‘Office Space’ marks 25 years of work sucking

Mike Judge’s film’s real target was capitalism, even if it never quite said so

Mike Judge’s comedy Office Space had one of the strangest pedigrees of any beloved 1990s movie. 

It started as a series of animated shorts on MTV’s Liquid Television and later Saturday Night Live, about a put-upon office employee named Milton, who was frequently told to move his desk. 

The film adaptation, which expanded far beyond the Milton character, was very much in the wheelhouse of 1990s slacker culture, and contempt for work. It was a time when tech was taking over the economy, but it didn’t mean the people working for those companies weren’t mistreated and miserable.