Office Space was not just a movie for me. For nearly 7 years, it was a pretty accurate slice of my life.

When this movie came out, I worked in a cubicle job at a computer company. For those of us unfortunate to have spent 5-10 years of our lives surrounded by faded green cubicle walls (unless you only had partial walls because you weren't important enough to have a full cubicle), this movie put us in tears. Not just from laughing too hard either. It makes us cry from how true it really is. I encouraged everyone that I worked with at my cubicle job to watch this movie.

The characters are all recognizable archetypes. At any given moment in our career, we will experience either knowing someone who resembles one of the characters or be able to identify with one of the characters. I worked with a guy named Bob, though he wasn't a consultant. Bob was more like a mix between Milton whose famous line was, "I believe you have my stapler," and Tom who said, "I have people skills! I can talk to people!" We did have consultants at my office, but they seemed to appear and disappear without making so much as a social ripple.

I can tell you for a fact that people who work in cubicle offices, who wear "dress casual" and who wear name badges clipped on to their belts, do go out in packs for lunch and eat at Chili's, Fridays, Bennigan's, and all of those restaurants that resemble "Chotchkie's" from the film. I wonder if the "over-the-top upbeatness" portrayed by the overzealous Chotchkie's worker is required behavior to be a waiter or waitress at such an establishment. God knows I have met enough of those people in my time. This, of course, leads us to the movie, "Waiting"... but that is a different movie review.

Though many offices will joke about the reference to TPS reports from the movie, every office does have its seemingly pointless ream of paperwork. From my particular Office Space job, we used similar acronyms. CRD, or "Change Request Document" was a big one at my company. I think a lot of companies have adopted the "Content Management System", or CMS.

In conclusion, never steal a man's stapler. Though not everyone will go "postal" and burn the place down, "Office Spaces" shouldn't take away what little dignity and individuality people have left. Oftentimes, they do.

Learn more about this author, Scott Johnson.
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