Speaker 1: From executive search to talent strategy, leadership development, rewards and
Speaker 1: succession planning. Corn Fairy can help you realize the full
Speaker 1: potential of your people so you can take your business
Speaker 1: where it wants to go up. Learn more at corn
Speaker 1: Ferry dot com slash up. Well. I generally come in
Speaker 1: at least fifteen minutes late. I used the side door
Speaker 1: that way Lumberg can't see me, and uh after that,
Speaker 1: I just sort of space out for about an hour.
Speaker 1: Space out. Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but
Speaker 1: it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably
Speaker 1: another hour after launch too. I'd say in a given week,
Speaker 1: I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real actual work.
Speaker 1: The thing is, Bob, It's not that I'm lazy, It's
Speaker 1: that I just don't care. Welcome to game Plan. I'm
Speaker 1: Sam Grobart, a writer at Bloomberg Business Week Magazine, and
Speaker 1: I'm Rebecca Greenfield, a reporter at Bloomberg WHEG cover the workplace.
Speaker 1: That clip you just heard, if it wasn't already familiar,
Speaker 1: is from the movie Office Space, which is universally acknowledged
Speaker 1: to be perhaps the greatest single piece of art ever
Speaker 1: created on the subject of the workplace. In the clip
Speaker 1: that we just heard, we have an incredibly candid and
Speaker 1: frank conversation between an underachieving employee and the consultants who
Speaker 1: have been brought in to examine just who should stay
Speaker 1: and who should go this week on our show, because
Speaker 1: the last week and probably the last year and a
Speaker 1: half for many of you, has been exhausting, and the
Speaker 1: news has been relentless, so much news, we decided that
Speaker 1: going into Thanksgiving, this episode would be about something later,
Speaker 1: and we're going to do our show about movies that
Speaker 1: portrait working life in a way that we think is
Speaker 1: very accurate. It's Becca and Sam at the movies. So
Speaker 1: we've picked some clips from movies that we feel really
Speaker 1: get at some universal truths about life at work, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna listen to them and then we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about them a little bit. Becca, do you want
Speaker 1: to go first? Sure? So my first clip is from
Speaker 1: The Devil Wears Product, which is a classic film about
Speaker 1: a woman working for what is supposed to be Vogue magazine.
Speaker 1: In this clip, it's Andy, the main character's first day
Speaker 1: at work, and she encounters her coworker, who is also
Speaker 1: an assistant for the editor in chief of this Vogue
Speaker 1: like magazine, who is played by the amazing Meryl Street.
Speaker 1: I picked this clip because in it you see how
Speaker 1: quickly everyone settles into the hierarchies of an office, and
Speaker 1: things that from an outsider would seem completely unimportant are
Speaker 1: very important to somebody trying to hold onto their tiny
Speaker 1: little bit of power. I hope you know that this
Speaker 1: is a very difficult too, which you are totally run
Speaker 1: and if you mess up, my head is on a
Speaker 1: chopping blog. Okay, first of all, you and I answered
Speaker 1: the phone. The phone must be answered every single time
Speaker 1: it rings. Find what here, Andrea Andrew? You want chained
Speaker 1: to that desk? Well? What if I need to what? No.
Speaker 1: One time an assistant left the desk because she sliced
Speaker 1: her hand open with a letter of and Mirandom missed
Speaker 1: large Field just before he boarded a seventeen hour flight
Speaker 1: to Australia. She now works at TV Guide. Remember you
Speaker 1: and I have totally different jobs. I mean, you get
Speaker 1: coffee when you run errands. Yet I'm in charge of
Speaker 1: her schedule, her appointments, and her expenses, and most importantly
Speaker 1: I get to go with her to Paris for a
Speaker 1: fashion week and before Yeah, so w the whole movie
Speaker 1: is really great about showing office life, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that's just true for media companies, since we work
Speaker 1: at media company. I think that this woman is low
Speaker 1: on the totem pole. And you remember when you're fresh
Speaker 1: out of college and you think you know everything and
Speaker 1: you come in and you do not expect to be
Speaker 1: slapped in the face by this organization where people have
Speaker 1: power and jobs and want to show you how much
Speaker 1: power they have. I often refer to these people, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure many others as well do as tiny emperors,
Speaker 1: like you know, their their kingdom is basically their desk,
Speaker 1: but they do have maybe control over one infinitiesmally small thing,
Speaker 1: and they will then lord it over you. And The
Speaker 1: other aspect of this that I think that clip really
Speaker 1: demonstrates quite well is the notion of hazing almost in
Speaker 1: a new job that you're coming in as a young person.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if you're smart, it doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: you actually know what you're doing. They're just gonna make
Speaker 1: your life kind of miserable because someone made their life miserable,
Speaker 1: and that's just the tradition. Emily Blunt is really great
Speaker 1: in that role, and I just love how she says
Speaker 1: our jobs are different. Mine is more important than yours.
