Slate Money Goes to the Movies: Office Space

Summary

Slate Money Goes to the Movies: Office Space

Slate Money | April 26, 2022
Host: Felix Salmon
Co-Hosts: Emily Peck
Guest: Cardiff Garcia

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Episode Overview

This episode of Slate Money Goes to the Movies dives into the 1999 cult classic "Office Space," dissecting its satirical take on white-collar work, bureaucracy, and the enduring resonance of office culture. Financial journalists Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and special guest Cardiff Garcia explore why the movie became such a touchstone for American office workers and how its themes remain relevant (and sometimes less so) in today's evolving work environments.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Legacy and Spread of "Office Space" in Office Culture

• Immediate Reception & Cult Status

  • Cardiff notes that no one seems to remember seeing "Office Space" when it first released—it gained traction later, becoming a kind of underground hit that permeated office culture ([01:06]).
  • Quotes and concepts (TPS reports, "case of the Mondays") became part of the vernacular; even those who haven't seen the film recognize the references ([01:51], [02:05]).
  • "It's almost as though it's become part of the collective unconscious of every office worker." — Felix Salmon ([01:51])

• Satire of a Transitional Era in Office Design

  • The hosts discuss how the film captures a specific moment in late-90s office architecture, the age of the cube farm—now largely extinct ([03:21], [04:15]).
  • Mike Judge’s intent to use tall cubicle walls contributed to the sense of isolation and bureaucracy, as noted by Emily ([04:15]).
  • "This movie is partly...about design and the strange social codes and social behaviors that come out of that design." — Cardiff Garcia ([04:36])

• Bureaucracy & Universality of Dysfunction

  • Despite changes in design—open offices, hot desking, "enforced jollity"—the psychological dysfunctions of large institutions persist ([05:52], [07:03]).
  • Silicon Valley’s attractive perks mask the underlying aimlessness or soullessness of much modern work ([07:03]).

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Work, Meaning, and Money: Movie Tropes and Realities

• Work’s Eternal Dissatisfaction

  • Both Cardiff and Emily reflect on how the movie wrestles with the eternal frustration and pointlessness of many white-collar jobs—and how this persists regardless of the surface perks ([05:52], [07:38]).
  • "The psychological aspect of working in a bureaucracy is eternal and never goes away." — Felix Salmon ([05:52])
  • The performance review culture and company slogans (“Is this good for the company?”) are lampooned—yet still present in various guises today ([08:26]).

• The Movie’s Narrative Trope: Money & Nobility

  • Felix introduces the "Taffy" trope: in movies, getting rid of ill-gotten gains or privileges restores nobility and satisfaction ([08:40]).
  • In "Office Space," Peter ends with neither job nor the $300,000 loot but is (allegedly) happier—a familiar Hollywood pattern ([09:00]).

• Questioning the Glory of Blue-Collar Work

  • Cardiff pushes back against romanticizing construction work over white-collar jobs, noting the real hardships of tangible labor ([11:33]).
  • "It may be overly romanticized...I don't think work is easy anywhere is the point I'd wanna make." — Cardiff Garcia ([13:04])

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Masculinity, Economic Shifts & Context of 1999

• Masculinity and Changing Work
  • Emily ties the film and its peers (e.g., "Fight Club") to late-90s anxieties about masculinity and the decline of physically-oriented jobs, referencing broader socioeconomic trends ([14:23], [15:01]).
  • Cardiff cites long-term declines in manufacturing/union jobs and decreasing male labor force participation ([15:01]).

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Remote Work, Office Culture, and the Pandemic

• Remote Work Changes Everything

  • Felix raises how COVID-19 and remote work deeply altered the "office"—in ways more profound than cubicle design ever could ([16:06]).
  • Social isolation can make the remote office lonelier, but it also shields workers from some negative social dynamics ([17:06]).
  • "In the office a lot of those interactions are quite unpleasant or distracting...people like Milton...are sometimes targeted for destruction in the office space." — Cardiff Garcia ([17:06])
  • For marginalized groups, remote work can create a more comfortable environment ([20:14]).

• Crime, Camaraderie, and Whistleblowers

  • The plot of "Office Space"—co-workers banding together to commit crime—might not occur in the modern remote workplace ([19:43]).
  • Spike in SEC whistleblower complaints during the pandemic reflects shifting worker-company dynamics ([19:59]).

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Friendship, Bureaucracy, and "Family" at Work

• Ephemerality of Workplace Friendships

  • Despite sharing long hours, most work friendships fade after exiting a workplace ([22:31]).
  • Corporate attempts to measure friendship (“Do you have a best friend at work?”) are both ridiculed and, apparently, statistically correlated with company performance ([23:54]).
  • Slack and digital comms change, but don’t erase, the feeling of impersonal corporate structures ([24:52]).

• Influence on Real Life: Culture Changes

  • The movie had unexpected real-world impacts: TGI Fridays dropped "flare" (buttons) because customers kept referencing the film ([26:03]).
  • Swingline began selling red staplers after demand surged thanks to Milton's obsession ([34:34]).

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The Bobs, Peter, and Management Satire

• Management and Motivation
  • The famous meeting between Peter and the Bobs is played, posing the question: Would Peter be a good manager? ([27:02]–[28:14]).
  • Peter’s insight—“It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care”—and his critique of meaningless bureaucracy ([27:02]).
  • While Peter highlights inefficiencies, Emily and Cardiff discuss whether systems actually allow true reform from the inside, or whether new managers become like the old ones ([28:29]–[31:15]).
  • "To be a good manager, you have to care a little bit about your workplace...If you're wearing flip flops at the office, that is a sign you don't care." — Emily Peck ([32:31])
  • The difficulty of fighting bureaucracy from within; the tendency to perpetuate dysfunction ([29:41], [31:15]).

