A.V. Club's guide to Office Space filming locations

Now you could set the building on fire

Sorry, gangstas, but this field no longer exists.

by Erik Adams and Sean O'Neal February 6, 2009

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Whenever alien scholars dig through our radiation-scarred ruins looking for clues to the downfall of the human race, the Rosetta Stone just might be Office Space, Mike Judge's hurts-so-good satire of our collective workaday misery. But those of us who live in Austin don't have to wait for the apocalypse: Despite being set in Dallas, much of Office Space was shot right here in town, using locales that most of us drive past every morning on our way to filing our own versions of a TPS report. In anticipation of this Sunday's celebration of the film’s 10th anniversary at the Paramount, Decider visited some of the real-life Austin counterparts to the places that gave Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) a permanent case of "The Mondays," bringing along the patented Decider Soul-Crushometer to determine—on a scale of 1 to 10—just how quickly each location could reduce a normal person to a mumbling, perspiring, red-stapler-fondling mess.

Erik Adams

Initech
Location: 4120 Friedrich Lane #175
In "reel" life: The home of Initech, just one of America's many undistinguished cubicle farms where people with too much education but not enough ambition paper-shuffle their way toward the sweet release of death.
In real life: Any 9-to-5 schmoe can say, “My workplace is just like Office Space,” but the employees at Supportkids can actually back that claim up: The South Austin child-support-collection enforcer makes its home in the same bland building, which is probably just another reason for them to dread going to work in the morning.
Soul-Crushometer Reading: 9. Dealing with deadbeat dads while working within the confines of filmdom's most famous model of corporate drudgery? No amount of occupational hypnotherapy is gonna cure that.

Erik Adams

The ditch
Location: 4120 Friedrich Lane
In “reel” life: The drainage ditch that Tom Smykowski (Richard Riehle) can’t conquer because he’s too concerned with layoffs and following in the footsteps of the Pet Rock guy.
In real life: The drainage ditch that keeps the Southpark Office Complex parking lot nice and dry.
Soul-Crushometer Reading: 10. What’s more depressing than a ditch? It’s probably a Abbey Road-level photo op for office drones, though.

Chotchkies (exterior)
Location: 9739 Great Hills Trail
In “reel” life: The brick-and-mortar façade for Jennifer Aniston’s personal flair-and-Extreme Fajitas hell.
In real life: The Arboretum branch of JPMorgan Chase Bank.
Soul-Crushometer Reading: 5. Though we'd up it to 7 for all those former WaMu customers who’ve come to the very real, not-so-funny realization that their life savings are just so many numbers being passed between massive corporations.

Mari Hernandez

Chotchkies (Interior)
Location: 3003 South Lamar Blvd.
In “reel” life: Livingston’s chain restaurant refuge, where there’s a bunch of crazy crap all over the walls and the waitstaff.
In real life: The Alligator Grill (An alligator with a grill? Now we’ve seen everything!), a New Orleans-style South Austin institution.
Soul-Crushometer Reading: 3, thanks to happy-hour specials like 20-cents shrimp and 50-cents oysters and wings. As Peter's neighbor Lawrence (Diedrich Bader) might say: "Fuckin’ A, man."

Rush hour traffic jam
Location: Braker Lane, between Domain Dr. and Burnet Rd.
In “reel” life: A sea of cars where an old man with a walker moves faster than Peter’s vehicle, a flower-peddling homeless guy makes Michael Bolton (David Herman) reconsider how loudly he raps along with Scarface, and Samir (Ajay Naidu) coins the immortal exclamation, “Mother shitter son of an ass!”
In real life: The intersection of academia (UT’s JJ Pickle Research Campus) and excess (the upscale shops and residences of The Domain) in North Austin, where the prices at Nordstrom and Neiman-Marcus probably elicit shouts of “Mother shitter son of an ass!” on a daily basis.
Soul-Crushometer Reading: 8. The buildings of the Pickle Campus and The Domain loom over the poor motorists stuck on Braker, acting as reminders of knowledge and wealth they’ll never achieve.

Erik Adams

Peter’s apartment complex
Location: 11511 Metric Blvd.
In “reel” life: Morningwood Apartments (huh huh), housing for the perpetually coasting, lined with walls so thin you don’t have to leave the couch to tell your neighbor that the breast exam commercial is on again.
In real life: The Trails Of Walnut Creek Apartments, described by one anonymous apartmentratings.com user as "Decent, safe, convenient, not too bad." Gee, where do we sign?
Soul-Crushometer Reading: 4. Beats being locked away in basement storage, at least.