If it feels like we’ve been quoting Office Space and sharing Lumbergh memes since the dawn of the internet, it’s because we have! The comedy premiered on February 19, 1999—25 years ago!—and while a lot has changed about corporate life since then, it’s a little freaky how closely the movie still aligns with modern workplaces.
Office Space was written and directed by Mike Judge (creator of Beavis and Butt-Head and King Of The Hill), based on his series of animated shorts about an office denizen named Milton. The film wasn’t a big hit at the box office and only earned $12 million domestically, but it became a cult favorite once it arrived on home video. By the mid-aughts, everybody and their mother was talking about “pieces of flair” and “TPS reports.”
Back in 1999, Judge told Entertainment Weekly that he was inspired to create his first live-action film by his own short stint working at technology companies in Silicon Valley in the 1980s. Judge worked as an engineer doing mindless software tasks, just like his main character Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston), and it clearly left an impression on him. ”It seems like every city now has these identical office parks with identical adjoining chain restaurants,” Judge said at the time. “It’s easy to despise and dismiss those places. Too easy. That’s what I want to look at.”
Office Space did just that. All of the action takes place in a nondescript square office building with soul-draining florescent lighting and cubicle farms as far as the eye can see. To break up the day, Peter and his coworkers head next door to the generic chain restaurant adorned with random junk on the walls to be waited on by an unhappy waitress (Jennifer Aniston) who hates her job as much as they do. At the end of the day, Peter heads back to his bland apartment complex, where his neighbor Lawrence (Diedrich Bader), who works in construction, seems to love his simple life and job a lot more than Peter does.
That last bit was also inspired by Judge’s real life, by the way. Lawrence was modeled after his own neighbor, a very content and happy auto mechanic.
Incredibly, Office Space was made when the internet was still in its infancy. Most people had an email address, but surfing the web was something we did to find a specific answer to a question or chat with random strangers, not just something we did casually. For reference, the earliest web memes were basic grainy ASCII or pixelated gifs (remember the dancing baby from Ally McBeal?!) that were passed via email chains, and they didn’t even become commonplace until the early 2000s. Also, Peter’s job was to change computer code ahead of the Y2K crash, which … never even happened. Talk about useless busy work!
Despite a lack of modern technology, Office Space is still a pretty accurate depiction of corporate life. Judge wanted to reflect the truth of office life around the turn of the 21st Century, and not a lot has changed since then. While COVID-19 briefly changed the world by forcing employees to work home from home instead of in offices, now that the pandemic is over companies are forcing workers back to those institutional office parks once again.
Absolutely nothing about modern work environments has changed since 1999 either, including the terrible lighting, annoying coworkers, overbearing bosses, mandatory overtime, forced birthday gatherings, and the general feeling that nothing we do really matters. At the end of the day, we’re all Peter toiling away at a non-existent computer glitch. “It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s just that I don’t care.”
The only thing different is us, the workers
By 2024, many people have started to suspect that “work-life balance” doesn’t really exist. Now we’ve got the technology to stay connected 24/7, so it’s even more difficult to get away (and stay away) from work. Gen X and millennial workers got so burned out from this constant connectivity that now, Gen Z largely wants nothing to do with traditional office jobs. New studies suggest that people aged 16 to 25 want to be their own boss and forge their own path instead of being controlled by “the Bobs” of the world.
Samsung’s head of corporate citizenship Ann Woo told CNBC, “What once seemed like the only path forward, getting a full-time job, has now been divided into so many. The idea of spearheading a career that I design and has all the elements I want is a strong source of motivation and empowerment that I think is unique for Gen Z compared to older generations.”
Office Space as a cautionary tale
Office Space was made to be a reflection of a specific time, yet it continues to reflect our struggles with corporate life to this day. Speaking with Variety in 2019, Judge said he’s still surprised but pleased people see themselves in his movie. By the time he made the film, he worried the concept of working a soulless corporate job like Peter’s would be a thing of the past. “I was just making a movie about the way it was when I worked those kinds of jobs,” he said. “If anything, I thought I was about ten years too late.” He was so wrong … yet so right!
The big takeaway in Office Space is that if we’re unhappy at work, we should change what we do to bring home a paycheck. In the end, Peter joins Lawrence and takes a job working construction. He doesn’t need a white-collar job to feel satisfied; he’s happy just to put in a hard day’s work and punch out on time every day. No more working weekends, no more TPS reports, no more office. Maybe he’s onto something.
Office Space is currently streaming on Prime and Hulu.
(featured image: 20th Century Fox)