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Attitudes Toward Money and Wealth in "Office Space"

• Unglamorous Wealth
  • Wealth is not glamorized—luxuries (such as Lumberg’s Porsche) are depicted negatively ([36:04]).
  • The few characters who benefit financially either do so by accident or through misfortune (the accident victim, Milton running off with the loot) ([37:12]).
  • Contrast to later pop culture like "Silicon Valley," where wealth and success are more openly celebrated ([39:11]–[40:45]).

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Progress in Technology and Office Life

• Improvements via Technology

  • Cardiff and Emily discuss how jobs similar to those shown in "Office Space" have improved—many rote tasks are now automated or much simpler ([42:10], [43:32]).
  • "All those kinds of rote tasks...have gotten easier now that they have been properly automated away..." — Cardiff Garcia ([43:53])
  • Examples: filing expense reports, handling clerical tasks (Expensify, digital receipts).

• The Film as a 1990s Time Capsule

  • "Office Space" serves as a snapshot of that era, with elements outdated but others prescient ([43:53], [44:43]).
  • Final thoughts: "That's progress!" ([44:43])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It's almost as though it's become part of the collective unconscious of every office worker.”
  — Felix Salmon ([01:51])

• “Did people have a case of the Mondays prior to Mike Judge's Office Space released in 1999? Probably.”
  — Emily Peck ([02:19])

• “The psychological aspect of working in a bureaucracy is eternal and never goes away.”
  — Felix Salmon ([05:52])

• “It may be overly romanticized...I don't think work is easy anywhere is the point I'd wanna make.”
  — Cardiff Garcia ([13:04])

• “To be a good manager, you have to care a little bit about your workplace...If you're wearing flip flops at the office, that is a sign you don't care.”
  — Emily Peck ([32:31])

• Peter to the Bobs:
  “The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy. It's that I just don't care.” ([27:02])

• Office influence on culture:
  “TGI Fridays got rid of the buttons...the flare...because people would come in and they'd be like, oh, you're wearing your flare. And finally corporate was like, get it? We can't do flare anymore. Office Space ruined it.”
  — Emily Peck ([26:03])

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Important Timestamps

• 00:10–01:50: Opening; the movie’s spread through office culture
• 03:03–05:52: Office satire predecessors, office design, cube farms
• 08:40–11:33: Movie tropes about money, giving up wealth for happiness
• 14:23–15:42: Masculinity, work, and economic shifts in 1999
• 16:06–19:01: The pandemic, remote work, and shifting office politics
• 27:02–29:41: Peter’s meeting with the Bobs; the management dilemma
• 32:31–34:06: The case against flip-flops and caring as a manager
• 36:04–37:12: Wealth in the movie—no one enjoys money
• 42:10–43:53: Digital transformation: making office drudgery obsolete
• 44:43–45:23: Final grades; the movie as a time capsule

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Final Grades

• Cardiff Garcia: Quintuple plus; “A great, great movie for all its flaws.” ([45:00])
• Emily Peck: B+ on rewatch (“A” originally) ([45:09])
• Felix Salmon: A-; “One of those great 1999 time capsules.” ([45:23])

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For Listeners and Non-Viewers Alike

This episode takes listeners on a thoughtful, funny, and occasionally poignant tour through the world of Mike Judge’s "Office Space," exploring why its satire still lands—and where real-life offices have changed (sometimes for the better). The panel’s discussion spotlights the intersection of film, business, and cultural change, making for an engaging listen whether you’ve seen the movie or just lived through the cubicle era.

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Transcript

[Felix Salmon]

Hello and welcome to the Office Space episode of Slate. Money goes to the movies. This is going to be a fun one. I know it. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios. I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios, mkay. Hello there, Felix. Oh, you're creeping me out already. We have a very exciting special guest for this one, Mr. Cardiff Garcia. Welcome to the show.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Thank you. Yeah, great to be here. I'm psyched about this one.

[Felix Salmon]

It's a good one. Cardiff, introduce yourself and plug your podcast.

[Cardiff Garcia]

I am the host of the New Bazaar, which is a weekly long form podcast about all things wonky and economic.

[Felix Salmon]

I should make one concession to the format of this show and ask Cardiff where you were when you were. Do you remember the first time you saw this movie?

[Cardiff Garcia]

Sadly, I don't because I was.

[Felix Salmon]

I don't think anyone does. I think this is. This is one of the movies and I think this is kind of interesting that basically no one saw when it came out.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. I was a freshman in college and so I. I wasn't really seeing a lot of movies in the theater anyways. But what I remember was that by the time this movie took hold as a kind of underground hit, it was in everybody's mind, it affected everybody's language. So that by the time I did start working a few years later in an office very similar to this one, it had very similar dynamics. At a bank, I was at J.P. morgan, everybody was quoting Office Space, which was satirizing these places, but it had also become a part of the language of. Of the office.

[Felix Salmon]

Yeah, it's. It's almost as though it's become part of, like the collective unconscious of every office worker, where people who have literally never seen the movie, if you start talking to them about TPS reports, they will know what you are talking about.

[Emily Peck]

Right? Yeah. Yesterday I was very tempted to talk about having a case of the Mondays because that is legend from this movie. There are just like several.

[Felix Salmon]

Did this movie invent that? Did that not exist before this movie? No.

[Cardiff Garcia]

It's a good question.

[Emily Peck]

It is a great question. Did people have a case of the Mondays prior to Mike Judge's Office space released in 1999? Probably.

[Cardiff Garcia]

I like the neighbor's response to hearing about it from Peter when the neighbor says, I do believe you get your ass kicked for saying something like that at his construction work site.

[Felix Salmon]

Office Space. Coming up on Slate, Money goes to the movies.

[Emily Peck]

So should we say what this movie's about for anyone listening who maybe hasn't seen It. Is there anyone who hasn't seen it over the age of 30 at this point?

