Office Space (Mike Judge, 1999) Expendable Cogs

[PHarrison]

Office Space

By Paul Harrison


Office Space is so true! I have sat in morning rush hour traffic, changing from lane to lane, trying and failing to find the lane that is moving the fastest. I have lingered just outside the employee entrance, trying to justify a reason to open the door and walk in. I have had to endure the trite office clichés and witticisms like, “must be a case of the Mondays!” I have had to listen to crude coworkers tell the same crass stories, or “Debbie downers” spreading the same corporate takeover rumors, over and over, again and again. I have sat at a desk staring at a screen for so long that I have seen white lettering on the walls when I look up. And, I have sat around with other disappointed co-workers imagining what we would do if we had a million dollars. And sometimes too, we thought of ways to come up with that million illegally as well.

Office Space is a funny film that not only comments on these tedious and mundane moments that swallow up our precious time, but it is also a criticism of the 1990’s dot.com culture, where, a generation of young twenty and thirty somethings bought into the idea that there was a glamorous life working for computer software companies. The 1990’s were a time where young often romanticized the software community, casually dressed CEO’s skateboarding from office to office, and making money hand over fist. It was a time when being a nerd, suddenly, (thanks to Bill Gates) became cool. For young corporate executives, the software industry was a way to get rich quick, and with promises of profit sharing and fat stock portfolios dangled like a carrot in front of them, gave up their souls for the chance at an early retirement.

Judge demonstrates this criticism throughout the film in the dialogue and actions of the main characters. Much of the opening of the film is seen through the point of view of Peter Gibbons, (I have no idea what this name could mean), who hates his job! As he tells his psychotherapist, “Every day is worse than the day before, so that everyday is the worst day of my life.” For Peter, his job is meaningless, and unfulfilling. The opening sequence of the film demonstrates his frustrations and the mundane world that he has to endure. As a result, every aspect of Peter’s life is unfulfilled and therefore his only ambition is to dream of doing “absolutely nothing.” He is so apathetic about his own life that he doesn’t even see that his girlfriend is cheating on him, when everyone around him does. It is only after Peter is partially hypnotized into letting all of his worries, cares and inhibitions be gone that he begins to act on his true desires. It is symbolic that the job at hand for Initech employees is to prepare for the Y2K changeover. A problem that was created by software engineers, and fixed by software engineers by going into every line of code and changing the year from two digits, to four. Peter’s job is not to create some new exciting software, but instead, to fix a problem.

Yet, Judge appears to not only be criticizing the dot.com culture of the 1990’s, but also the way in which employees became expendable cogs in a world of minute details. The most obvious example of this is with the character of Milton. Milton is the office collator. This is symbolic, because a collator is the one that puts everything together in its proper order, and staples it with a red Swingline model 747 office stapler. (As a side note: Swingline at the time did not make a red Swingline model 747 office stapler. The set coordinator wanted to find a stapler that would stand out enough to warrant Milton hoarding it for himself as something special. So, they painted it red. Three years later, after multiple requests for the red Swingline 747 office stapler from “Office Space” fans, Swingline put it into production.) (Google: Redswingline.com to order yours!) When we first see Milton, his desk is fairly uncluttered, with the exception of the radio he has the right to listen to. Yet, as the movie progresses, Milton is gradually pushed out of the picture. His cubicle, as it is moved around the office, grows increasingly smaller, and more and more cluttered with office supplies until at one point, his cubicle appears to be surrounded on all sides, without a way out. When Lumbergh takes Milton’s stapler, he is symbolically taking away Milton’s value to the company, reducing him to unimportance and expendability. Ultimately he is pushed into the storage basement, and literally left in the dark.

Judge’s other criticism appears to be demonstrated through the character, or lack of character, of the main protagonist, Peter Gibbons. I see him as both a hero and anti-hero. Though he appears to be a cool and likeable guy, Peter allows himself to be a victim. He lets his boss push him around; he lets his girlfriend boss him around and his only ambition in life is to do absolutely nothing. Is this the kind of guy we really want to root for? Instead of accepting responsibility for his life and having the courage to change it, Peter instead appears to blame the system. And, when the system appears to have failed him, he stoops even lower and seeks revenge by stealing money from Initech. Perhaps Judge is trying to say something to the very same 20 and 30 something crowd that turned his movie into a cult favorite, “Get off your ass and do something with your life. Don’t be such a victim.” This is Peter’s low point in his life, and in response, he decides to accept all the blame. Symbolically, he realizes that he is the one to blame for his life being meaningless, and with a little help from Milton, is able to escape the severe punishment he expected, and gets a second chance to live a life more fulfilling.