Speaker 1: But if you really listen to the words she's saying,
Speaker 1: she does scheduling instead of getting coffee. It's arbitrary. It's
Speaker 1: completely arbitrary. And I like how throughout the movie they
Speaker 1: do become closer as they work more together. Those two characters,
Speaker 1: I will say, to the credit of the movie, they
Speaker 1: do round out Emily Blunt's character to be an actual
Speaker 1: human being and not just a caricature of this kind.
Speaker 1: And they do that with all the characters in the
Speaker 1: movie in facting even Meryl Streep's character. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: you said, starting a new job, when I've started new jobs,
Speaker 1: or when new people come in two new jobs, you
Speaker 1: immediately do have this kind of like animal kingdom reaction
Speaker 1: to them. You're like sizing them up and trying to
Speaker 1: see if they're going to be a threat to you.
Speaker 1: And you also need to show them that you could
Speaker 1: be a threat to them. That's right, that's right, which
Speaker 1: is really much air and cool. Oh it's the best.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to our next clip. What do you got? Okay,
Speaker 1: So I have picked a clip from one of my
Speaker 1: favorite favorite movies of all time A movie called Broadcast News,
Speaker 1: which stars Holly Hunter, William Hurt, and the always always
Speaker 1: amazing Albert Brooks, and a lot of people know this
Speaker 1: movie is being sort of a love triangle set at
Speaker 1: a network news operation in d C. But the clip
Speaker 1: that I want you to listen to is actually the
Speaker 1: undercurrent of the whole movie, which is that there are
Speaker 1: all these layoffs about to happen, and then they do happen,
Speaker 1: and in a movie that's supposed to be considered a
Speaker 1: romantic comedy, it actually does as good a job as
Speaker 1: I've ever seen as what an office looks like the
Speaker 1: day that people lose their jobs. He'll just be a minute.
Speaker 1: I hate this so much. You know, I'm just old
Speaker 1: enough to be flattered by the term early retirement. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1: What a lovely line. Now, if there's anything I can
Speaker 1: do for you, but I suddenly hope you'll die soon, Tom,
Speaker 1: this is a severe cutback town. Twenty seven people in
Speaker 1: this bureau alone, including technical personnel. We're going to reorganize.
Speaker 1: At the same time, we're going to drop you out
Speaker 1: of Washington and assign you to look I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: the clip has some humor in there. There's the great
Speaker 1: line I'll hope you'll die soon, which is probably something
Speaker 1: we've all wished we could see more fantasy than reality,
Speaker 1: it's true, but then it does have a lot of
Speaker 1: actual reality in it in terms of just the dislocating
Speaker 1: feeling that that day takes on, and you know, you're
Speaker 1: just being surrounded by people who a terrible thing has
Speaker 1: just happened to them, but other people are still there.
