There was a time when I didn't understand the comic strip Dilbert. This was before I had ever worked in an office environment and lived through the insanity first-hand. Now, with the benefit of experience, I realize the absolute truth of that comic strip and it is one of my favorites.

The brilliance of Office Space is that, like the Dilbert comic, it is an honest depiction of life in a cubicle. If the film has any fault at all, it's that anyone who hasn't worked in an office just may not get it.

The real contradiction of office management is the ever present power struggle. Managers, who believe they are more valuable than the employees, exert their will by weilding authority like mad dictators. They can't do the work and belittle those who can.

The film's hero is Peter (Ron Livingston). He is pale, sad and nearly defeated by a job that is sucking away his will to live. His daily routine is to be ambushed by packs of managers who have nothing better to do than to reprimand him for trivial errors.

His co-workers fair no better. Consider, for example, the pitiful Milton (Stephen Root). Milton wants nothing more then to just do his job, but he has been reduced to the constant defence of his cubicle. His manager, Bill (Gery Cole), takes perverse pleasure in blatently stealing supplies from Milton and using his cubicle as storage space.

The company they all work for, Initech Corporation, is typical in that it sees that it has a problem with production, but is unwilling to attribute the bulk of the problem to its bloated management staff. Instead, the company calls in a group of "efficiency experts," who's pupose is to trim away employees. Ironically, the very employees facing the chopping block are the ones responsible for most of the work.

Meanwhile, following a visit to an occupational therapist, Peter makes it his personal mission to get fired from his job. He comes to work in sandles and guts fish at his desk. He tears down the walls to his cubicles and mouths off to his manager. The irony is that this attitude is appealing to the efficiency experts and they recommend placing Peter on the fast track for a management position.

The film doesn't limit its satirical revelations to the office. Peter becomes involved with a Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), a waitress at a TGIF-like restaraunt. Joanna faces ridicule from her boss for not having enough personality and for not covering her uniform with enough "flair" (pseudo-witty buttons and pins).

Office Space works because although many of the events in the film seem absurd, they have the ring of truth. Some of these things really do go on and there isn't a cubicle worker alive who doesn't wish they could act a little like Peter sometimes.