Office Space Explained In a Nutshell

In the Initech office, the insecure Peter Gibbons hates his job and the abusive Division VP Bill Lunbergh that has just hired two consultants to downsize the company. His best friends are the software engineers Michael Bolton and Samir Nagheenanajar that also hate Initech, and his next door neighbor Lawrence. His girlfriend Annie is cheating on him but she convinces Peter to visit the hypnotherapist Dr. Swanson. Peter tells how miserable his life is and Dr. Swanson hypnotizes him and he goes into a state of ecstasy. However, Dr. Swanson dies immediately after giving the hypnotic suggestion to Peter. He dates the waitress Joanna and changes his attitude in the company, being promoted by the consultants. When he discovers that Michael and Samir will be fired, they decide to plant a virus in the account system to embezzle fraction of cents in each financial operation into Peter’s account. However Michael commits a mistake in the software and instead of decimals…

The Office Space Trailer

The Office Space Movie Breakdown

Office Space Movie Tagline: A comedy from Mike Judge, creator of “Beavis and Butt-head” and co-creator “King of the Hill”.
Who is in it? Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, David Herman, John C. McGinley
Genre: Comedy
Was it funny? Yes!
Would this movie be for every comedy fan? For sure.
Should you see it? Without question.
Run Time: 90 minutes
Rating: R

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The Verdict

Office Space is one of those movies that wasn’t popular when it came out, for reasons unknown. I showed this movie to my friends about 5 years after it came out and none of them had seen it. Nowadays the movie is more known because of its airing on TV. Not liking this movie blows my mind, but… this is now a cult movie. The people that like it, LOVE IT and the other people simply have never heard of it. I have never worked in a cubicle setting, but anyone that has worked can relate to the things the main character goes through. The story is about the life of Peter Gibbons and his workplace Initech. Every day you happen to see Peter is on the worst day of his life. He hates his job and his girlfriend is cheating on him.

Sounds like someones got a case of the Mondays…

Peter decides to go to an occupational hypnotherapist to help him with his work problems. The hypnotherapist puts him under and makes him relax and totally wipe all the cares and worries in his life away… then he dies in mid session and never releases him. Peter is now completely care free and doesn’t give two craps about anything. His boss asked him to come to work over the weekend, and Peter slept, his girlfriend called and he hung up on her, and she broke up with him. Peter simply doesn’t care. He goes to work in regular clothes and not in the suit they normally have to wear to get an address book at his cubicle because he got the girl of his dreams that morning. While at work his friend says he has a meeting with a company consultant (that is there to fire a bunch of people). Peter goes into the meeting totally care free and he tells the consultants that he comes to work late every day, he doesn’t care about how the company does as long has he isn’t hassled by his 8 bosses, and that the company is set up in a way that makes you only work hard enough not to get fired. Even though Peter is saying all the wrong things, the consultants fall in love with him and they decide to promote him.

I’d tell ya what I’d do man… Two chicks at the same time

Peter’s friends Michael Bolton (no relation to the damn singer ok?!) and Samir work hard and they are getting fired. Milton Waddams is a mumbler and happens to be obsessed with a red Swingline brand stapler, which comes into play later on. After the guys get the news from Peter they will be fired they install a virus that will take the fractions of a penny normally rounded off in a transaction and deposit it into a bank account (you know, like in Superman 3…). After its installed and the guys are canned, they go to check out the bank account, but find that Michael had put the decimal point in the wrong place and they now have a huge problem. Instead of making a fraction of a penny on a thousand or so transactions per day, they had received a little over $300,000 over night. After a bit Peter goes to the office at night puts the money (in the form of a check) under his bosses door and goes in the next day to turn himself in so that his friends wouldn’t end up in jail.

We need to talk about your TPS reports… Did  you get that memo?

When he arrives at work he finds that the building is on fire. Milton the crazy mumbler had set it on fire because the company had stopped issuing him checks, but the final straw was the theft of his red stapler. The guys lost the money, but they also got off the hook with the fraud too. Peter goes to work a construction job with his neighbor and loves it and Peters two friends Samir and Michael work for another company. The last scene shows Milton at a Mexican resort complaining to his server about salt being on his glass, he had taken the money before he burned the place down. The End.

Official Nutshell-Movies Explanation

Office Space (1999): Three people that hate their job plant a virus that takes untraceable amounts of money, but it didn’t work out that way

Fun Facts About Office Space

• This movie has gained cult status on video. Mike Judge has said more people talk to him about this movie than any project he has ever worked on. Also, he doubts there will be a sequel, due to poor box office.
• When Peter is in the meeting room, on the white board behind him there is a complicated flow chart titled “Planning to Plan.”
• Gary Cole’s character wears a large, gold class ring of the style that are common for graduates from military academies. This ring was originally a prop produced for the short-lived science fiction series ”Crusade” (1999), on which Cole played captain Matthew Gideon. The ring was worn in every episode, and was supposed to show that Gideon was a graduate of Earthforce Military Academy. “Office Space” was the first project Cole worked on following the cancellation of ”Crusade” (1999) and wore the ring as an in-joke, referring to his previous job.
• The set for Chotchkie’s is actually the restaurant “the Alligator grille” in Austin, Texas. The Alligator Grille closed down as of 2009.
• Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) lives in the “Morningwood Apartments”, a reference to a frequent theme of director Mike Judge’s ”Beavis and Butt-Head” (1993).
• Chotchkie’s gets its name from the Yiddish word meaning a cheap trinket or knick-knack.
• The directory that the bank software virus is stored on is “C:/LR427/Virus_CDEF” CDEF is a virus that dates back to 1990 and affected Macintoshes. It infects desktop files and can cause system crashes, anomalous behavior, and printing problems. It is obsolete now and was mostly harmless. It should be noted that “C:” relates to MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
• The infamous “PC Load Letter” error that confounded Michael Bolton is a message that the printer was out of, or not recognizing the refill of Letter-sized (8.5×11 inches) paper. “PC” stands for “Paper Cartridge”. Older model HP Laserjet printers commonly display this error. This error also occurs when attempting to print a non-letter-sized project onto letter-sized paper.
• Artie Lange auditioned for the role of Milton.
• Jennifer Aniston’s character is named Joanna, which is Aniston’s own middle name.
• Mike Judge played  Stan, Joanna’s boss at Chotchkie’s. He’s listed in the credits as “William King.”

Office Space is a hilarious must see Cult Classic!