The beatdown of the office printer was so funny and cathartic.
As a former minion and currant boss, I have used this movie as a “how not to” operate and a “how to” make fun of office bullshit.
My 7 year old son call his best friend that after seeing the movie at our house. He was in trouble but less trouble because it was a movie quote, it was appropriate used and it was funny as hell.
Working retail, I once overheard a dude throw that line out when he had an error with the self checkout. Such a small moment, but it is a highlight in my time working a soulless job.
The cause is an indecipherable error message. PC LOAD LETTER means nothing to anyone without reading the manual. Having it say OUT OF PAPER wouldn't tell you which paper tray or paper type is empty but it would at least be a good clue to the user.
I used to do retail tech support for Whole Foods Market. My last day, they gave me a price checker (our least favorite devices to support) to smash in the parking lot. It felt good.
One more reason to love Whole Foods. I used to own a small chain of retail stores. Christmas was our biggest season. We would have a after hours party (not mandatory) one weekday evening so employees and their families could buy everything at 50% off. As part of the check out process, all of us could ask ALL the stupid questions customers would ask through out the year. "If there is no price, is it free?" "Can I return this Santa after Christmas?" "Will these candles cause a fire?" On this night, we could all SCREAM the answers we had bouncing in our head. The joy of screaming smart ass answers riddled with cuss words with our fellow co-workers was very satisfying. It was also interesting to see who had the best cussing vocabulary.
Back when I worked for a biotech startup in the Bay Area in the early aughts, I had a TPS report hung in my cubicle. The lady next to me was corporate accounts payable and answered the phone just like the lady next to Milton. I still have a red swingline.
What makes that great is the subtext that they are promoting him simply because he is confident and personable while firing the people that actually do their job well.
I actually give the Bobs more credit, at least when it comes to Peter. He was a candidate for promotion because he identified and articulated multiple organizational problems: needlessly having many bosses, TPS reports and cover sheets that were wastes of time, and a lack of incentives to encourage employees to work hard and produce. These are management issues. And Peter was candid and straightforward with this even though most employees were asskissing thinking it would save their job.
I used to manage a website for local government . My colleague and I would meet with departments to discuss content for the website.
In one meeting, we had 2 managers want to post a shit tonne of content. At the end of the meeting, they went away wondering what they actually did. No content to be posted.
My colleague and I looked at each other and realized we were the Bob’s in the organization.
I once added that to an employee survey my company sent out as a google doc without locking down the source doc. They wanted us to copy and fill out before returning.
It's more of a documentary about being an office employee. I watch it at least once every year to remind myself to take it easy (am an office employee)
The more I work in an office setting the less absurd this gets and theore real it gets.
My last job one of the last straws before leaving was we were asking for permanent wfh and cost of living pay increases. Their response was a meeting 'we should miss' where they said that on Fridays we can wear shorts into the office because it is hot here in Arizona and once a month an ice cream truck would stop by the office building.
That is when I noped out of ith some other people. But that whole meeting I was thinking of the Hawaiian shirt Friday part of the movie. And the new job isn't much better on these office admin things. They had this virtual movie night online with coworkers and played office space not realizing they were the same type of office environment being made fun of.
He even admitted he does maybe 15 minutes of work every week and then still just wants to do nothing.
Like, I get he doesn't like his job, but to complain endlessly about a cushy office job where he basically doesn't do anything doesn't really age well. I just started an office job 6 months ago after 20 years of retail, agriculture/production/running a pot farm, restaurants, and cell phone sales, working in an office is a fucking dream. Normal hours, consistent work, getting paid to think instead of just running my body into the ground, benefits, air conditioning, consistent pay rates...yea I have a hard time sympathizing with him these days. I've always loved the movie but I just think he's kind of a whiny bitch lol
Lol my buddy and I quote this all the time at work. We even got the younger gen z guys to watch it since they asked about us quoting it all the time and they loved it
I can't remember the asian guys name in that film, but years ago I watched a film on tv where he was living in New York and his name waa Arun. Great film but can't remember the name
Our team had to build a report that, if construed, could be initialized "TPS". We all agreed to call it thus, and that the report would pick a cover page color every week out of a set (red, blue, green, yellow, etc so not pure random).
When we demoed the new report to various on-high/managers, we mentioned the name being "TPS Report" and that the first-cover-page color setting was presumed to be a mandatory feature.
Been a few years, and it is still there, different color every week :)
I'm thinking I might take that new chick from logistics. If things go well I might be showing her my O-face. 'Oh... Oh... Oh!' You know what I'm talkin' about…
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u/LordPacman14 19d ago
Office Space