HOME OFFICE SPACE: INTERPRETING MIKE JUDGE’S 1999 CULT CLASSIC OFFICE

SPACE FOR THE COVID-19 ERA

Mike Judge’s 1999 cult hit Office Space satirized the evil tedium of the office as a place and as an institution
by showing just how soul-sucking working in it can be. The movie’s protagonist, Peter Gibbons, encounters
smarmy, micromanaging bosses, spineless consultants, and everything we all came to hate about office life.
He gets promoted for his Zen approach to work after taking a botched hypnotherapy session he took to
make improve his life. As he moves up the corporate ladder, his friends face immediate termination under
a downsizing scheme was brought in to save the company. As a result of the unfair treatment, Peter and his
friends hatch a scheme to grift the office.

Much of the workplace has changed since the movie’s release in 1999. The rise of technology allowed the
workforce to skirt the office and choose work schedules that they can personally control. Fast forward to
2020 and the workforce needed to adapt once more. Working from home had become more widespread and
offices were vacated in favor of remote work. This inched the office as both a place and an institution to
virtual obsolescence.

The ability to control how and where we work means that we no longer slog it out, brave the weekday
traffic, nor deal with the other inane effects of the office. Undoubtedly, remote work has its benefits and is,
in fact, considered, in one form or another, the preferred working set-up by most employees. However,
working from home means we have to contend with blurred lines between our jobs, homes, and ourselves.
Moreover, working from home increases the likelihood of longer hours and unpaid overtime. Considering
these conditions, I still think it is fair to say that Office Space will remain relevant as an office comedy for
many years to come.

Firstly, the workplace has long been a part of our every day. Before the pandemic, most of us were still
working in physical offices. But the pandemic changed all that, exposing to the workforce that working
from home is not all roses. In fact, much of the recent discourse on working from home involves its
downsides, especially in areas concerning long-term productivity and income generation. This means that
the physical office has cemented itself as integral to the working culture.

Secondly, the movie tackles themes that are present in any working environment. What makes the movie
timeless is that it shines a humorous light on the ever-present hellish conditions of the workplace. Over the
years, even with consideration to the evolutionary trajectory of the workplace, some aspects of it are eternal.
The physical manifestations are the only differences.

One of the major pains faced by remote workers is unplugging. This is no different to Office Space’s
demonstration of being consumed by your work and how it subsumes your identity. In the film, we see how
the workers at Initech are only as good as their roles in the company. Peter feels wasted at Initech, working
a boring, soulless, unfulfilling job every day including weekends. Telecommuters experience the loss of
identity in a different form. Difficulty unplugging could mean that one would be tempted to work during
rest days, leaving employees with insufficient time to pursue other activities, which leads to stress and
burnout.
Employee disengagement and motivation are also very clear themes in Office Space. Peter and his friends,
Michael Bolton and Samir, are brilliant individuals made to feel disposable. Because of this feeling of
disenfranchisement, they have ambivalent attitudes towards the company and its activities. Uncaring about
their environment, they fulfill only the barest minimum of their contracts and go through the motions of
every day.
Working from home is a bit different. Working from home tends to overlap the reality of the home and that
of work. While Peter and his friends have an office that they can (theoretically) separate themselves from
after a certain hour, the absence of a physical office in the home makes for difficult daily planning. Either
way, both scenarios are examples of the workplace subsuming identities.
It goes beyond the ability to focus. The office, whether in reality or in Office Space, is a fundamental part
of imparting company culture to its employees, and is considered a source of (un)accountability,
(de)motivation, and (loss of) meaning. Office Space caricatures this by portraying the corporation as
monolithic, bland, and bereft of a conscience. However, in reality, being in the office imparts the values
and conscience of a company by way of physical presence and material design. The absence of an actual
office, with all its effects, posters, and the giant corporation logo in the front desk, strips the connections
between the employee, their work, and ultimately, the company. As terrible as it sounds, being brainwashed
in the office, an absent feature of remote work, is necessary to align goals, cultures, and values. A little
indoctrination goes a long way.

Even after a lot have been working from home for over a year, workplaces still cling onto their old habits.
Working from home is packaged as the solution to efficiency and work-life balance. However, it seems that
we’ve been less efficient and have been working longer hours while working from home. Much like in the
pre-Covid world, unnecessarily long, meetings happen when the announcement could have been an e-mail.

Co-workers are there for a reason. They facilitate your indoctrination and keep you in check. The movie
doesn’t show much of this. Even if it did, it did so disparagingly. But, what they do show is that even in the
dehumanizing drudgery of the workplace, there is a reason to keep you from setting the place on fire.
Everyone around you hates work just as much as you do, and co-workers provide company in misery,
something that working from home cannot give you.

Overall, Office Space is a great satire of the workplace environment by poking fun at the worst of it all.
Regardless of what set-up you have or what field you work in, Office Space does well to translate the
dreariness of the workplace to its viewers. The culture of work may have changed over the years since the
movie’s release in 1999, but attitudes about work still remain the same wherever you go. Soul sucking jobs
exist and will be a mainstay of the working world for a very long time. Office Space will only be irrelevant
if workplaces, companies, and employers enact meaningful changes in ways that would eliminate or
drastically reduce disaffection and disengagement in non-superficial ways.