Ever spend eight hours in a “Productivity Bin”? Ever had worries about layoffs? Ever had the urge to demolish a temperamental printer or fax machine? Ever had to endure a smarmy, condescending boss? Then Office Space should hit pretty close to home for you. Peter (Ron Livingston) spends the day doing stupefyingly dull computer work in a cubicle. He goes home to an apartment sparsely furnished by IKEA and Target, then starts for a maddening commute to work again in the morning. His coworkers in the cube farm are an annoying lot, his boss is a snide, patronizing jerk, and his days are consumed with tedium.
Summary from Amazon.com
I’m guessing the geeks amongst you will have seen this movie, it’s probably the seminal geek flick along with other favourites from Kevin Smith[/url] (Mallrats[/url], Clerks[/url] etc.), those techie films like Hackers[/url], Wargames[/url], Sneakers[/url] and Swordfish[/url] and those other wierd movies like Pi[/url] and Donnie Darko[/url].
It really epitomises how you feel in the dull cubicle based corporate warground of a big company, especially a tech company..
It’s not a movie for everyone, but if you work in an office you should be ashamed if you haven’t seen this, if you work in I.T. in an office, you should be very ashamed..
If you haven’t started working yet, you should watch it anyway, especially if you’re studying I.T. as this is where you’ll be in a couple of years time..stuck in a cubicle next to a fat woman called Tina who answers the phone in a high-pitched tone with exactly the same phrase for 8-hours a day…
You’ll experience the annoying patronising boss, the memos, the paper-jams, the obscure error messages, the weirdos who are territorial about their stationary..
It reminds me about some of the jobs I’ve had…perhaps I’ll blog about my jobs one day, but that’d be a long post as I’ve been working since I was 13…and worked in pretty much every industry you can think of (unfortunately, not the adult entertainment industry..apart from a brief stint as a fluff boy..no I’M JOKING).
Stuck in a cubicle, staring at your monitor, doing just enough to get by, why do more I ask people? You don’t get incentives, there is no profit sharing, no stock options? What do bosses think? People work for fun? I see people over here, especially in Asia, working themselves to death at detriment of all else (their family, friends and partners), for what? The same salary they would get if they did half as much work, what’s the point? Does it make them feel good, perhaps for a while, yay I’m good at my job, I’ll give you a gold star.
My saying is work SMART not HARD.
Do what you do, do it well, enjoy it if possible and do it in a timely fashion, don’t rush things (then you make mistakes), but don’t procrastinate (you are getting paid for something after all)
Luckily the job I have no is in a line I enjoy, and I spend as little time in a cubicle as possible, but the CyberJaya office is actually cubicle hell…Hopefully will be back to Mon’t Kiara and I’ll be establishing a strong NO CUBICLE policy. We aren’t lab rats, why put us in little boxes?
Anyway enough rambling for today. Miss you.
Where’s my stapler? Have you seen my stapler?
Actually, I worked in a place so poor, that when I started they gave me two pens and told me to guard them with my life, as they couldn’t afford any more.
I saw Office Space at the movies with a friend from work. In the movie, they’re working for the Credit Unions. That’s who we were working for at the time. Our office was actually more HELL than the movie, because in the movie they at least got to go to a place called HOME! 🙂
So much of that movie reminded me of the three places I worked in IT. They wondered why I left! Bwahahahahahahahaaaaaaa!
can’t blame em, in asia getting lay off is a real fear. people work themselves to death to prove their worth. sure there are the crazy mofos who do it in pursuit of whatever but many do so coz they don’t wanna give out the wrong impression to their bosses. then again, smart peeps like u have no reasons to worry 🙂
Great post – sad life. It is like that and I pity those who even hate their job. Hey – I am in a cubicle, and that is fun, because the work is fun and there are fun people around. If not, I would slowly die.
I work in an IT co. in a cubicle. I’m almost dead. I have no life. I hate my work. I hate my company. My boss just humiliated me in front of all my colleagues by shouting at me for how slack I am. I drag getting up in the morning having to go to work. I have to hold the 24-hour support hotline once a month, and deal with crappy, bitchy, shitty idiots. Waking up in the middle of the night and support them. And not forgetting getting screwed by boss if customers complain. I want to resign. Sad, eh?
Who is this “you” person? Why do you only miss ONE person? What about the REST OF US? Hmm? Do we mean NOTHING TO YOU?!?! NOTHING?!?!?! HOW CAN?!?!? HOW CAN U DO THIS TO US?!?! YOU CHEEBAI!
*sniff*
and I FCKING HATE MY JOB. IT SUCKS AND I’m ONLY DOING ENOUGH TO GET BY UNTIL I CAN PUT IN A “GFY” RESIGNATION LETTER. Hell YEAHHHHH!
From what I know…blog reading is not a group activity, so there is just 1 person reading that, so it addresses you, personally, as you read it.
That includes you FA 😀
I wanna see your GFY letter, you should watch Office Space btw, it’s the pwn.
That sucks to the max, 1st tier technical support is the pits..
At least if you can progres up to 2nd tier it’s not *so* bad. But still anything where you have to talk to customers/clients/end lusers..is a bad thing.
Yeah from experience I’ve found it’s the people you work with that make the difference, not so much the work you’re doing or the environment.
Great people can make the most boring task fun and assholes can make the dream job hell.
missssss uuuuuuuuuuu tooooooooooooooooooooo comeeeeeeeeeee backkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk sooooooooooon
Hey! I didn’t know you could speak whale!!!!
*giggles*
Gees, that sounded like me three years ago (and for about six years prior to that too!)
Save up, get some more education (ina different field), & get out! That’s my advice.