Continuity mistake: When he is playing Tetris, he is playing a different game every time. (00:43:35)
Office Space (1999)
Plot summary
Directed by: Mike Judge
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Gary Cole, Ron Livingston, Stephen Root, David Herman
Lumburg has Peter stressed out and Peter's girlfriend takes him to a hypnotist and hypnotizes him into not caring about anything and then the hypnotist dies
Michael Bolton: If we get caught, we're not going to white-collar resort prison. No, no, no. We're going to federal "pound me in the ass" prison.
Samir: I don't want to go to ANY prison!
Trivia: Director Mike Judge wanted the story to be able to take place anywhere, so the state is never specified. Even the license plates on the cars are stateless.
Question: While recognizing that this film is entirely fictitious, how likely is it that an IT firm in 1999 would have allowed a former employee access to the premises after being laid off, never mind continue to send him a paycheck as with Milton Waddams? I myself was fired the following year and got the walk of shame treatment ("you have 5 minutes to clear your desk - the taxi's waiting outside") which at the time already seemed pretty standard.
Answer: Simply because he is basically invisible to them. Anyone can walk into that place, no guard outside, no key-card required. Nobody cared. At least you got a taxi.
Exactly. These things can happen. It depends on the place and how they operate. As recently as January 2024, I read about one young woman who went into a Kroger grocery store and worked for six hours, as an experiment. She has also done this at Target and Walmart. She wears clothes that look like a real employee's.
Answer: They never told Milton he was fired, they just cruelly cut off his paycheck, figuring he'd eventually get fed up and leave (he'd actually been laid off years ago, but a payroll glitch kept him getting a paycheck). The management is hoping if they're cruel enough, he'll stop showing up.
Brian Katcher
This is actually the reverse of what happened. The glitch caused him to continue to receive a paycheck, even though he'd been laid off. The "Bobs" corrected the glitch, so he would no longer receive a paycheck. In an effort to avoid confrontation, they chose not to say anything to him, hoping he'd realise it and leave on his own.