| Office Space, an American comedy film that satirizes | | | | fan sites, most notable of which was the website |
| the working life of a number of fed up individuals who | | | | B*llSh*tJob.com, which was not only an ode to the film, |
| work for a large software company, flopped at the big | | | | but a forum for those who had had enough of their |
| screen. When it was first released back in 1999, critics | | | | own dead end jobs, and by watching Office Space |
| were largely unimpressed. The New York Times | | | | were motivated and inspired to quit and find better |
| wrote: "It has the loose-jointed feel of a bunch of | | | | employment. |
| sketches packed together into a narrative that doesn't | | | | The cult following is also manifested in the availability of |
| gather much momentum"; Entertainment Weekly | | | | non-official merchandise related to various props in the |
| deemed it "cramped and under-imagined." | | | | film. For example, it's possible to purchase Initech mugs |
| The story focused on Peter Gibbons, an employee of | | | | and mouse mats, but perhaps the most unlikely item to |
| the software company Initech, who spends his working | | | | receive a cult following came from the stationary |
| days adjusting banking software code to prepare for | | | | world. |
| the Y2k disaster - which at the end of the 90s was a | | | | One of the central characters Milton, an overweight |
| much talked about "threat". Peter is bored, tired, fed up | | | | paper pusher who is constantly bullied by upper |
| and hates his job and everything about the company | | | | management who relocate his desk whenever they |
| he works for, especially his boss "Lumbergh" who | | | | feel like it, has one love in his life: his Red Swingline |
| frequently makes Peter come to work on weekends. | | | | Stapler - about which he is constantly mumbling. |
| Despite the slow start, Office Space became a | | | | Swingline are a real life stationary company who do |
| massive cult movie, spawning a whole generation of | | | | manufacture staplers, but prior to the making of Office |
| office bound fans. It seemed to sum up the working | | | | Space, they had not produced a red model in years (a |
| lives of so many in the Western world; even those | | | | member of the props team was instructed to paint the |
| who had never worked in an office cubicle for a | | | | stapler prop red to fit in with the script). Due to the |
| software firm could still relate to the maddening | | | | demand generated by the film, Swingline began |
| commute to work, the pointless office bureaucracy, | | | | producing the red model again, which went on to |
| the annoying co-workers, the printer that forever | | | | become the best selling stapler of all time. |
| jammed and the boss who preferred to spend | | | | Perhaps the movie's greatest achievement was |
| company time and money on his shirts and celebrating | | | | striking a chord with so many workplaces around the |
| his birthday, rather than giving his staff a pay rise. | | | | world; from serviced offices in London to the desks of |
| Such was the connection that Office Space made | | | | Detroit, Office Space is the voice of the jilted office |
| with those who watched it, that it spawned dozens of | | | | generation. |