Untitled

“— How are you? — Living.”

“Mike Judge’s unjustly undercelebrated film Office Space (1999) is as acute an account of the 90s/00s workplace as Schrader’s Blue Collar (1978) was of 70s labor relations. Instead of the confrontation between trade union officials and management in a factory. Judge’s film shows a corporation sclerotized by administrative ‘anti-production’: workers receive multiple memos from different managers saying the exact same thing. Naturally, the memo concerns a bureaucratic practice: it aims to induce compliance with a new procedure of putting 'cover sheets’ on reports. In keeping with the 'being smart’ ethos, the management style in Office Space is a mixture of shirtsleeves-informality and quiet authoritarianism. Judge shows this same managerialism presides in the corporate coffee chains where the office workers go to relax. Here, staff are required to decorate their uniforms with 'seven pieces of flair’, (i.e. badges or other personal tokens) to express their 'individuality and creativity’: a handy illustration of the way in which 'creativity’ and 'self-expression’ have become intrinsic to labor in Control societies; which, as Paolo Virno, Yann Moulier Boutang and others have pointed out, now makes affective, as well as productive demands, on workers. Furthermore, the attempt to crudely quantify these affective contributions also tells us a great deal about the new arrangements. The flair example also points to another phenomenon: hidden expectations behind official standards. Joanna, a waitress at the coffee chain, wears exactly seven pieces of flair, but it is made clear to her that, even though seven is officially enough, it is actually inadequate - the manager asks if she wants to look the sort of person 'who only does the bare minimum.’ 'You know what, Stan, if you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair,’ Joanna complains, 'why don’t you just make the minimum 37 pieces of flair?’ 'Well,’ the manager replies, 'I thought I remembered you saying that you wanted to express yourself.’ Enough is no longer enough. This syndrome will be familiar to many workers who may find that a 'satisfactory’ grading in a performance evaluation is no longer satisfactory. In many educational institutions, for instance, if after a classroom observation a teacher is graded as 'satisfactory’, they will be required to undertake training prior to a reassessment.”