Speaker 1: It's a weird mix. Yeah, it's this general mood that
Speaker 1: is is somber, but also people saying like, oh, let's
Speaker 1: get drunk, or you don't really know how to feel
Speaker 1: the shock, right, it's all happening at once. Layoffs generally
Speaker 1: are a surprise, and perhaps that's for the best as
Speaker 1: far as morale is concerned, but when that band aid
Speaker 1: is ripped off, it can be exceedingly painful, and I
Speaker 1: just think this movie does a really good job of
Speaker 1: showing that. I think a lot of movies treat the
Speaker 1: workplace as a very background subject, like you often don't
Speaker 1: even know what they do for a living, or if
Speaker 1: they do. It's just sort of like I'm an architect, Fine,
Speaker 1: you know, but this really actually gives you an up
Speaker 1: close portrayal of that environment. Yeah, and I like how
Speaker 1: it treated layoffs, like you said, in a very realistic way.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of other movies that have done
Speaker 1: the layoff scene and everything's really chaotic and people just
Speaker 1: runaway and steal things and then the buildings empty. And
Speaker 1: that may have been true for kind of historic layoffs
Speaker 1: on Wall Street and things like that, but this was
Speaker 1: kind of like the general run of the mill or restructuring,
Speaker 1: getting rid of some people, cutting costs layoff. The only
Speaker 1: other thing I would say about this is that it
Speaker 1: also shows how people drop the veil, if you will,
Speaker 1: or the mask that they wear at work. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think everybody has a certain way that they are
Speaker 1: in the office that's different than probably how they are
Speaker 1: at home or with their friends. And it might be
Speaker 1: just a minor distinction. But you see people here they're crying,
Speaker 1: you know, and you see people here who are very upset,
Speaker 1: and we normally don't see that kind of raw emotion
Speaker 1: in the workplace. That's never really considered welcome, But on
Speaker 1: these days those rules seem to be suspended. The next
Speaker 1: clip that I picked is from the movie nine to five,
Speaker 1: which is a great, great, great movie. It's from over
Speaker 1: years ago and it feels really radical even today. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad you picked this. It's so great. And in
Speaker 1: the scene that I chose, Dolly Parton's character is having
Speaker 1: a fantasy about how she would treat her boss if
Speaker 1: she could, her boss, who sexually harasses her on a
Speaker 1: regular basis borning. Hold it, just hold her right there?
Speaker 1: Something wrong? No, no, that wasn't wrong. I just want
Speaker 1: to check your bad turn around for secon. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: you got a nice glass, friend, but you know you
Speaker 1: are to get your pants cut a little tighter. You
Speaker 1: need to bring them up just a little in the crotch.
Speaker 1: I mean, you got a nice package, you might as
Speaker 1: well show it off. Mr Rhodes, come over here. I
Speaker 1: want you to take a memo. Oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: I got a surprise for you here, Mr Rhodes, I
Speaker 1: am a married man. Forget about your wife, friend. I mean,
Speaker 1: you may be hers in the evening, but you're my
Speaker 1: boy from nine to five. Here. I wanted to show
Speaker 1: you what I got for you. Isn't that pretty? Yes,
Speaker 1: it's pretty, and it's very pretty, But you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: buying gifts for me. Mrs Rhodes, Okay, let me put
Speaker 1: it on here. Yeah, that wasn't so bad worthy. I
Speaker 1: love your hair, it's so sexy. Why don't we go
Speaker 1: from the couch and I'll go off the door Mrs Rhodes. Oh,
Speaker 1: let's be really frank and we need got to be
Speaker 1: a little more cool if you want to keep this job.
Speaker 1: I'm not the kind of point. It's one little kid.
Speaker 1: I love this scene because it's so absurd, but it's
Speaker 1: only absurd because we're hearing it come from a woman
Speaker 1: almost earlier in the movie. Her boss does these kinds
Speaker 1: of things to her all the time, and we treated
Speaker 1: as tragic but kind of in that oh yeah, that
Speaker 1: happens way. I think almost every line she says is
Speaker 1: something that he has already said to her and that
Speaker 1: we have heard him say, right, And then it's the
Speaker 1: inversion that we all go what yeah. So in this movie,
Speaker 1: they work at a company called Consolidated Companies. It's all
Speaker 1: about working in a generic office in the eighties. It's
Speaker 1: so great, and it's about these three women who are
Speaker 1: treated in sexist ways in very different ways, And the
Speaker 1: best thing about the movie is that Towards the end,
Speaker 1: they take over the office and implement all these changes
Speaker 1: that even now would be considered not usual, like paid
Speaker 1: family leave and daycare and equal pay. It will never happen.
Speaker 1: And then the boss comes back and he says, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get rid of all these changes. You can't
Speaker 1: do that, and his higher up comes and says, actually,
Speaker 1: everyone's been so productive, you should keep all these changes,
Speaker 1: except for equal pay, which is the punch line, but
Speaker 1: not really a punch line anymore, but still twenty five
Speaker 1: years later. But it's such a great movie. It's so funny,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a little feminist manifesto and the
Speaker 1: theme song is fantastic and very good to do at karaoke.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm gonna get that in there. All happens
Speaker 1: when the power and potential of every employee and leader
Speaker 1: in your workforce is released, and corn Ferry can get
Speaker 1: you there by aligning your people to your strategy, attracting, developing, engaging,
Speaker 1: and rewarding them to reach new heights. With corn Ferry,
Speaker 1: you get a partner who truly understands people, leadership, and
Speaker 1: the new landscape of work, a partner who is going
Speaker 1: to take your Business Up. Learn more at corn Ferry
Speaker 1: dot com slash up. All right, what's your your last clip?
