Adminisphere
Usually in a work setting that isn't an office, right at the coalface of an industry or profession, there will be an Administration department, a world away from the hardships of the "Real Work". As a result, people who work in Admin will be out of touch with the workers and their problems. May or may not be expensively decorated while the "real" departments have to scrape by with what little cash they have.
Needless to say, Truth in Television.
Examples of Adminisphere include:
Film
- Brassed Off: Compare the literal coalface where the band work to Gloria's building.
Literature
- Quite Ugly One Morning is also a good example, considering the trope name is derived from medical slang.
- In the novel Mindfogger, the protagonist worked in a factory that made automotive type batteries. While the "factory floor" was hot and noisy, the "front office" was quite nice and air conditioned. The "factory floor" was pretty much male and the "front office" had female lower end staff and male bosses (early 1970's USA). The "front office" also had a number of young high school and college girls who were daughters of the managers working there for the summer.
Live Action TV
- In The IT Crowd, the protagonists work in a dingy, cluttered basement underneath one of the tallest and most stately skyscrapers in London, and go unappreciated by the vast majority of the staff.
- The Wire is the titular example of this. Not to mention the in-office minigolf...
Video Games
- In Dwarf Fortress the Dwarven Nobility tend to operate like this. Once installed in the luscious and expensive rooms that they demand to have, they will ocassionally make other demands, such as "build 2 metal chairs" or "I want a glass window in my room". They will make demands even if the fort lacks the necessary resources to fulfill these demands, such as sand for making glass or coal for smelting metal. They can also order the guards to dispense justice should their demands be ignored. However, they will often order justice to be delivered upon dwarves who could not possibly do anything wrong, simply because it was not their job.
- Of course, players are free to collapse their rooms over lava pits or bottomless chasms, put caged monsters in their rooms with a release-lever for them to pull, and generally treat them as worse than dirt should they so wish.
Real Life
- A dramatic Real Life example was the First World War. Soldiers were being blown to pieces in trenches while the Generals lazed around planning battles in the French Chateaux, making this trope Older Than Television. Best exemplified in fiction by Blackadder Goes Forth.
- And Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory.