Bill Lumbergh

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William Lumbergh
'Office Space' character
Cause/reason	Immolation (Arson)
Created by	Mike Judge
Portrayed by	Gary Cole
Information
Nickname(s)	Bill Lumbergh
Gender	Male
Occupation	Vice President, Initech
Nationality	American
IMDb profile

William Lumbergh, commonly named Bill Lumbergh, or referred to as just Lumbergh, is a fictional character played by Gary Cole in the 1999 film Office Space. A sort of everyboss, Lumbergh is the division Vice President of the software company Initech, and serves as an unassuming antagonist to the other characters.

Lumbergh is known to micromanage and often asks his employees, such as Peter Gibbons, to come in to work on Saturdays. He is obsessed with making sure all the office's paperwork (such as TPS reports) is done perfectly, no matter how pointless it may be. His character is known for saying "What's happening?" as a greeting, and when telling an employee they're going to have to do something undesirable starting his sentences with, "m' yeah, I'm gonna need you to" or "if you could just go ahead and", as well as ending these requests with "That'd be great". A Wharton Journal perspectives article opines that the character "brilliantly exposed the emptiness of linguistic conventions at work."^[1]

He seems to represent the impersonal and oppressive business practices that Peter despises so much. Peter refers to Bill as "all that is soulless and wrong." The irony of the character's popularity is noted in GQ/Details Men. Style.com, "[T]he guy who stops by your desk and says, "Mmm, yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Sunday," is now an integral part of the soul-crushing corporate culture Lumbergh was created to satirize in the first place."^[2]

He has a habit of ending nearly every sentence with "M'Kay?" instead of "Okay" which is a speech pattern matched by the character David Van Driessen in Mike Judge's animated series, Beavis and Butthead, and also Mr. Mackey in South Park. Lumbergh's character in the original Milton cartoons is almost identical to Van Driessen.

One interesting component of his style of communication is that he rarely pays attention to the person with whom he's speaking. In one example, Peter repeatedly says that he did get the memo, but Lumbergh finishes the "conversation" with "and I'll make sure you get another copy of the memo." In the midst of Peter trying one more time to assure Lumbergh that he has the memo, Lumbergh is already walking away, saying "thanks a bunch, Peter." Lumbergh assumes a position that there's nothing he needs to hear from his underlings, communicating for him is simply for the purpose of reinforcing the company position, and he is but a representative of the company position.

In another situation, when advising Peter that he needs to come in on the weekend, Peter never actually even says a word, whether he can, or has other plans, or whether he's willing to come in. But Lumbergh isn't "asking" him, nor is Lumbergh interested in the possibility that Peter might choose to say no. Again, Lumbergh walks away, assuming (naturally) that the message is clear and Peter will be showing up as directed.

He drives a Porsche 911 with a vanity license plate reading "MY PRSHE".

According to his information sheet when viewed by Bob Slydell, Lumbergh has BS and MS degrees in physics from MIT.

Lumbergh's marital status is never mentioned in the movie. However, the Emergency Contact in his Employee Personal File lists his brother Harry Lumbergh, who lives in Medina, TX, so it is implied that he is single.

[edit] External links

• Bill Lumbergh at the Internet Movie Database
• Best Bosses from Hell discussing Lumbergh, from NPR's Talk of the Nation (July 27, 2006)

[edit] References