YMMV / Office Space

• Accidental Aesop:
  • If you want to succeed, you must learn confidence and charisma. Peter wins over the Bobs with his plain-spoken candor and honesty. Tom loses his job after he melts down during his interview with the Bobs.
  • If you don't like your boss or job for that matter, learn a trade so you can be your own boss. The magazine salesman is happier and making more money than he did at his boring old job. And Peter finds happiness working in construction alongside his buddy Lawrence.
• Adaptation Displacement: This film is much better-known than the Saturday Night Live cartoons on which it's based.
• Adorkable: Joanna. Just look at the awkward way she plays with her hair and fumbles with things on the table on her first date with Peter. And, of course, she loves Kung Fu (1972).
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is Peter really an oppressed victim of a bleak office environment, or is he a lazy and entitled jerk? One could point out that he has a poor work ethic, does the bare minimum required of him, and eventually engages in an illegal scheme to rob his company — and convinces his friends to join him — just because his bosses pushed him too hard to do his job. That said, Peter is supremely unmotivated and micromanaged, he's horrified when he discovers that his friends are getting laid off despite having a better work ethic, and when things start going wrong, he takes the blame to spare his friends. All this is muddled by the fact that his nonchalant attitude, at least in part, can be attributed to the hypnotherapy he tries at the start of the film.
  • Is Lumbergh a genuine Pointy-Haired Boss, or is he trying his best with a group of unmotivated employees? He's there at work on the weekend, he calls Peter at home several times to remind him to come to work, and his constant commands, while annoying, are the basic details of Peter's job. It's also implied that the company is preparing for the upcoming Millennium Bug (consistent with the film's release date), meaning they're absolutely swamped with work and really do need the weekends to catch up. On the other hand, Lumbergh's manner of going about his job is terrible. He badly micromanages his employees, adores busywork like TPS reports (the Bobs deduce that he doesn't even read them), and clearly doesn't care about productivity — if he did, he would spare some thought for his employees' well-being, and maybe not have them drop everything they're doing so that he could talk about how they need to be doing something. And none of this gets into his treatment of poor Milton.
  • Are the Bobs a pair of heartless hatchetmen, or are they serious professionals who want to improve the company? Are they so mired in corporate buzzword "theories" that they see Peter as a go-getter and not a Lazy Bum? Or are they so disheartened by what they see when they interview everyone else that they correctly identify Peter as the one most likely to save the company, because he knows exactly what's wrong with it and spoke up about it? Do they grill Lumbergh because they want to show who the real boss is, or because they take their job seriously even if it means asking tough questions of high-ranking people? The main point against them, really, is that like Lumbergh, they also mistreat Milton, what with their idea not to let him know that he's been fired. Not to mention their rather glib attitude toward the people they fire.
  • Is Tom one of the many beaten-down employees at Initech, unfairly laid off because he lost control of his emotions one time? Or is he an incompetent blowhard who deserves to be fired? Heck, it's a matter of debate whether his job is actually important; while it certainly sounds useless the way he describes it, and at a company as hopeless as Initech it might well be, in Real Life tech companies very much employ people to ask a customer who's not tech-savvy for specifications and "translate" that to something the hopelessly nerdy engineers can understand — a job that very much requires "people skills". But this raises another question: is Tom actually good at his job and just so flustered by the Bobs that he can't prove it? Or is he so bad at his job that his secretary does all the work, and his demeanor with the Bobs is the best he can do?
  • Nina, the secretary in corporate accounts payable, seems to be the only lower-level employee at Initech who's not completely miserable. Is that because she's genuinely happy with her job^note after all, in Real Life, secretaries tend to have higher job satisfaction than average, or because she's a Stepford Smiler? Is her cheery attitude toward people who are clearly miserable a genuine effort to cheer them up, a survival mechanism for office life at Initech, or condescension for the people who don't enjoy their jobs? And she also treats Milton like crap (telling him to wait for his cake - knowing that this will in fact deny him any, for the second time in a row - while she's clearly already got her own).
• Applicability: If you or someone you know have ever held down a job, you've probably had at least one that felt just as insufferable as Peter's. It doesn't have to be tech work; every industry has its share of annoying co-workers, incompetent and abusive superiors, stifling work environments, and trivial nuisances that overpower any effort to actually preserve one's well-being. There's something at Initech for every worker to laugh at.
