Ron Livingston credited as playing...
Peter
- Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
- Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
- Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
- Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
- Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
- Bob Slydell: Eight?
- Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
- Peter Gibbons: It's not just about me and my dream of doing nothing. It's about all of us. I don't know what happened to me at that hypnotherapist and, I don't know, maybe it was just shock and it's wearing off now, but when I saw that fat man keel over and die - Michael, we don't have a lot of time on this earth! We weren't meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.
- Michael Bolton: I told those fudge-packers I liked Michael Bolton's music.
- Peter Gibbons: Oh. That is not right, Michael.
- Joanna: So, where do you work, Peter?
- Peter Gibbons: Initech.
- Joanna: In... yeah, what do you do there?
- Peter Gibbons: I sit in a cubicle and I update bank software for the 2000 switch.
- Joanna: What's that?
- Peter Gibbons: Well see, they wrote all this bank software, and, uh, to save space, they used two digits for the date instead of four. So, like, 98 instead of 1998? Uh, so I go through these thousands of lines of code and, uh... it doesn't really matter. I uh, I don't like my job, and, uh, I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.
- Joanna: You're just not gonna go?
- Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
- Joanna: Won't you get fired?
- Peter Gibbons: I don't know, but I really don't like it, and, uh, I'm not gonna go.
- Joanna: So you're gonna quit?
- Peter Gibbons: Nuh-uh. Not really. Uh... I'm just gonna stop going.
- Joanna: When did you decide all that?
- Peter Gibbons: About an hour ago.
- Joanna: Oh, really? About an hour ago... so you're gonna get another job?
- Peter Gibbons: I don't think I'd like another job.
- Joanna: Well, what are you going to do about money and bills and...
- Peter Gibbons: You know, I've never really liked paying bills. I don't think I'm gonna do that, either.
- Joanna: Well, so what do you wanna do?
- Peter Gibbons: I wanna take you out to dinner, and then I wanna go back to my apartment and watch 'Kung Fu'. Do you ever watch 'Kung Fu'?
- Joanna: I love 'Kung Fu'.
- Peter Gibbons: Channel 39.
- Joanna: Totally.
- Peter Gibbons: You should come over and watch 'Kung Fu' tonight.
- Joanna: Okay.
- [Peter nods]
- Joanna: Okay. Can we order lunch first?
- [Peter nods again]
- Joanna: Okay.
- Bob Porter: Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately.
- Peter Gibbons: I wouldn't say I've been *missing* it, Bob.
- Michael Bolton: Peter, you're in deep shit. You were supposed to come in on Saturday. What were you doing?
- Peter Gibbons: Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.
- Bob Slydell: You see, what we're actually trying to do here is, we're trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work... so, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?
- Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
- Bob Slydell: Great.
- Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.
- Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
- Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
- Peter Gibbons: So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.
- Dr. Swanson: What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?
- Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
- Dr. Swanson: Wow, that's messed up.
- Peter Gibbons: What would you do if you had a million dollars?
- Lawrence: I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two chicks at the same time, man.
- [Peter laughs and then notices Lawrence's dead serious expression]
- Peter Gibbons: That's it? If you had a million dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?
- Lawrence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a millionaire I could hook that up, too; 'cause chicks dig dudes with money.
- Peter Gibbons: Well, not all chicks.
- Lawrence: Well, the type of chicks that'd double up on a dude like me do.
- Peter Gibbons: Good point.
- Lawrence: Well, what about you now? What would you do?
- Peter Gibbons: Besides two chicks at the same time?
- Lawrence: Well, yeah.
- Peter Gibbons: Nothing.
- Lawrence: Nothing, huh?
- Peter Gibbons: I would relax... I would sit on my ass all day... I would do nothing.
- Lawrence: Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit.
- Dom Portwood: Hi, Peter. What's happening? We need to talk about your TPS reports.
- Peter Gibbons: Yeah. The coversheet. I know, I know. Uh, Bill talked to me about it.
- Dom Portwood: Yeah. Did you get that memo?
- Peter Gibbons: Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. And the problem is just that I forgot the one time. And I've already taken care of it so it's not even really a problem anymore.
- Dom Portwood: Ah! Yeah. It's just we're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. All right!
- Peter Gibbons: I can't believe what a bunch of nerds we are. We're looking up "money laundering" in a dictionary.