Speaker 1: My last clip is from the classic film The Apartment
Speaker 1: starring Jack Lemon and Shirley McClain, largely considered to be
Speaker 1: one of the great comedies of the modern era. The
Speaker 1: clip I selected deals with the jargon that comes out
Speaker 1: of that very technocratic culture. And the thing I want
Speaker 1: you to listen to is how the suffix wise, like
Speaker 1: appointment wise or employee wise, is starting to be thrown
Speaker 1: around the office. And it's this kind of jargon that
Speaker 1: people like to use to feel knowledgeable and special. And
Speaker 1: then what you start to see is that other people
Speaker 1: who are maybe lower down on the totem pole start
Speaker 1: to use it as well as a means to sort
Speaker 1: of gain entry into that rarefied echelon. Wise and Billy wise,
Speaker 1: we are eighteen percent ahead of last year October wise.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, hi plenty seven, Please carefully, you're carrying precious cargo.
Speaker 1: I've been wise seven. I realized it was public, but
Speaker 1: I am in the top ten efficiency wise. And this
Speaker 1: maybe the day you're beginning to sound like Mr kurkul
Speaker 1: Be already again. This is a movie that is known
Speaker 1: for its sort of romantic qualities, but if you look
Speaker 1: not very far past it, it really gets into the
Speaker 1: world of work at this very male dominated, very sort
Speaker 1: of corporate culture time. And it's a shame in this
Speaker 1: case that we're actually doing a podcast, I feel, because
Speaker 1: visually it's just like a sea of cubicles and you
Speaker 1: don't even like they don't even end, it just keeps
Speaker 1: going forever. I've never seen this movie. What struck me
Speaker 1: about the clip was how much people bought into the
Speaker 1: jargon so quickly they're speaking it like it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: completely ridiculous, which is exactly what happens with the jargon.
Speaker 1: And the thing the movie shows is because our hero
Speaker 1: protagonist C. C. Baxter, is a young man trying to
Speaker 1: move his way up within the company, he takes on
Speaker 1: the speech patterns of his bosses. So speech becomes sort
Speaker 1: of a key into a hopefully a world that you
Speaker 1: want to be a part of, or almost like currency
Speaker 1: that you can use to show like, oh, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm with the higher ups here. I know how they speak.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned that we couldn't see the movies, but
Speaker 1: one thing just watching all these clips as we were
Speaker 1: preparing for the show, was that how the aesthetics of
Speaker 1: the office really haven't changed that much. So you have
Speaker 1: a movie from the sixties, The Apartment, which is from
Speaker 1: the early eighties, and then Office Space, which I think
Speaker 1: was and I mean, except for the production quality, they
Speaker 1: could all be the era. It's cubical after cubical after cubical, planned, cubicles,
Speaker 1: office workers. A lot of these same themes come up
Speaker 1: in all the movies. The only one that looks slightly
Speaker 1: more modern is The Devil Wares Proud Of But that's
Speaker 1: because they're out of Fashion magazine, and in fact, fashion
Speaker 1: magazine offices tend to be kind of very slick and
Speaker 1: cool and everything else. I do think that movies sometimes
Speaker 1: really overdo it on workplaces. So they go find like
Speaker 1: an amazingly cool looking place and they fill it with
Speaker 1: awesome furniture, and it's like that would never happen. It
Speaker 1: would be a much cheaper arrangement. They kind of slap
Speaker 1: some stuff together because that just makes more sense financially. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of that movie The Intern, which came up
Speaker 1: when we were thinking of our clips. Yes, also with
Speaker 1: a Hathaway, Yes, and Hathaway is just a lot of movies.
Speaker 1: I watched Famous America Sweetheart. I have not seen The
Speaker 1: Intern unfortunately I saw it, fell asleep during it. But
Speaker 1: the office was striking to me. It's supposed to be
Speaker 1: a startup office, and it kind of looks like a
Speaker 1: mock up of a startup office. It's really nice, right,
Speaker 1: they overdo it. It's like apartments on TV shows. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: like Carrie Bradshaw and Sex in the City, although there
Speaker 1: was a recent article talking about how that's changed a
Speaker 1: little bit, Like if you look at the house and
Speaker 1: Insecure it is it looks like where they would live. Okay, good,
Speaker 1: good for a TV Yeah, TV's catching on. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: speaking of TV, we're going to focus on that for
Speaker 1: our half Baked Takes, Happy Fake Takes. So, Becca, do
Speaker 1: you have any partially formed ideas about television and its
Speaker 1: portrayal of the workplace. Here's my thought about people working
Speaker 1: and television shows. I remember any time I was watching
Speaker 1: a television show and my dad would walk into the room,
Speaker 1: he would say, what do these people do for a living?