• Ass Pull: The reason Peter breaks up with Joanna is that he finds out she slept with Lumbergh. It turns out later that this is a different, previously unmentioned character with the same last name. It's not a very common last name, but Peter should be familiar enough with both characters to not assume that it's his boss Lumbergh whom Joanna slept with. The guy who tells him that "Lumbergh fucked her" is not only aware of both himself, but seems to expect that Peter would be, too — and even points out how ridiculous it was that his mind immediately jumped to Bill "that'd be greaaaaaat" Lumbergh instead of the other one. It just seems kind of contrived.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: Even fans have admitted that it's difficult to make 90 minutes of dry, quirky comedy in a dull corporate office sound exciting. Fox head Tom Rothman called the film one of the most difficult he'd ever had to market.
• Awesome Music: The whole soundtrack features an awesome array of classic '90s hip-hop.
  • Two songs by Geto Boys: "Damn, It Feels Good To Be a Gangsta" during Peter's Good-Times Montage, and "Still" during the heroes' mafia-style beatdown of the office printer.
  • Scarface's "No Tears" bumping in Michael's car in the opening scene, perfectly setting the tone for his character.
  • "Shove This Jay Oh Bee" by Canibus and Biz Markie, the only song recorded specifically for the movie, which plays over the end credits and ends it on a literal triumphant note.
• The Catchphrase Catches On: Several turns of phrase from the film have become fairly commonplace in Real Life, e.g. "TPS Report", "pieces of flair", "a case of the Mondays", "Did you get that memo?", and "no-talent ass-clown" (which may or may not be specifically applied to Michael Bolton).
• Catharsis Factor:
  • The printer smashing scene. Admit it: you've always wanted to do that to a piece of technology you hated too.
  • Milton gets his when he sets the building on fire.
  • Lumbergh's Trauma Conga Line is incredibly fun to watch — he gets a grilling from the Bobs, Peter finally works up the nerve to disobey him, and his car gets towed. A Deleted Scene mentions he died in the fire.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The hypnotherapist discussion at Chotchkie's.
  Michael: Look. Why don't you just tell Anne that you're not into hypnosis, and you want to play poker with us?
  Peter: Aww, I can't do that. She'll get all pissed off, and besides, I think that the guy might be able to help. I mean, he did help Anne lose weight.
  Samir: Peter, she's anorexic.
  Peter: Yeah, I know. The guy's really good.
• Cult Classic: 20th Century Fox had no idea how to market the film, resulting in it just barely breaking even on its original release. Once it hit home video and aired on Comedy Central, it became not only a cult classic, but the definitive work film for anyone who has clocked hours in a large, corporate, office environment.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Milton. He's constantly mumbling, doesn't express his emotions that well, and is hyper-fixated on his work and his stapler.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite only appearing in a few scenes, Peter's neighbor Lawrence has become one character from the film that almost everybody remembers, largely due to his hilariously stone-faced delivery of pretty a passel of ridiculous lines, like "Two chicks at the same time" or "Don't want you fuckin' up my life, too."
  • Milton was one in the original cartoons, and he's still one here.
• Harsher in Hindsight: After Peter gets laid off from his presumably higher paying tech job, he takes a job in construction. In The '90s, this was a plausible thing to happen; he might get paid less, but he'd get paid enough, and jobs were plentiful and fairly secure. And as technology got better, the tech boom ended, and many jobs like Peter's became obsolete, a lot of tech workers did exactly what Peter did. Fast forward to the 2008 Great Recession, and the extra construction jobs disappeared, replaced by even lower-wage service sector work. Peter's future, unfortunately, is not that bright.
• He Really Can Act: Gary Cole's deadpan delivery convinced Mike Judge for a while that he wasn't sure if Cole knew the movie was a comedy. It took giving him a coffee mug to hold during the dream sequence for Cole to corpse. Knowing his later roles, it's not a surprise that this was in Star-Making Role in the comedy genre.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In this movie, Ron Livingston plays a guy whose boss treats him like crap. Thirteen years later, in The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Ron Livingston plays a boss who treats his employee like crap. One cannot watch the latter film without thinking of Peter channeling Lumbergh (if not being worse).
  • Michael Bolton can't catch a break. Michael Bolton the singer-songwriter was already popular when the film came out. But in the Internet age, he got a renewed surge of popularity after being featured as a guest vocalist in The Lonely Island's "Jack Sparrow".