[JBondurant]

Another example in the movie of just how miserable our protagonists are is the interview between Michael Bolton and his superiors. Bolton absolutely hates his singer counterpart and mentions it whenever the topic of his name or the singer is brought up. The interview is a situation in which he is severely compromised, up against a wall. He knows his job is on the line and that he must leave a favorable impression upon the interviewing executives or he may be fired. When they get to reading his name, they have the same reaction as most people throughout the film do - "Michael Bolton, is that really your name" - and then the one with the moustache goes off about how he loves the singer. They put him on the spot by asking him what his favorite song is. The truth, as we all know, is that he hates that "assclown", but with his job on the line he compromises and says "I guess I kind of like them all". This is a total lie, but it garners support from the two bosses who apparently are huge fans. This concession is representative of the mindset that got all of our miserable software geeks into the soul-eating job in the first place. If he was, in fact, a "gangsta", he would have told those bosses exactly what he thought with no remorse. Alas, he plays it safe, just like he probably did when he applied to Initech. He starts to look sick as they progress through the interview, and at the end he says "you can just call me Mike", which is something he said he would never do, because he shouldn't have to change- Michael Bolton is the one that sucks.

[NPhillips-Edwards]

I found the metaphor of the characters in the film as cogs to be an apt one. Indeed these characters are merely uniform, unremarkable cogs in the corporate machine. An entity in constant metamorphosis, always seeking to amplify efficiency and profit at the expense of it's constituent parts. They are trapped in the continuous and, indeed, mundane revolutions of their lives. They get up, drive to work, sit at their desks for a few hours, then go home. Day in, day out, like clockwork. Miserable as these "cogs" may be, it is not until they break from this clockwork, attempting to embezzle a sizable portion of money from Initech, that things truly go awry. Essentially, by showing ambition in their attempted heist of the company, Peter, Michael, and Samir are in fact worse off than if they had simply persisted.

However, even after Initech perishes in the fire, and by extension all of the evidence linking them to their crime, they fail to escape the revolutions and monotony of life. Samir and Michael take jobs at Initrode, which is essentially no different from Initech. Milton, having made off with the embezzled funds can be found at a tropical resort, with little change in demeanor, or disposition. While it is true that Peter is arguably the best off in his "new" life, there is and equal sense of dé⋅jà vu. In the end, the film suggests that we, as uniform cogs are wholly incapable of escaping the monotonous clockwork of life.

[lbourgeois]

I found the observation that Peter’s job is not to create something, but rather to fix a problem that his same brethren of software engineers actually created, very interesting. This is just one of the many things that makes Peter loathe his job as another meaningless task that is devoid of inspiration. Yet, while Judge takes many steps to show the overwhelming inhumanity of the corporate structure this is mere foreplay for what I believe is his most biting critique that Peter and people in general must be responsible for their own happiness.

Judge shows that yes, Peter, like so many other people, hate his job but the idiosyncrasy that drives Peter to such despair and ultimately madness is his complete and utter apathy. Peter hates how meaningless his job is, yet he has invested no time in finding something that would be meaningful to him, so he has only constructed his own downfall. The same could be said of his life in general until he meets Joanna. By taking this profound step (asking her out) Peter for the first time in the movie is happy enough that he can forget about the monotony of his work life. Peter may be a hero for having the courage to find a new job, but the movie ended by leaving its most important question unresolved. Does Peter, after we have watched him mature so much from a whining wimp to a self-possessed man, still dream of doing absolutely nothing? If so, then he is ultimately an anti-hero. But his blossoming new attitude and love for Joanna in the final minutes of the film suggest that Peter is learning that a meaningful life is not measured by what you get or have but what you give and make.

[K Bonnington]

It's interesting that Peter's idea of a good life is sitting around doing nothing. It seems that all people fundamentally like to actually do at least something so that at the end of the day they can feel some sense of accomplishment, although that can look different to everyone. Usually the level of apathy that he displays in the film would be driven by a severe lack of challenge in life. Peter differs from this stereotype in that he doesn't show any real flash of brilliance that would give the impression that he is actually being under-utilized. The only creative thing he does is engineer a way to get away with not going to work and acting out without having any real consequences. In this way Peter sticks out as an anomaly not just for the fact that he challenges the corporate world, but that he doesn't really make any sense as a person. While in most films the final scene might have had him running a new software company with similarities to care-free environments of places like Apple, instead we see what many would consider an even worse job. From this there is no reason to believe that Peter ends up being happy with his work. It's quite conceivable that he would end up burning out there as well. There is the sense that just a change of scenery is all he was craving, but in the end he still shows up to the same office park to work at the same spot he always did. There is very little evidence from Peter's previous complaints about monotony to suggest that he would feel any different in the long term about his new work. In a way, the joke is on him in the end because he is still trapped in the same cycle which prevents him from meeting his goal of doing nothing.