[Felix Salmon]

I guess my point is that even if you haven't seen it, you know what it's about. I guess it kind of invented the whole genre of office satire. Right.

[Emily Peck]

Well, I mean, there are other movies like the apartment from the 50s that sort of satires the office. Right. And shows like long, soulless spaces filled with desks, you know, men in gray flannel suits. It's like an update on that in a way. Right. Because it's now, it's not gray flannel suits.

[Felix Salmon]

It's not. It's not like Brazil. It's not like a dystopian. Terrible, you know. Yeah. It kind of made cubicles funny. It also really identified a very, very specific moment of late 90s office architecture, which was in this kind of liminal space between people having offices and open plan offices. And it was all about cubes. And it's not easy to find cube farms anymore. But there was a point that everyone worked in cube farms. I remember when I moved to Reuters, everyone had a cube. It was totally the thing. We went from no one had a cube in say, 1990 to no one had a cube come like the mid 2000s. But in between there, everyone had a cube.

[Emily Peck]

Yeah, everyone had a cube. They put up sad pictures and posters on the cube walls, and you go visit your friend's cube and pop your head over the cube wall. I read that Mike Judge wanted the cubicle walls to be very tall. Like, he was very specific that you would have to kind of peek over the top of the cubicle wall in the movie. That was important to him.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah, I mean, the name of the movie is Office Space. Like this movie is partly at least about design and the kind of strange social codes and social behaviors that come out of that design. And this was a time and this was a movie about experimentation and these new tools that we had. So there was experimentation in the design, as Felix, you just described, but there were also these weird new things like email and all these databases everybody wanted to use and ways of expensing things. Now workers who had specialties in totally different things like updating Y2K codes and things like that that now had to figure out how to use all these new things that allowed you to hire fewer workers. But it meant that you were also layering onto existing workers and people who were not trained or meant to do stuff like this. They were these new tools that they had to learn how to use, which can be like really frustrating because those tools were still quite immature. And so you, you end up with the TPS thing. You end up with a boss coming by the desk and just interrupting you all the time. And so this was a really weird time in these office spaces to work and to try to figure out just what the hell you were really supposed to be doing.

[Felix Salmon]

I think my theory though, is that while the architecture changes and the office design changes, and this is definitely a movie about a certain type of office design, and the art direction is just so on point, so perfect, the psychological aspect of working in a bureaucracy is eternal and never goes away. And one of the things that I kept on thinking about rewatching it for this show was my other favorite office satire, which is W1A, the BBC show about the BBC, where the design is completely different. It's open spaces, it's hot desks, it's soft furnishings, it's enforced jollity. It's all manner of, like, it's very, very different from the sort of gray, exurban office park. It's right in the heart of London. So there's, you know, on a design level, everything's different. It's as though the designers of the BBC have watched Office Space and just said, we want to do the exact opposite. But they've wound up creating exactly the same kind of dysfunction because that's an endemic to any large organization.

[Emily Peck]

I think you're totally right because when I was watching it, I said, I was thinking, okay, well, Silicon Valley and tech companies have evolved away from this very, like uniform cubicle, gray walls space. But it, they mask it all now with, you know, talking about changing the world or bringing in the ping pong tables or breaking down the cubicle walls and hot desking, whatever. But it's still, at the end of the day, kind of a soulless job that you do for money. Like, you can't at the end of the day disguise that really. And that will always get you in the end.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Maybe you guys will know the answer to this question, but the three of us are now in media journalism fields that are at least half creative. Do offices of this type still exist? In other words, have all offices started to migrate away from this kind of soulless, strange environment where there's all these weird, there's all this weird insipid messaging like in the movie, where it's like, ask yourself, is this good for the company? And there's a big sign like that like, does this kind of thing still happen? I just, I actually haven't worked in an office of that kind in so long.

[Felix Salmon]

I just don't. It does. There's. I mean, you know, they're. They're a bit flashier these days and they might have a bit more Herman Miller furniture. But yeah, the middle managers are going.

[Emily Peck]

To middle manage and there's always going to be those like, weird slogans that are like the language of the company that you must learn and internalize and ask yourself while you're doing work. I can think of a few in my head that I won't.

[Felix Salmon]

Yeah, like there's that whole Netflix book or whatever about like, you know, you have to know all of the precepts and tenets of the company and have on top of mind to keep on dropping them into, you know, performance reviews. Oh my God. I mean, they. I can't believe there wasn't a actual, like official performance review. Although there were like unofficial performance reviews in this, in this thing. But it will never die. It will never go away. But I did want to come back to one of the things you mentioned very early on Cardiff, and talk about as a movie. This is very conventional. I think it was the very first episode of Slate, Money Goes to the Movies, when Taffy wrote us that Agner came on and started talking about this trope, which is that whenever you have a relatively large amount of money in a movie, the way that you achieve like nobility and a happy ending is by giving that money away and ending up with none of it. And what we have in this movie is this hero who has a well paying job and gets a promotion and then. And also steals like $300,000. And like, by the time, and by the time that the movie ends, he doesn't have 300,000. He has none of the $300,000. He doesn't have his job, he doesn't have his promotion, and he is much happier working on a building site for like half of what he was making before.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah, I love this theory, by the way. And I guess there's two things I'd say to that. First is that in the movie there's this kind of warped sense in which the noble thing to do in giving up the money is actually just returning the three hundred and something thousand that he stole in the first place. Right? Like, that was the thing where he realized, okay, I need to give this up, not care about it, just transcend all the misery, do something else and wait.

[Felix Salmon]

And did he give it back? Was his mechanism for giving it back? I love this. I mean, this is so 90s, like so pre digital. His Mechanism for giving it back was converting it to travelers checks and putting the traveler's checks in an envelope.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Or he put burned money under the. He put the money under the door.

