Bad Employee

EXTRACT-Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck, Gene Simmons





SEE.



Let's take a minute to honor the American worker. Why, you ask? Isn't this a movie about a guy so disillusioned by his passionless marriage that he falls for a beautiful grifter with designs on bankrupting his company?! Yeah, yeah. Sure. That may be the story the trailer tried to sell you, but, in reality, this movie is a story about how the entitled American worker is making him/herself an endangered species. In this historic time of global economic difficult, the one universal truth that we can all count on is you'd better be good at your job. And being good at your job doesn't mean you'll get to keep it.

I mean unemployment isn't way up just because machines can do your job. Let's study the employees of the Reynolds Extract, and see what we American workers are doing wrong. First, we have Step, clearly he believes he is king of the company even though his only claim superiority is the rather dubious title "fastest sorter." Step represents the co-worker we all love to hate (unless we are, in fact, that coworker). He's the guy who can tell you best how to do your job even though he never seems to be doing his. Speaking of not working, we have Rory, a barely competent goth type who, when not destroying the product at his workplace, is plying his coworkers with flyers for his band's "concert." Let's not neglect management, we have to include Brian, the number 2 guy in the company who can't be bothered to learn any of the employees' names although he has a razor sharp memory for their faults. Finally there's Mary, a racist, know-it-all who delights in watching others fail as a means of proving how invaluable she is as a worker (how wrong she is.)


Why do we care about these people? We don't. Joel (Jason Bateman) wants nothing more than to leave this company he created behind and why? Because these people, his employees, are slack, over-entitled, incompetent meat puppets who have taken for granted the gift of earning a paycheck. Yet somehow, in the end (SPOILER ALERT), he comes to realizes that being the patriarch of this dysfunctional family is the best thing that's ever happened to him. No, I don't get it either. Please point me in the direction of the company that survives with that financial model. I need a new line of work.


EAT.

Make your own extract. Build your own company. And for cryin' out loud, please hire decent labor. Visit www.cooks.com and enter "make your own extract." Please don't make anything freaky.


SHOP.


Ambulance chasers. Sorry, once you've seen Gene Simmons play a low-life attorney, you're gonna want to get one of your own. Ball breaker, that one. Literally. Good news, there's an app for that. Visit www.sueeasy.com. May the best chaser win.