- Peter Gibbons: Let me ask you something. When you come in on Monday and you're not feeling real well, does anyone ever say to you, "Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays?"
- Lawrence: No. No, man. Shit, no, man. I believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin' something like that, man.
- Peter Gibbons: [about the plan to steal from Initech] Before we go any further, all right, we have to swear to God, Allah, that nobody knows about this but us, all right? No family members, no girlfriends, nobody.
- Samir: Of course.
- Michael Bolton: Agreed,
- Lawrence: [from the next apartment through the wall] Don't worry, man. I won't tell anyone either.
- Michael Bolton: Who the fuck is that?
- Peter Gibbons: Uh, don't worry about him. He's cool.
- [Peter and Lawrence are working on the crew cleaning up the burned Initech building]
- Peter Gibbons: This isn't so bad, huh? Makin' bucks, gettin' exercise, workin' outside.
- Lawrence: Fuckin' A.
- Peter Gibbons: [nods] Fuckin' A.
- Peter Gibbons: [Explaining the plan] Alright so when the sub routine compounds the interest is uses all these extra decimal places that just get rounded off. So we simplified the whole thing, we rounded them all down, drop the remainder into an account we opened.
- Joanna: [Confused] So you're stealing?
- Peter Gibbons: Ah no, you don't understand. It's very complicated. It's uh it's aggregate, so I'm talking about fractions of a penny here. And over time they add up to a lot.
- Joanna: Oh okay. So you're gonna be making a lot of money, right?
- Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
- Joanna: Right. It's not yours?
- Peter Gibbons: Well it becomes ours.
- Joanna: How is that not stealing?
- Peter Gibbons: [pauses] I don't think I'm explaining this very well.
- Joanna: Okay.
- Peter Gibbons: Um... the 7-11. You take a penny from the tray, right?
- Joanna: From the cripple children?
- Peter Gibbons: No that's the jar. I'm talking about the tray. You know the pennies that are for everybody?
- Joanna: Oh for everybody. Okay.
- Peter Gibbons: Well those are whole pennies, right? I'm just talking about fractions of a penny here. But we do it from a much bigger tray and we do it a couple a million times.
- Peter Gibbons: You're gonna lay off Samir and Michael?
- Bob Slydell: Oh yeah, we're gonna bring in some entry-level graduates, farm some work out to Singapore, that's the usual deal.
- Bob Porter: Standard operating procedure.
- Peter Gibbons: Do they know this yet?
- Bob Slydell: No. No, of course not. We find it's always better to fire people on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there's less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week.
- Peter Gibbons: Lawrence, you awake?
- Lawrence: Yeah.
- Peter Gibbons: You wanna come over?
- Lawrence: No thanks, man. I don't want you fucking up my life, too.
- Joanna: I dunno, it just seems wrong.
- Peter Gibbons: It's NOT wrong. INITECH is wrong. INITECH is an evil corporation, all right? Chotchkie's is wrong. Doesn't it bother you that you have to get up in the morning and you have to put on a bunch of pieces of flair?
- Joanna: Yeah, but I'm not about to go in and start taking money from the register.
- Peter Gibbons: Well, maybe you should. You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear.
- Joanna: What?
- Peter Gibbons: [talking about the hypnotherapist he's about to see] Hey, he helped Anne lose weight.
- Samir: Peter, she's anorexic!
- Peter Gibbons: Yeah, the guy's really good.
- Michael Bolton: Samir and I are the best programmers they got at that place. You haven't been showing up and you get to keep your job.
- Peter Gibbons: Actually, I'm being promoted.
- [Peter, Michael, and Samir are chatting as they hang around the printer]
- Peter Gibbons: Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what you'd do if you had a million dollars and you didn't have to work. And invariably what you'd say was supposed to be your career. So, if you wanted to fix old cars then you're supposed to be an auto mechanic.
- Samir: So what did you say?
- Peter Gibbons: I never had an answer. I guess that's why I'm working at Initech.
- Michael Bolton: No, you're working at Initech because that question is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her, there'd be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up if they had a million dollars.
- Samir: You know what I would do if I had a million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...
- Michael Bolton: Samir, you're missing the point. The point of the exercise is that you're supposed to figure out what you would want to do if...
- [printer starts beeping]
- Michael Bolton: "PC Load Letter"? What the fuck does that mean?