Last evening, for the first time in my life, I made it all the way through the movie Office Space. Curiously, that link says the movie was released in 1999 but it seems to me it’s been in my life much longer than that. Possibly because my main objection to it was “I know all these people, and it’s not funny.”
But last night, ten years since my last endless day in a gray carpeted cubicle, I sat through the whole thing in a single sitting. Even laughed at spots.
This morning, as if either being punished for hubris or preparing the next great milestone, I woke up thinking about Glengarry Glen Ross. Far from sitting all the way through this horrid flick, I couldn’t ever make it through Alec Baldwin’s scene at the beginning. It’s like a kind of torture. I can understand that the excellent cast probably had a ball making it, it’s an actor’s movie, but it only reminds me of all the desperation-verging-on-despair and the way my family learned to avoid me on Sunday nights because I never took the knowledge that Monday morning’s coming very well. Gods, there were times when I hated life, and I never even worked in real estate. No, I don’t own a copy of this one and don’t plan to try to watch it. Office Space, at least, was supposed to be a comedy.
And no, for the record, I was not this guy…
I was, however, pretty much this guy in every way but girth.
I sat all the way through Glengary Glen Ross. Believe me, you made the right decision by not even making the attempt.
But now you need to try a few episodes of the nine very long seasons of The Office.
Ten years? That’s great. As for the movie maybe you should take a look at another business classic. A television series that deals with all the inns and outs of customer service… Yes that BBC classic Fawlty Towers.
I am a partner in a small software company. Orientation for all new hires includes an airing of Office Space.
Dear god, why?
Actually I exaggerate. It’ll be ten years in October.
Well, maybe you will get run over by a truck and get enough money to do whatever you want for life, like the guy in the movie. But you seem to be doing pretty well out there, you and your dog. There are times when I envy you. ISYN.
In answer to Joel’s “Dear god, why?” We write software for banks and I learn a lot about the new hires when I watch their reaction to the various decision making scenes in the movie.