  • A nebbish, beleaguered office worker deals with the pent-up anger from their job by singing along to hardcore music. Are we talking about Michael Bolton or Retsuko?
  • What would Lawrence do with a million dollars? Turns out he'd fight crime.
• Jerkass Woobie: Michael. It's clear that his love of hardcore gangsta rap and somewhat abrasive personality are his way of coping with the self-esteem issues and pent-up anger — thanks to his unpleasant job, his embarrassing name, and everyone constantly asking him the same question about said name.
• Love to Hate: Lumbergh is a memorable antagonist for being an incredibly accurate portrayal of corrupt and incompetent management.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The printer scene, arguably the best-known scene to everyone who hasn't watched the film. Parodied by Family Guy here and Smosh here.
  • "I believe you have my stapler?"
  • Michael's description of federal prison.
  • "Yeeeaahh, I'm gonna need you to go ahead and..." For extra meme, finish it with "That'd be greaaaaaat."
  • "Two chicks at the same time."
  • "What exactly is it you do here?"
  • "No-talent ass-clown."
  • "I'm going to set the building on fire."
  • "I was told that..."
  • "Pieces of flair"
  • "Mmmm.... yeah..."
• Misaimed Fandom: Ron Livingston has been told by many fans that the movie convinced them to quit their jobs. But that's not the message of the film; the message is to quit if you hate it so much that it drains you of your will to live. While a lot of people have jobs like that, not everyone does. And in any event, the heroes are definitely committing a crime by robbing their company, only avoid prison through sheer dumb luck, and are all relieved to have jobs again by the end.
• One-Scene Wonder: The magazine salesman pretending to be a crackhead made the most of his one scene.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Some reviewers have criticized Idle Profits for promoting the vapid work environment the movie was making fun of, for example by rewarding climbing the corporate ladder and increasing profits. Even burning down the building becomes a regular obligation instead of an act of rebellion.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The film takes its cues from Head Office.
  • Office Space is also a spiritual (and somewhat gender flipped) sequel to the 1980 office comedy, 9 to 5. Both films take place in a souless corporate environment, with horrible managers, where the abused and neglected employees get revenge on their awful bosses.
  • Has one in Horrible Bosses. Both films feature workers setting up revenge plots on their bosses and have Jennifer Aniston in the cast. (The second one has her as a villain rather than love interest.)
  • Mike Judge's later work Extract also touches on several of the same themes of a put-upon guy trapped in an unsatisfying working and personal life at a small business, except this time it's shown from the perspective of the boss instead of the employee. Incidentally, Extract features Jason Bateman, who was also in Horrible Bosses.
  • The Comedy Central workplace comedy Workaholics has been been described as "Office Space on drugs."
  • Silicon Valley is the closest thing to an Office Space sequel you'll likely ever see.
• Strawman Has a Point: For all his annoying habits and micromanagement, Lumbergh has a point when he complains to the Bobs about Peter. He is regularly showing up late, zoning out at his desk, goofing off, and avoiding doing actual work. This is not professional behavior and will get any tech worker in hot water. Lumbergh also has to express his befuddlement at this, since this isn't typical behavior from Peter; he only started doing it at the beginning of the movie.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The end credits song "Shove This Jay Oh Bee" by Canibus and Biz Markie seems to be taking a lot of conceptual cues from "Ghetto Superstar": both are hip-hop theme songs to movies about white guys who rebel against their white-collar jobs, both recap the entire plot of their respective films, and both sample country pop hits ("Take This Job and Shove It" by Johnny Paycheck for the former, and "Islands in the Stream" by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton for the latter).
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • Dated technology notwithstanding, this movie, along with Fight Club and especially American Beauty, was one of several films released during the late 1990s and very early 2000s which dwelled on the crushing banality of the American middle class, consisting of disaffected white guys who felt as though everything important had been accomplished and there was nothing left to do but let humanity run its course until the end of time. Ron Livingston even described his character as someone who imagines himself as the star of Fight Club. A ton of things would change that feeling, though, starting with 9/11 and just careening onward from there. The only thing that hasn't really changed is the soul-sucking nature of white-collar office work.
  • The plot being built around the Millennium Bug could only happen pre-2000.
