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‘Office Space’ Had a Much Bigger Impact Than People Realize

The cult classic managed to get a word added to the dictionary and bring a new product to the market, despite being a box-office flop

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Mike Judge’s Office Space landed in theaters on February 19, 1999, and…wasn’t a box-office hit. We know a lot of you love it, but where were you back then when your support might’ve counted for something? After its initial release, Office Space barely recouped its $10 million budget at the box office and was pulled from distribution after a very short run. In fact, it wasn’t until the movie—about a disgruntled computer programmer who schemes with his co-workers to embezzle from their company—was released on home video that people started paying more attention to it.

And, man, did it resonate with them from that point on. It might not sound like much, but David Herman’s character, Michael Bolton, referred to the singer of the same name as an “a– clown,” which was the earliest instance of that particular term being used on film. Herman came up with the unscripted line the day the scene was shot, and the word has since entered several dictionaries. So just remember who’s to blame next time a 12-year-old calls you that in Call of Duty.

The film’s effects on the outside world don’t stop there, however. Remember how Joanna (Jennifer Aniston) keeps getting harassed by her boss at the chain restaurant Chotchkie’s for not wearing enough flair? That whole thing was inspired by places like TGI Friday’s, which used to require employees to wear all kinds of buttons. Notice how we said “used to.” Yeah, according to Judge, a few years after the movie came out, Friday’s did away with their flair for good. “One of my ADs asked once at the restaurant why their flair was missing and they said they removed it because of that movie Office Space,” Judge told Deadline in 2014. “So, maybe I made the world a better place.”

The eventual popularity of Office Space even led to a new product being introduced, thanks to the Milton character (played by Stephen Root) and his obsession with his stapler. As Judge explained to The Ringer, the Swingline stapler company didn’t actually offer a red model in those days, so they had to spray paint one of their other staplers to make it stand out. Fans started requesting it so much that the company decided to seize the moment. “The team, at the time, saw it as an opportunity to really capitalize on the cultural movement that the movie did spark,” Swingline senior marketing manager Theresa Hardy said in 2019. “We’ve been probably officially making different variations of the red stapler for the better part of 10 years now.”

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