[Felix Salmon]

And he put the money under the door in the form of travelers checks, which are basically bearer bonds. And then, you know, Milton stumbles across the envelope just before he burns the place down, literally. And, you know, and Milton, who is, is a, you know, we can talk about the character of Milton, which is, you know, mildly problematic, but Milton winds up just sort of saying, well, if I'm going to burn the place down, I may as well walk off with these travelers checks and facts. Off to the beach.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much what happened. Which also raises the question of how does Peter and his two buddies, how do they still not get caught just because he converted the money to traveler's checks and put it in, like, wouldn't that, you know, because all of the.

[Felix Salmon]

Records have been destroyed in the fire. Get it? That's. That's the point.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah, I guess it's a nice clean solution. The second thing I would point out is that this is one thing where I think the movie may have gotten something a little bit wrong, which is in kind of overly romanticizing the. Those tangible physical jobs of the past. Those jobs are obviously, like, super important. They're very noble and so forth, but they're hard jobs. And so it draws this equivalence between Peter, who's a computer programmer, white collar guy, works in an office all day and probably gets paid a decent salary, and his construction worker neighbor and his job, which is obviously in construction, gets paid a lot less money. And like, that is a tough job. And it makes it seem like it's this sort of, oh, it's a nice job. You get exercise, you're out in the sunshine all day, and at the end, like, you're creating something that's good and like, that's great. Like, obviously there's nothing wrong with the job like that. But if you were to ask, like the average construction worker, hey, would you like to get paid up to two and a half times more money? And in exchange you get a safer job and you get to sit indoor all day, indoors all day, looking at a screen, and yeah, your boss is kind of a dick, a lot of them would probably take that trade. So I don't think it's this simple thing where you're just trading one job for another one.

[Felix Salmon]

We should also add that, like, if you ask an average construction worker, like, could some guy who's spent the Past few years, sitting in front of a screen filling out TPS reports. Just waltz onto a construction site and do your job.

[Cardiff Garcia]

They'll be like, insulting. Of course not. It's insulting, you know? So anyways, I just wanted to make that point that it may be overly romanticized. Those other jobs. I don't think work is easy anywhere is the point I'd wanna make. Which is also, by the way, the point that Jennifer Aniston makes at the end of the show when she essentially tells him, like, dude, like, nobody's happy with their jobs. You wanna go out and find yourself something that makes you happy, you go do that. But, like, honestly, the message I took away from it was that Peter and his buddies just, like, kind of whine a little too much, you know? Like, you know, if you want to take the initiative and go find something that's awesome because you're alienated from work, I get it. I'm with you. And it makes for a wonderful comedy. I love this movie more than I can express, but they were like these kind of sad, whiny, mopey dudes. And they shared a lot, actually, with another movie that came out that year, which was Fight Club. And you can imagine those guys swapping places that. But whereas in Fight Club they got all super aggro and destructive, here they tried to, like, put into motion this Superman 3 inspired penny stealing plot device. Right. So it was really funny. But yeah, that was. That was what it made me.

[Felix Salmon]

Although, yeah, I mean, the endings of both movies are the same where the big, like, faceless corporations get destroyed.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah, great point.

[Emily Peck]

I love that you made that comparison with Fight Club and Office Space Cardiff. I was thinking about it more and I was wondering, like, was something going on in 1999 where men and, like, masculinity felt particularly threatened by the advent of technology, which made, like, so much of the things prized by masculinity kind of like beside the point, such as, like, strength and the ability to make things. Like, all of a sudden the best jobs are, like, to be found in the cubicle, sitting on your butt all day, you know, not using your physical body anymore. Like, is something going on? Like, especially at that time. I don't know. I was just wondering about it.

[Cardiff Garcia]

This did come in the midst of what has proven to be decades of declines in manufacturing jobs. For example, these old school union jobs that you didn't need a college degree for, that still paid a middle class salary. I think that may have been part of the socioeconomic trend that affected this and also part of what has been a decades long trend in the decline of prime age men participating in the labor force. And so in terms of percentages, and so I don't know to what extent these things are sort of lingering in the background and contextualizing it, but I would imagine that has something to do with it.

[Emily Peck]

Yeah, there are big changes taking place. Yeah. In the workforce and among. In traditional roles and even the jobs themselves. Like you were saying, you can't just go to work and do the thing you specialize in. You have to deal the work of the secretary also, because they're losing, that job is going away. So now you have to do all your own clerical stuff as well, which is kind of aggravating and frustrating and makes the job more of a drag.

[Felix Salmon]

I want to ask though about the biggest change to work that we have seen over the course of our careers, which is the pandemic. And you know, you can change the geography of the inside of an office as much as you like, um, and it will ultimately be cosmetic, but when you go to remote work, it's not cosmetic. It's a very, very big and profound change. And you're suddenly trying to work from like your bed or like some weird catching counter and you've got kids running around and you, you don't have what every office provides, which is a nice clean space and time where you can just be doing professional stuff and then you can leave that. And when you leave that, you have left it. What happens to stultifying bureaucracy in the age of remote work and slack?

