Peter clearly had a lot of sway over The Bobs, when he heard they'd be firing Samir and Michael, just say "I need those two working directly under me" or something.
The obvious answer is because if he did there would be no movie.
Still one of my favorites; highly rewatchable and quotable.
Yep.
Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, and / or doesn't.
I think he hated Innetek, regardless of position. After his "awakening", he seemed to have set his course where leaving the company would be inevitable.
shareThat's a good point.
It's still a paradox, because he hated the corporate environment, but his work buddies (not sure if one could call those 'friends') were too scared to not want to work in there. He could still have done it.
His new position would probably have come with perks, like being able to take long vacations and days off, so he could've made that work somehow, a sort of compromise. So those guys would have had a job, and he would still be able to 'do nothing' at least sometimes. He could also have saved a lot of money and retired early (his position would've given him more money)..
Thinking about this a bit further ..
First of all, Peter never WANTED a promotion, it was never his goal. He didn't want 'more money', he wanted to 'do nothing'. When he realized his buddies' jobs are gone, it WOKE HIM UP.
In this 'woken up'-state, he started thinking about things more deeply, and with his newfound confidence he would be able to DO something about it. As he philoosophizes in the bar, while all Michael can do is curse his lost job and how he árse-kissed the layoff people, 'human beings were not meant to live like this'.
This means, no matter how much money he gets or what position he ends up in, he won't be happy, if he has to just come to the building and work at that corporation.
He needs a big change in his life, and he wants to have it while helping his friends. In his new viewpoint, it would not BE helping his friends by letting them waste their lives by stagnating in a cubicle with an infuriating printer aggravating them every day. It's NO WAY TO LIVE!
He doesn't want to be a 'manager with more money' while his friends suffer, and life goes on that way indefinitely.
He wants CHANGE, he wants to return to a more natural lifestyle, and at that point, he's BEYOND just 'making sure Michael and Samir can keep their jobs' (that suck to begin with), he wants to bring them to a more elevated position in life, and in his mind, that 'non-crime-crime' is the only solution he sees for this problem - to RETIRE EVERYONE would be the only good solution.
That way, everyone could do whatever they wanted, ahh.
By the way, when Joanie (or whatever her character's name is) asks Peter 'How is that not stealing', I could've counter-asked, 'how _IS_ it stealing, when those fractions would've been rounded off anyway'? I mean, the corporation doesn't lose even one dime, because it wouldn't have HAD that 'dime' in the first place, it would've been ROUNDED OFF.
(I am sure it doesn't work like this in real life anyway, though)
I could've also explained "How is that not stealing".
First, STEALING is bad and immoral, unethical, unlawful and wrong, BECAUSE it deprives. It deprives the owner of the thing they own. If I have a Commodo 64, and you sneak into my house while I am sleeping and take that Commodore 64, when I wake up, I DO NOT HAVE IT.
I have been deprived of a valuable possession, now I can't make music with it or play old classics. I am hurt, because I LOST something I used to own.
That is why stealing is bad.
However, when you just COPY something (which is insanely called 'pirating', which ACTUALLY was cutthroating, bloody murder and ritualistic skull&bones-crap - yes, that's where it came from, look at 'Jolly Roger' - it's completely ludicrous to even compare harmless manipulation of your hard drive's ones and zeroes to any of that!), or when you 'round off' something the original 'owner' (which isn't even a human being, but a feelingless, soulless corporation) would NOT have owned in the first place, OR would still continue owning without even knowing about your actions..
..then HOW is that stealing, or even immoral?
If you have a beautiful car, let's say Edsel, and I secretly COPY the car, and due to some futuristic tech, can quickly make an exact replica of it (let's say out of the energy in the air or something - just rearranging molecules and such), I haven't DEPRIVED you of anything, have I? The only logic to why it is 'financially harmful' (and even that is highly debatable), would be that now there's one POTENTIAL buyer less if you want to sell that car, because I don't need to buy it because I copied it.
So basically 'free abundance' is labeled 'pirating', because some super wealthy and rich cutthroat corporations can't make EVEN MORE money out of that something.
Copying files freely regardless of some 'copyright' crap, would be a big BLESSING for the masses, for the people, for the individuals, for the human beings of the planet.
But because EVERYTHING has to be tied to money and measured in (usually virtual) coins, suddenly even these blessings are a curse to huge international corporations that want to bleed people dry, so it's "immoral" somehow.
When you look at the crimes against humanity corporations have done all throughout their history, it's a miracle that ANYONE thinks anything done to lessen their power and profit (and remember, it's debatable, because it can't be directly proven anyway, as it has to do with 'intentions' more than anything measurable - do you intend to buy something if you can get a copy of it for free, etc..) is somehow immoral or bad.
These corporations keep kids doing wage slave jobs in sweatshops, and then claim it's somehow wrong that some 10-year old kid copied a bad quality version of some movie made in the eighties.
It's like.. I can't understand these attitudes.
In any case, the 'copying the otherwise rounded-off fractions' is TECHNICALLY stealing, but in real terms, it's like stealing TRASH that would've been thrown away anyway. It's NOT something anyone would miss, because they wouldn't GET it anyway. The corporation wouldn't get those rounded-off fractions, so they wouldn't LOSE any money, they wouldn't get LESS money than otherwise, they wouldn't get less money than usual, their business wouldn't be affected, etc. etc. etc.
So while very very techically, it WOULD be 'stealing', it would NOT have the usual effect of stealing, which is what makes stealing bad - DEPRIVING someone of something they would otherwise have and own.
In filecopying and this fraction-copying, the same thing applies; although you can claim copyrights and such, and you can claim it's stealing (only the latter actually is), it's a 'harmless, victimless crime', where no one is DEPRIVED of anything.
Therefore, _IS_ it really stealing? I don't think it is.