Speaker 1: I think, to somehow, I don't know, delegitimize whatever I
Speaker 1: was watching. Now, because of that, I'm quite a tune
Speaker 1: to what people do for a living on television shows
Speaker 1: and how often that they do it during shows, and
Speaker 1: it's actually more than you would think. For example, I'm
Speaker 1: watching rewatching Gilmore Girls to get ready for the new
Speaker 1: Netflix Gilmore Girls, and Laura, I'm one of the main characters,
Speaker 1: works in an inn, right, She's often in the inn
Speaker 1: taking calls, like organizing things. She works. She works. No
Speaker 1: that her job makes up a considerable portion of that show,
Speaker 1: and I think that was rare at the time. I
Speaker 1: think it's gotten more common now. Anyway, what's yours? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make a recommendation which is semi work related.
Speaker 1: This is a little bit of a reach, but what
Speaker 1: the hell? Okay, So my exactly, exactly, my half baked
Speaker 1: take is a television recommendation something I really enjoy doing.
Speaker 1: Um it is about a workplace, just probably one that
Speaker 1: none of us have ever seen the inner workings of.
Speaker 1: And that show is The Crown, which is currently available
Speaker 1: for streaming on Netflix, and it is a fictionalized but
Speaker 1: semi historically accurate portrayal of Queen Elizabeth the Second And
Speaker 1: it starts when she was just a princess and you
Speaker 1: follow her all the way through, and so there's lots
Speaker 1: of stories being told. There are big political things happening,
Speaker 1: there are personal relationships, but you also just get a
Speaker 1: sense of how Buckingham Palace like functions, and how the
Speaker 1: office of the Queen functions and who are all of
Speaker 1: these different people. So it's a pretty extraordinary look inside
Speaker 1: something that you know, I knew nothing about. I was
Speaker 1: gonna make some joke about like being a queen not
Speaker 1: being a real job, but real question, the staff of
Speaker 1: Buckingham Palace, that's a job, right, those are fine for that, oh,
Speaker 1: I mean and like some people who have those jobs
Speaker 1: are like very high in the social stratosphere of England.
Speaker 1: So it's it's not, you know, it's like it's a
Speaker 1: fancy job. It's not even like you would have to
Speaker 1: be have gone to university. You would have had being
Speaker 1: a janitor at Buckingham Palace. You also have to have
Speaker 1: gone to Oxford, is what I'm I'm hearing. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go with that. I'm gonna say that's totally true. Becca, Okay,
Speaker 1: I should watch The Crown. You should watch The Crown.
Speaker 1: It is a really great show. Clarifoy as Elizabeth is
Speaker 1: a wonder. It's really quite amazing and this has been
Speaker 1: half baked takes, half baked takes. Well, this has been
Speaker 1: a really fun show, a departure from our usual fair.
Speaker 1: I hope that you all had fun. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to Game Plan. I'm Sam Grobart. If you want to
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter, look me up at Sam Grobart
Speaker 1: and I'm Rebecca Greenfield. You can find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at rs Greenfield. And if you like what you're hearing,
Speaker 1: please rate and review our podcast on iTunes. This show
Speaker 1: has been produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Henrickson. The
Speaker 1: Head of podcast is Alec McCabe. Happy Thanksgiving, See you
Speaker 1: next week. Get the most from your people and send
Speaker 1: your business soaring with corn Ferry. From executive search to
Speaker 1: talent strategy, leadership development, rewards and succession planning. Corn Ferry
Speaker 1: knows up is more than a direction, It's your future.
Speaker 1: Learn more at corn ferry dot com. Slash Up Busie
Speaker 1: on our show, Busie on our show, Game Plan, Game
Speaker 1: Plan Big on our show. I'm Sam. I'm Sam. I'm
Speaker 1: Sam Grobar. This seeg on our show this week on
Speaker 1: our show game Plan, game Plan. This seeg on our
Speaker 1: show this week on our show, I'm Rebecca Greenfield, about
Speaker 1: all we want to do. Yeah,