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah, office space would be a much lonelier experience if it was just Peter in front of his, in front of his laptop on zoom all day, I guess, but I don't know. I would also make the point though that in the office a lot of those interactions are quite unpleasant or quite distracting. Sometimes they're quite problematic. And so, yeah, you lose the social aspect of it. But the social aspect of it isn't always great. I mean, people like Milton, the socially awkward, the introverted types, these people, as I like to describe it, are sometimes kind of targeted for destruction in the office space. It's kind of wrong. I mean, you see how the people who are socially quite adroit, the people who are quite extroverted and know how to have fun and that kind of thing, or it comes naturally to them, you know, often seek them out and sort of diminish them. I saw this directly all the time in the 2000s in the office space in which I worked. And I thought the movie did A brilliant job of portraying this. I mean, I felt a lot of kind of cringe, sympathy for the character of Milton when he didn't get the cake that they were passing around. And one of the, one of the women there just kind of started like, yelling at him, like, pass it down, Milton. Like, eventually you'll get one. And then he didn't get anything. Like, this kind of thing exists everywhere. You know, they stole his stapler. Lumberg. The boss is walking around just giving orders not to get anything done, but just to enforce his own status. All of that, I thought was brilliantly and accurately portrayed. And I think a lot of that goes on in the Office, and I don't like it. So there's a lot of things about the Office place that are. That are great social, it can be fun, there's collaboration with your colleagues, it's in person. But a lot of it also sucks. And I thought this movie focused on what sucks, maybe at the expense of the stuff that can be quite nice. But I thought it did a good job of portraying the stuff that sucks.

[Felix Salmon]

Well, there was the real camaraderie between, like, you know, the three hapless criminals. And. And you're right that they. They needed that, like, ringleader. There's only one of them who had any social skills, and he wound up, like, you know, orchestrating the entire plan. So you did see it. Like, how much do you think it was a. It's an important subplot to this movie that the dystopian nature of the Office is so terrible that it literally drives them to crime.

[Emily Peck]

I don't think this movie could happen in a. In pandemic era remote work. Like, these guys would not team up and do crime. You know, they would just like, goof off at home probably. Like, Peter would have just been like, I don't need to even be here, and just would have found some other stuff to do and it would have been okay. Yeah.

[Felix Salmon]

And there was that really interesting phenomenon during the pandemic where SEC whistleblower reports surged to an all time high. During the pandemic because everyone was like, I don't care about my company. I'll just pop them into the authorities.

[Emily Peck]

Yeah. And you see now, like, women and people of color feel better, to Cardiff's point, are happier working from home because it's not like daily microaggression nightmares at work anymore. They can just be home and no one's bothering them or harassing them or asking to touc their hair or whatever. It's a kinder space. To be at home. But at the end of the day, you're still working for the soulless corporation. Don't forget.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah. In the movie, though, let's remember that Peter was hypnotized and his two buddies lost their jobs, and that drove them to crime because there was a sense of, I have nothing left to lose. I mean, Peter had already just had enough. He was fishing all the time. He was walking into the office to play Tetris and eat Cheetos and talk smack about the place to the Bobs, which was great. Walking around everywhere with that great hip hop soundtrack in the background, and damn, it feels good to be a gangsta and all that. It was fantastic. And then he gets promoted because of that attitude. And the other, his two buddies, Michael and Samir, are losing their jobs. So from their standpoint, it's like, well, I guess I'll accidentally steal three hundred and something thousand dollars on my way out using this weird fraction of a penny theft scheme or whatever. So they. They had just been driven to the, you know, to wit's end, I guess, and. And that's. That's what they decided to do with fantastic consequences.

[Emily Peck]

That's also a 90s movie trope. There was also was. I think it was in the 90s, there was a movie where, like, Michael Douglas is, you know, a frustrated officer type. Yeah. Falling down. And doesn't he shoot up a bunch of people? Or a banker? I don't know what he does, but. But it's very similar. Like, the Office drives you crazy and then you burn it down. The Office drives you crazy and then you steal from the boss. The Office drives you crazy, and then I don't know what else happens. What else could happen? The Office was driving a lot of people crazy back then, and I guess not so much now. I mean, the Office TV show kind of picks up the baton from Office Space and makes it, like, more gentle, more caring. A place where you meet, you hang out with your friends. Right. These people aren't really friends, as Cardiff pointed out in an email to us last night. He was like, at the end, when they're not working in the same company, the friendship kind of fades away. Right.

[Felix Salmon]

Yeah.

[Cardiff Garcia]

That was based as much, I think, on my own experiences as on the movie, which is that you see these people at work sometimes eight, nine hours a day, in many cases longer than that. And if you have a family, that means that you're literally spending more time with the people in the Office than you are with your own family. And yet you could do this for years. And at the end of it, when you're ripped away from that context, that can really be it. And in the places that I've worked in the past, usually it's just been two, maybe three people who remained actual friends that I kept in touch with afterwards and did social things with. But the rest of them, I mean, dozens of people that I would see every day, people that I was often very fond of, that I had warm feelings towards, that would be it. Once I left, or once one of them left, I'd never see them again. And I just. I thought that was something poignant about the end of the movie that I hadn't really noticed before was that they have this kind of stalted conversation where Peter has become a construction worker, Samir and Michael have started working at a different tech firm. And they're just kind of casually talking. But it seems clear at this point that they don't have a lot left in common. And maybe they'll see each other at poker night still. I don't know. I'd like to think that that's the case. But I thought there was just something kind of sad and, yeah, Emotional about that, which I hadn't remembered.

[Felix Salmon]

Emily and I. And talking of wonderful bureaucratic things that people love to make fun of. Emily and I work at a company where they love to ask every six months, do you have a best friend at work? Is this, like. It's this question that we get asked and everyone laughs about it.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Wait, is that a real question or is that, like a.

[Felix Salmon]

That is a real. That is a real question. And apparently Gallup, who came up with this question, have asked this question in tens of thousands of organizations around the world. And the response to that question, like, the more people who respond yes to that question, the better performing and the more successful the company is. So there's a strong correlation there. Even though the question itself is just the most cringe question in the world and everyone kind of knows it. Apparently asking that question is a good way of informing senior management of how healthy their company is. I don't quite know what to make of that.

