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In the decade since its release, the movie Office Space has dramatized the corporate best of work-life dystopia.

In Office Space, we’ve got the Lumberg, the red stapler, the TPS Reports, a bad case of the Mondays, a little flair, and of course, “the Bobs”. Oh, the Bobs, those clueless, bumbling, omniscient consultants from corporate who come in to do a little downsizing.

Such innocent times, when we thought Office Space was a cynical view of the corporate world, and we laughed.

Now, we have another cinematic view of corporate reality: Up In The Air.

Up In The Air is not actually cynical- it’s realistic. Up In The Air shows us something very real about employer-employee relationships. And it’s a reality that’s neither funny nor easy to watch.

Up In The Air: Corporatized Layoffs

If you’ve seen Up In The Air, you’ve seen the latest version of corporatized layoffs. Corporatized layoffs take the humanity out of human resource management.

A lot has changed in the ten years since the Bobs demonstrated state-of-the-art termination practices. Back in Office Space, the Bobs came over form HR to analyze work flow and to hold the managers’ hands while they executed the lay offs of their employees and colleagues.

Now, in Up In The Air, the layoff process has been outsourced to the specialist-for-hire, Ryan Bingham, a “termination engineer”.

New Realities of Corporatized Layoffs, as seen in Up In The Air.

Up In The Air dramatizes for us 6 new realities of the layoff process.

1. Layoffs are so common that they have spawned their own growth industry, complete with skilled, well-paid termination experts.

Bingham doesn’t just lay people off. Rather, he’s a “termination engineer“. A specialist. In a well-cut suit and a silk tie from the “Shoppes at Terminal C”. Unlike the belt-and-suspenders dorkiness of the Bobs, Bingham is real business class talent — smooth and skilled as he wields the hatchet.

Who knew we’d gotten so good at this, at the act of telling employees we don’t want them anymore?

2. Organizations and their managers have deftly insulated themselves from the unpleasant experience of laying people off. This insulation allows these organizations to be genuinely fake, to say one thing and do another without any ambivalence or embarrassment.

By outsourcing their termination practice to a consultancy, the organization removes any manager or corporate representative from the process. There is no one from the company who has to explain the decision to the ex-employee, and no one from the company to take responsibility for the layoff decisions.

Structurally, Bingham, is insulated from any responsibility for these axed employees. He didn’t create the problems that lead to the layoffs or make the choices about whom to lay off. Emotionally, Bingham is also insulated. He shares no common culture, no corporate history, no personal relationship with the people losing their jobs. He has no reason at all (apart from some basic humanity) to feel guilty or conflicted about what he is there to do.

This structural and psychic distance make it possible for Bingham to be genuinely fake. For all those the platitudes, Bingham really means what he says. And he also doesn’t mean what he says, because no part of the experience actually touches him.

Similarly, the structural set up prevents the organization and its managers even from seeing the damage that their behavior is causing. The organization and its managers are free to claim that they care about employees while laying them off.

3. In corporatized layoffs, no one can hear you scream. [click to continue…]

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