by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer

I suspect I’m not the only one who saw Office Space for the first time because my parents rented it and I pilfered the VHS after hours and clandestinely viewed the much ballyhooed R-Rated comedy. Released in 1999, Office Space came out at a time before memes where the things that were discussed around the junior high school lunch table were various bits of popular culture. I vividly remember trying to find places to download episodes of South Park because my family’s cable package didn’t include Comedy Central, and a single episode taking over 24 hours to download on a dial-up internet connection. Despite none of us ninth graders having even the slightest idea what Office Space was trying to say about the soul-sucking nature of office culture and work in  general, it was one of those movies that was just so goddamn funny that it didn’t even matter. 

That I even got to see the movie at all is a minor miracle, since it wasn’t the kind of movie my parents typically rented, and this was a period where my mom refused to let me rent or see an R Rated movie so I was on my own here. To this day I have a very distinct memory of watching Office Space for the first time. It helps that I grew up on a steady diet of Mike Judge–late night Beavis & Butthead marathons dovetailed nicely with the premiere of King of the HIll–which no doubt laid the groundwork for my “getting” Office Space at the tender age of 14, but there was always something kind of magical about getting a glimpse into the world of adults. Especially in the days of the early internet where it was nigh impossible to get that kind of intel without first hand experience.

I watch Office Space every 5 years or so partly because it gives me that pure late 90s nostalgia hit that I need sometimes, but also because I have more and more context with each subsequent viewing. While I never worked in one of those cubicle-filled offices from the movie, the beautiful thing about Office Space is the setting doesn’t matter. The core message of the movie is: isn’t it insane that we spend half of our waking lives in these places? “Work Sucks” is the tagline you’ll see on the poster, but the content of Office Space is how work literally sucks the life out of you until you’re nothing but the guy who hands in the TPS reports making profits for some unseen entity. 

The inciting incident of Office Space–corporate drone Peter’s girlfriend takes him to see a hypnotherapist to help him cope with the depression caused by him hating his job, and when the hypnotist dies mid-hypnotizing, Peter is left in a blissful delirium where his job does not matter–is one that feels more brilliant upon each new viewing. Peter starts going into work whenever he feels like it, and rather than being fired outright, he is praised by the higher ups who appreciate his candor (much to the chagrin of his 8 other bosses). It’s deeply cathartic. While the plot action involves Peter and his work friends attempting to rip off the company (“It’s like Superman III”) that’s really just a device to give the movie some traditional structure. It’s designed to get us to a point at the end where Peter is working construction cleaning up the burnt out wreckage of his old office (they should have known better than to take Milton’s red Swingline stapler) and basking in the glory of manual labor. No, we all shouldn’t quit our jobs and work construction, but there is something to be said about the satisfaction of doing something tangible as opposed to filling out TPS reports for your 8 different bosses. 

Other movies and TV shows have followed in the wake of Office Space, but none have really rivalled the movie’s borderline masochistic depiction of work culture. The Office–both US and UK versions–tapped into the mind-numbing nature of modern employment but ultimately settled for feel good vibes. What sets Office Space apart is that even though the incredible jokes and bits that have stood the test of time and make the movie so much fun to watch, there is a grim undercurrent that never stops nagging at you as you’re watching. Because if you stop to think about how much time you spend at work, and how you see your coworkers more than you see your own family, well, that’s pretty damn grim. Couple that with work that is Sisyphean and you really start questioning the meaning of life. You eventually get to the point where you’re like, “Man, the hunter gatherers really had it figured out.” Sure, you probably died before you turned 30 because Grog accidentally cut you open with a bone spear and it got infected, but at least your work had tangible, real-world results. 

These are the kinds of questions–or in my case, romantic daydreams about caveman living–Office Space still inspires. Because at the end of the day, if you won the lottery, would you still go to work the next day? Or would you quit without notice and go about living your life the way you want to live it? Our society likes us to think that our work is important, but like everything, that feels like a carrot hanging from the stick held by the moneyed goons who really run the show and keep lining their pocketbooks with the toil of the working man. Like, you can’t watch Office Space and not think that working as much as we have to work just to survive is kind of insane. White dudes with truck selfies on Facebook will rebut this by saying people are soft these days and don’t want to work, but why do they feel compelled to stick up for our corporate overlords? Is it because the culture war we are currently experiencing is a brilliant distraction to draw attention away from the fact that capitalism is just a game that a select few are allowed to play? Part of me feels like this kind of thinking is conspiratorial and I’m one step away from donning a tinfoil hat and posting my dissertation about shape shifting lizard people coming up from the hollow earth to replace the people in power, but someone tell me how Jeff Bezos gets a yacht that needs its OWN SEPARATE SUPPORT YACHT without exploiting the system and the people who have no other choice than to work within it? 

That’s why Office Space has to be so damn funny. Because the truth about our working lives is just too damn sad. I’m fortunate enough to have a job that I enjoy and provides a lot of satisfaction while also knowing full well that I only go there every day because I have basic needs that have to be met and a family to support. I feel like that is most of us, unless you’re making a living as an artist or you’ve turned your hobby into a career and you’re making your living doing something you would be doing anyway. Let me remind you that I only started down this depressive spiral because I rewatched a workplace comedy where the most famous bit is a dude with bleach blonde hair miming an orgasm. That’s the power of cinema, I guess. The power to disguise the horrifying truth in the silliest of packages.