[Emily Peck]

Yeah. And it's harder now with Remote. For the people working remote to have. You can't have a best friend the way you used to. I haven't had to answer that question yet at Axios, but I'm looking forward to it now. But, yeah, it's easier to make a best friend at work when you can, like, go take a walk or go get a coffee or whatever. Now it's. Everything is On. On Slack, it's public record. Anytime you want to have like a conversation with someone. I mean, I guess you can call someone. But it's a little harder to feel that bond at work. And that means it's easier to see your job for what it is. Which I think is what having friends at work kind of masks. You're like, oh, we're all a family. And I think Office Space, there's that message. We're all a family here. We're all friends. And like, no, they're going to call in the Bobs and fire everyone. Of course you're not family. But if you have friends and like close ties at work. You can kind of feel like maybe are, you know.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Do you think that some of that stuff has eased up in some office places because of the movie? That people see this kind of thing and they realize, oh, God, we don't want to be like the people who like the company that was satirized in Office Space. Do you think anybody's changed in response with all the.

[Felix Salmon]

Yeah, I mean. I mean, certainly the. Certainly design wise people have changed.

[Emily Peck]

Right. Oh, and I have some. A fun fact is that TGI Fridays got rid of the buttons that the waiters and waitresses wear. As a result, they got rid of the flare. Because people would come in and they'd be like, oh, you're wearing your flare. And finally corporate was like, get it? We can't do flare anymore. Office Space ruined it. So they were.

[Felix Salmon]

They got rid of. Not only. Not only did they get rid of the flare. But they also got rid of the striped shirt. Did they? Yeah. I mean, yeah. This was. This was very successful, this movie. In changing the culture of TGI Friday. It's not necessarily. But I have a question for you guys. Which I've been pondering. And I don't know what the answer is. The new free Peter comes into his job interview type consultation thing with the Bobs. And the Bob's very impressed with him. And recommend him for a promotion. And say that he has the potential to be very good in senior management.

[Peter (character from Office Space)]

The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy. It's that I just don't care. Don't, don't care. It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now, if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units. I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation? Here's something else, Bob. I have eight different bosses right now.

[Felix Salmon]

I beg your pardon?

[Peter (character from Office Space)]

Eight bosses.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Eight.

[Peter (character from Office Space)]

Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled. That and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that'll only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. Would you bear with me for just a second, please? Okay.

[Felix Salmon]

What if, and believe me, this is.

[Peter (character from Office Space)]

So hypothetical, but what if you were offered something? Some kind of a stock option, equity sharing program?

[Emily Peck]

Would that do anything for you?

[Cardiff Garcia]

I don't know.

[Peter (character from Office Space)]

I guess. Listen, I'm gonna go. It's been really nice talking to both of you guys. Absolutely. The pleasure's all on this side of the table. Trust me. Good luck with your layoffs. All right. I hope your firings go really well.

[Felix Salmon]

Thanks a lot. Great. This is kind of played for a laugh and ironic, given that he's basically completely checked out of the company at that point. But are they right? Would Peter actually have been quite good in senior management?

[Emily Peck]

Well, I thought the Bobs were right to appreciate his intelligence because he made some great observations. Like, he was like, I have eight bosses. That's not good. Like, someone needs needed to say that. Like he said some things that needed to be said. And you do need people like that in management, in a healthy organization. People that can see the flaws and fix them. If managers can't see the problem or they want to make any changes, then that's not good. So.

[Cardiff Garcia]

But the question is, would Peter get promoted and then essentially become lumberg? Right.

[Felix Salmon]

No, the question is, would Peter get promoted and then not become lumberg and actually do what the Bob's kind of want him to do, which is make the company more efficient rather than less efficient.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Right. That's the. That would be the other way it could go.

[Felix Salmon]

Right?

[Cardiff Garcia]

Right.

[Felix Salmon]

Right. Because the point is that the consultants who get called in, they don't want layers and layers of stultifying bureaucracy. Right. They want to clean things up and make things more streamlined and make things more efficient. And they look at Peter and think to themselves, here's someone who could do that.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah, I think that's certainly their hope. Right? And the question to me, though, is like, yeah, it could. It could go that way. Felix. He could become the guy who has seen how bad things are for the workers and how stupid and overly bureaucratic it is. And now if he's in a position where he can affect change, great. But if he's promoted into middle management, where I think he was going to get like four or five workers, he might still have layers above him who are trying to enforce their own specific set of things. And now he's just channeling that, but from a higher level than he was before. So that would be the sort of cynical view, which is that the company, the office place, and all of the conformist messaging and the enforced, like, social mores of the place end up having this deadening effect even as you rise up the ranks so that you're no longer the guy at the bottom who sees all of the stuff that's messed up. You just ascend to the place where you are the one who is enforcing the messed up stuff. And this is something, by the way, that the American version of the Office did kind of in an interesting way, where, like, Jim, who could maybe be like the Peter character in the Office, right, Would always be mocking all the stuff around him. But as he got promoted to other jobs, he didn't do those jobs very well. He wasn't himself a very good manager. Because it turns out that, number one, it's hard to fight a bureaucracy. Number two, managing to give it credit is actually quite hard. Right? Doesn't mean everybody becomes lumberg, but some element of that ends up just sort of creeping in. It's a very sad state of affairs. But yeah, that's my.

[Felix Salmon]

Yeah, so my. My answer to my own question is probably not that he probably wouldn't be very good in that new role, but for an interesting reason. I think, as you say, managing is hard. And if he took the job seriously and wanted to be good at that middle management job, then I think he could do what all good managers do, which is protect their direct reports from the implications of the rest of the organization and provide this kind of umbrella under which their team can do good work. And they just take all of the flak from middle management and don't pass it down to the people below them, or from senior management and don't pass it down to the people below them. I think that in principle, Peter would be capable of doing that, but in practice, he just wouldn't have the motivation or the desire to do that unless he was literally just made the boss of Michael Bolton and Samir, in which case, maybe because he has that friendship, he might care about protecting them.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Or he could keep not caring and get promoted to CEO.