• Values Dissonance:
  • After the Great Recession in 2008 and its long, shaky recovery marked by high unemployment rates and a very dry job market, it can be hard to sympathize with Peter wangsting about having a full-time job in his field of expertise, which apparently pays him enough to live in a decently sized apartment in a gated community. It also adds some poignancy to Samir's line about how nice it would be to have the kind of job security where you could keep your job until you're fifty, no matter how boring it would be.
  • The film was clearly made before mass shootings became a thing in American discourse and public life (even Columbine didn't happen until a few months after the film's release). Even just ten years after the film, Peter's offhand joke about shooting up the office would be considered a genuine red flag.
  • Although it's portrayed in a comedically extreme fashion, the "Rank And Yank" style of management used at Initech was actually very popular in the 80's and 90's, thanks to General Electric's notorious then-CEO Jack Welch's influence. The corporate scandals of the 2000's, plus the Great Recession of 2008 and the Great Resignation of 2020, have led to far more discussion about mental health in the workplace and maintaining positive/collaborative company cultures. Thus, the "Rank and Yank" style of management has become far less popular (although it is still used at some companies - particularly those that are run by older CEO's who had been using it since its heyday).
  • Peter knocks down one of his cubicle walls as a sign of rebellion against management. However, as open-plan offices become more popular, it's been found that they only make it easier for management to watch and control workers, which increases stress. Many workers in open-plan offices actually prefer cubicles for some semblance of privacy.
• Values Resonance:
  • While not everyone is as ungrateful to have a soul-sucking office job as Peter is, most would tell you that yes, such jobs can be exactly as soul-sucking as the film depicts. Office drones are still expected to deal with trivial bureaucratic crap like TPS report cover sheets, mission statements, timesheets, and multiple bosses. The technology may have improved, but it hasn't gotten any more reliable.^note "Fuck! Even in the future, nothing works!" Indeed, many a modern-day office drone has dreamed of enacting the printer-smashing scene in real life.
  • While the job market has gotten shakier since the film and many workers are more grateful to have a job than Peter is, in some ways this attitude exacerbates the problems shown in the film — workers have become even more reluctant to criticize their bosses or work environment, because they risk getting fired. A more recent viewer might be shocked at Peter openly saying he doesn't want to do his job anymore; in their time, it would get him fired on the spot. That same viewer will cheer even harder when Peter gets rewarded for saying this, and also identify more with Michael and Samir, who are perfectly competent but risk getting fired anyway for not working hard enough.
  • Although the cycle has come and gone several times since the film, one can see the boom and bust cycle in both the tech and construction industries. A later viewer who's befuddled as to why Peter would be fine leaving a tech job for construction work contrasts with an even later viewer who can absolutely relate to that particular career change. In the 1990s, there was simply a huge market for real estate; in the late 2010s, it was so expensive to get a college degree (which you'd need for a tech job) that construction and tradesmanship looked a lot more attractive. It helps that by The New '20s, things such as wage stagnation, companies hiring freelancers over full-time employees, and longer work schedules have resulted in tech company jobs no longer providing the stable middle-class lifestyle they did in the 90s.
  • The Bobs' struggle to figure out how to motivate their employees and keep them from totally bailing out got new relevance after the COVID-19 pandemic, the work-from-home boom, and the "Great Resignation", when people started quitting office jobs en masse. Many of the conversations had then about balancing profits and employees' well-being, maximizing productivity, and avoiding burnout were exactly what the Bobs were trying to start two decades before.
  • Peter and Lawrence react negatively to the female temp worker's rather blissful dismissal of Peter's feelings ("Somebody has a case of the Mondays") as empty garbage. Nowadays with awareness of issues like depression, toxic positivity and the questionable success of self-help, more people are inclined to side with Peter and Lawrence.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor, poor Milton. Every scene has Lumbergh visiting a microaggression of some sort on him. He keeps moving Milton's office and eventually puts him in the basement. He fires him without telling him so that he can get free labor for as long as he keeps coming to work. He won't let him keep his stapler. Milton has totally earned the right to set the building on fire and make off with the money at the end of the film.
  • Peter, meanwhile, is trapped in a boring office job, has a girlfriend who cheats on him, runs into a ton of people with No Sympathy who might not be trying to make his life more miserable but do so anyway, and is watching it get worse every day. Even if he didn't get the hypnotherapy at the beginning of the film, it was only a matter of time before he snapped and stopped caring about anything.

---