Office work is funny business

The protagonist is played by Da Peng, and the human resources staffer is portrayed by Bai Ke. Both actually experienced the daily hustle of commuting on congested subways and clocking in at the office before transitioning to become actors. This real-life experience made their performances authentic, in turn, helping the movie receive a lot of word-of-mouth praise from online users and hence accumulate a rating of 8.2 out of 10 on the popular review aggregator, Douban.

Director Dong Runnian, who is also Ying's husband and co-wrote the script with her, drew the initial inspiration for the movie from a reunion dinner with former university classmates in 2017.

Some of them were then working at internet companies and complained about workplace problems, ranging from nasty bosses to office bureaucracy and excessive yet ineffective overtime.

Dong, a native of Tianjin, a city that's known for its prolific production of cross-talk — a traditional genre featuring comedic dialogues between two performers — graduated from the Communication University of China after earning his bachelor's degree in the directing department and pursuing a master's in cinema. With a natural sense of humor, and already an established scriptwriter famous for blockbusters like Breakup Buddies and Mr. Six, Dong quickly seized the humorous and satirical elements in the anecdotes.