[Emily Peck]

I think anyone who wears flip flops to an office is never going to be a good manager. That's what I think. And he did that.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Somebody.

[Felix Salmon]

Can you expand on that, Emily? Why is wearing flip flops a contraindication about good manager to Be a good.

[Emily Peck]

Manager, you have to care a little bit about your workplace, about the work that's being done there, etc. I think if you're wearing flip flops inside an office, that is a sign that you don't care about any of those things. You're wearing these shoes that kind of let your feet kind of flop out everywhere. You're essentially barefoot at the office. That's. That's not cool. That's not that that shows you don't care at all. And I think Peter, his whole vibe is that he does not care at all about this office or about this job. He does care about his friends and he, you know, he tells them they're going to be laid off and all that, but he does not care about the job or anything like that. And to be a good manager, you do need actually, I think, to care about the work. Also, I don't know, is being a good manager, like Felix said, protecting your underlings, that's the whole gig.

[Felix Salmon]

It's not all of it, but it's a large chunk of it.

[Cardiff Garcia]

It's very important. And by the way, a thing to notice here in Peter's last meeting with the Bob's when they like confirmed his promotion, he's wearing a suit right before executing the theft. So he did go from flip flops to a suit for the one thing he cared about, which was robbing the company. So, yeah, yeah.

[Felix Salmon]

Where did that suit come from? And like, you know, he was such a schlub in the whole movie. And then he dresses up like someone from Reservoir Dogs to come in there.

[Cardiff Garcia]

And like do the interview suit.

[Emily Peck]

Because in the 90s you had to have an interview suit. Right. Like you wear just regular clothes to work all the time. But then if you had to interview for a job, go to a funeral, you wear a suit, you come to work wearing the suit, interview for a.

[Felix Salmon]

Job, go to a funeral. Those are the only times you wear that suit. Yeah.

[Emily Peck]

Except where Cardiff was at JP Morgan. I'm sure they were wearing suits all the time.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah, sadly, that's true. Yeah.

[Emily Peck]

My other fun fact about this movie is Swing Line did not make a red stapler at the time, but started producing one after the movie came out because it was popular and or became popular anyway. So there was demand for it.

[Felix Salmon]

The biggest cruelty that inflicted by the corporation is really the one where Milton gets fired, but no one has the heart to tell him that he's fired. And so he just stops getting his paycheck and he goes to HR and they're like, you should talk to your manager about that. Like, no. Like, if your manager is not going to tell you that you're fired, then at least HR should tell you that you're fired.

[Cardiff Garcia]

You know, as like the Bob. Hold on there, Professor. We fixed the glitch. Okay, so problem gets started from here. No need for confrontation. But yeah. And in that last scene, Lumberg is telling Milton, who by this point is down in the basement to bring a can of pesticide and a flashlight and take care of their roach problem. I mean, it had really descended to that level where Lumberg was just going out inflicting these random cruelties to everybody, really. One of the great on screen villains, I think, Buil Lumberg. So, yeah.

[Felix Salmon]

Who, by the way, is. Is identified very early on in the movie as a villain because he drives.

[Emily Peck]

A Porsche and he has a vanity plate that says My Porsche. Right. That's what it says. I mean, obviously, that's a signifier.

[Felix Salmon]

Yeah, but. But again, like the one. Like, there's not actually. Like, there are only. There are only really two moments, three moments in the movie where you actually see, like, indicia of money and wealth. One is the Porsche, One is the ATM receipt where he's like, oh, there's $350,000 in this account. This is a problem. And then there's. And then there's Milton on the beach, you know, and all. You know, all of these are, like, designed to create a negative impression in the audience. Right. Milton is being a dick on the beach. The portrait is just a dick move. The ATM receipt is, you know, a sign that they totally up on the. On the cunning Richard Pryor scheme. Like, there's no positive wealth in the movie. There's no. No one enjoys money ever in this movie in a sort of positive way. Except for the guy who gets hit by a car and creates a jump to conclusions.

[Cardiff Garcia]

I was going to say it's easy.

[Felix Salmon]

After he can't jump.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah. The stark contrast between everybody else and the two people who do have financially rewarding outcomes. One is the guy who gets hit by the truck, gets a huge settlement so he can fund his Jump to Conclusions Matt idea. And the other one's Milton, who literally burns the place down. Right. That's it. That's who gets rich in this movie, who didn't start out rich. Everybody else either loses their job or gets a new job or, you know, or just stays, I guess, in their current job. So it does have kind of an interesting relationship to money. Going back to Felix, what I think you referred to as the Taffy, originally. Taffy Taffy. So, yeah, the only exceptions to that one in other movies I can think of are, like, Oceans 11 and Trading Places where the path to greatness does lead to great riches and money and things like that. But even then it involves, like, a lot of dodginess, right? Like manipulating commodities markets and stealing from casinos. So anyways, it's. It's a really kind of amusing thing. And there's one other, I guess maybe a corresponding theory to that, which is that the guy who always stops caring gets rewarded in movies. And in this case, it's Peter, right? Where you just kind of. He's the person who sort of is able to transcend all the weird behavior that's happening around him, all the heaviness around him, and then he ends up getting promoted. Like, I guess that seems like a movie trope too, is like the guy who's just too cool or the. Or the woman who's too cool for the place, you know, ends up getting rewarded. I don't know if that's a theory. I have zero other examples of it. But I have a feeling that that's the thing that happens in movies.

[Emily Peck]

Felix, you were saying, like, essentially, Office Space doesn't glamorize wealth. And so many of these movies, even the ones that uphold the Taffy princip of money, isn't everything. Learn your lesson. They will glamorize wealth. They'll make things look beautiful or make you want things. I don't want the Porsche. I don't want to.

