Question: Does Peter Gibbons ever come out his hypnotic trance during the course of the film?
Question: Why does Joanna tell Peter that she got fired from Chotchkie's? She quit. She told her manager that she didn't need her job and walked away.
Answer: She never said she quit though. She did say she didn't need the job, but only walked away from her manager while he was talking to her. She would have been fired for flipping him and customers off (and her attitude), which Brian kind of makes fun of her for later.
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.
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.
Chosen answer: I think the hypnotism broke something instead of putting him into a trance. It totally released his stress, that stayed despite not being influenced by the hypnotism anymore.
lionhead