On a Lighter Note: Work-Related Movies

I have 3 comic relief suggestions for work place related films:

1. Office Space
2. Office Space, Layoff Edition
3. Office Space, Manager's Cut

Heaven forbid limited network coverage outside of designated news slots and prime time one-hour specials of a bebillitating tragedy for part of our country should get in the way of someone's personal entertainment. "On a lighter note" is not exactly wthe type of leadership I would expect a magazine like Fast Company to be concerned with at the moment.

Well said, Jeffrey.

When we are all watching a major American city disappear -- home to the second largest seaport in the country -- before our eyes, its people now living in unspeakable conditions, it is hard to get excited about 'work-themed movies.' New Orleans is not the 'feel-good event' of the summer.

Come on people! I think you missed the point all together! The point is just what you are complaining about. As a psychologist I can say that, while our country is currently overwhelmed with emotion and concern for the residents of the gulf coast region. Human beings do need occasional relief from distressing events. Fast Company is a very respectful publication and no doubt has their own plans to help in relief efforts.

Well said, Ryan!

If we are all doing what we can do and we have contibuted financially to the limits of our ability, then ongoing self-flaggelation is of very limited usefulness.

When I was in high school, I was eating lunch with a young woman whose parents had just returned to the US after an extended stay in India working to train medical professionals there.

At the time, famine in India was all over the news. This young lady sat down with a plate of food in the school cafeteria. Since the students had little control over portion size, she left a few bites of food on her plate when she was done eating.

A smart-mouth young man at the table quipped, "How can you not clean your plate with all those starving children in India?"

Her response was remarkable and it stuck in my mind these 30+ years hence. She said, "What possible good would it do those children in India if I ate this food?"

Silence reigned as the we pondered the many levels of meaning her reponse had for each of us.

I would suggest that a similar response would be in order here. Assuming we have made whatever contribution we are capable of making, "What possible good will it do for me to agonize over something I have no control over on the Gulf Coast?"

But to quote Dennis Miller, "That's just my opinion, I could be wrong!"

true story, should be in a movie, who ever picks up this can have the story for a movie line gratis...I once worked in a hotel in Denver on Colorado Boulevard, a big convention hotel. In the mid-90's where the sales of hotels were rocking and rolling, it was hard to tell when you would lose your job. A hotel would be sold, merged, the company you worked for would be bought, absorbed, the chain you worked for could be bought out, the sight would go down, a new one go up - ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN.
At that hotel, in 1995, everything happened. We were bought, sold, bartered, traded, bankrupted, and sold again -- four times in calender year. I never lost my job, I kept my desk, my title (director of sales), my salary, my staff, and my sanity.
My color of my paychecks and my vice presidents changed four times that year,and
I developed a drinking problem about Labor Day, BUT....I did hold onto my job.
Next spring, my wife died of the stress.