[Felix Salmon]

Robert Redford in Indecent Proposal. He has a very glamorous lifestyle.

[Emily Peck]

Yeah, yeah. Nothing glamorous about this. Then I was comparing it to Mike Judge's big hit, more recent hit, which is Silicon Valley. And I feel like that's like the natural evolution of Office space is Silicon Valley really. And that does more. More so than this movie glamorize riches and wealth, even as it's satirizing it. You know what I mean? There's more to covet, I think there, like Gavin Bellson, the. The Google, the Hooly Hooley CEO in Silicon Valley is an absurd figure, but also is very wealthy. And yeah, you kind of. It's an HBO show. I guess so.

[Felix Salmon]

And. And he's happy. Like in. In his own, like, you know, terribleness. He is internally. If you asked him like, are you happy? He'd be like, yeah, I have money. I'm happy. Like, the money has done its job, which is like, I wanted to achieve self satisfaction through wealth. And I have all the money, and so that now gives me the happiness that I've sought.

[Emily Peck]

Yeah, and that's more like a 2000s, that's more our era kind of vibe. The message of, like, the money is. Is always bad and corrupts. Has been.

[Felix Salmon]

Exactly. Corrupted. Yeah, I mean, like, exactly. That's. That's the. Those people, you know, crypto bros with their lambos. Right. Who are like, I have the money. I can spend it on first cars and move to Puerto Rico and be a douche and be happy about it. Like, that's that yet. That's definitely. You don't get a hint of that, really. I mean, except for maybe Milton at the end.

[Cardiff Garcia]

I have a maybe more optimistic spin on everything coming out of this movie. And it's not about the movie itself. It's about what happened afterwards. And I'm kind of curious to know what the two of you think about this, which is that the technology itself that seemed to be causing so much of the alienation, the disconnect from work in the movie is at this really early stage. It's all quite immature. And over the next couple of decades, the technology has just advanced so much. Felix, you brought up working from home, but there's so much more to it. And I wonder if some of the jobs of the kind that Peter had back then are just better now. They're just more interesting jobs. And if the intangible economy is not necessarily this difficult, alienating. Oh, my God. I don't quote, unquote, make anything thing that it used to be. And the thing that came to mind, Felix, was that in our career, specifically back in 2010, you and I were both economics bloggers that did not even exist as a job a decade before that. And now all three of us are economics podcasters, which almost didn't exist as a job 10 years ago. So, like, these things are moving quickly. And that's just anecdotal, obviously, but in all kinds of other fields, there's more, like, interesting things that are happening now, right?

[Felix Salmon]

The stultifying bureaucratic jobs which involve filling out TPS reports. I do think that one thing we've seen over the past few years is those jobs getting outsourced into SaaS. Like, everything that you used to do in those jobs now is like something you can buy from a software as a service company of some description and just like, get them to deal with it with software.

[Emily Peck]

I was thinking about this as you guys are speaking, because I was thinking about expense reports. I remember working in the 90s, I would have a pile of paper receipts. I would have to tape them to a piece of paper really well, no wrinkles. And then photocopy that and then fill out a whole separate form to get my money. Now at Axios and I'm sure a lot of other companies, there's an app called, like, Expensify. I'm. If I take a break between doing more satisfying work, I can just beep, boop, beep. Take a screenshot of some receipt in my email and in like a minute, file an expense report. And that is, to me, it. That definitely is progress and technological advancement that has made work less stultifying because I have run up many a late charge on many a credit card because I refuse to tape the paper receipts to the other piece of paper. Just.

[Felix Salmon]

Oh, I mean, yeah, there was that famous. Like, Mike Arrington, I think was. Was very vocal about how when he started working for aol, he just stopped filing expenses reports because it was such a painful thing. And it's like, I am just going to pay for all of my work expenses personally, because it is. It is less painful for me to do that than it is to file expense reports.

[Emily Peck]

That's a whole other level of. I don't know.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yeah, just pay me the higher salary and I'll just incur the expenses myself so I don't have to go through this madness. And it's not even about the time. It's like the sheer hassle and the time and the feeling that this is not what you're supposed to be doing. All of those kinds of rote tasks, I think, have gotten easier now that they have been properly automated away instead of the clunky 1.0 version that we had in the late 90s. So I guess the way I've been thinking about this movie is that it's like an artifact in a late 1990s time capsule. Right. Like, it's this wonderfully funny artifact, but it has some things in it that are outdated, and it does have some things in it that are suggestive of what was to come later. But not everything that we worried about back then then is something that we still worry about now.

[Felix Salmon]

That's progress.

[Emily Peck]

Y2K.

[Cardiff Garcia]

Yes.

[Felix Salmon]

Well done, people. And we don't worry about Y2K. Cardiff, thank you for coming on. This has been absolutely awesome.

[Cardiff Garcia]

I loved it. Yeah, thank you.

[Felix Salmon]

We'll just finish with a grade. You're going to give it something very high, I'm sure.

[Cardiff Garcia]

A quintuple plus. Yeah. It's such a. It's such a great. I love this.

[Felix Salmon]

A quintuple.

[Cardiff Garcia]

I love this movie for all its flaws. I that this is a great, great movie. Yeah.

[Emily Peck]

Emily, you didn't ask me about the first time I saw it, but I liked it a lot more then. I don't know what's changed about me, but first time I saw it an A and this time maybe like a B plus. It was a little boring sometimes. I don't know. I don't know what happens.

[Felix Salmon]

I thought it raced, raced along happily. I mean, it's like it's an hour and 29 minutes. It definitely has that going for it. I will give this, I think, an A minus. I think it like it is one of those great 1999 times capsules. And I hope that people keep on watching it. And that's it. Thanks for listening to Slate. Money goes to the movies.