Office Space has an insider's view of the politics, processes, and jargon of working in a large, controlled office space. Procedures and appearances are everything. Someone who does no work can be rewarded provided that he (a) stays nestled in his cubicle, (b) looks busy, and (c) fills out all his TPS cover sheets flawlessly and on time. Then there are the little things we're all familiar with: FAX machines that display a "paper jam" error when no paper is jammed anywhere, bosses whose smooth-talking voices threaten to induce instant catatonia, computers that take forever to shut down, and the use of Tetris as an antidote to the 9-to-5 blahs.
The lead character Peter, works at a company called Initech. He is a drone in a cubicle, and he's miserable. His girlfriend is cheating on him, he's stressed out, and his life has all the color of a rain cloud at night. His boss is a manipulative, quintessentially creepy guy who always makes Peter work weekends. In addition, on his way to work, he gets stuck in a mind-blowing traffic jam, and every time he successfully gets into the moving lane, the lane stops moving, and the lane he was just in starts moving miraculously. He glances out of his blind spot and notices the old man with a walker, moving at a snail's pace, is making more locational progress than he is. When he gets to work, people notice he's gloomy and say he's "come down with a case of the "Mondays."" Then his main boss Mr. Lumburgh (Gary Cole) shows up at his cubicle and mentions that he didn't put the cover sheet on his latest TPS report. A couple seconds later, another boss comes up to him and says the same thing. Then again. Then again. Meanwhile, a high-pitched receptionist's voice repeats the same annoying mantra to caller after caller after caller. .
The next day Peter's cheating girlfriend gets him to go to a psychologist. Therefore, when Peter starts talking about his job he reveals that everyday feels like his worst day.