The passive-aggressive war that Doug and Richard wage against each other, too, will seem hilarious to anyone who has ever competed with a co-worker, or even been passed over for a deserved position. There may be no more ruthless arena than the battlefield of the workplace.

But when The Promotion delves into the motivations behind Doug and Richard's yearning for the manager's spot, Conrad sets the frivolous humor aside and depicts a very realistic portrayal of working-class families struggling to make ends meet and men who pride themselves on their traditional roles as providers but are quietly ashamed at their inability to fulfill their part.

In one scene, Doug's girlfriend (Jenna Fischer) tries to ease his financial angst by offering to take on a night job, which he interprets as a failure of his masculinity. ''Female lions do the hunting,'' she says as a way of making him feel better. ''I'm not a lion,'' he replies. ``I'm a guy.''

The themes of self-disappointment and identity crisis were also prevalent in The Weather Man, but Conrad says that film's failure taught him a lesson as to how far he can push the audience and still keep it laughing.

''The lighter tone of The Promotion was definitely a conscious reaction to The Weather Man,'' he says. ``That is not to say I wasn't satisfied with that movie: I was, absolutely. But I think that movie compounded some harsh observations about how hard personal happiness is to come by and how unlikely it may be for most of us with the dead of winter, which is already somewhat of a downer.

``We also had a character die in that film. We treated it pretty briefly, but I think those three things together were too much. So in The Promotion, I wanted to deal with private dissatisfaction in a sunnier environment, because feeling blue or uncertain about your future is not relegated to winter. I feel that way spring, summer, winter and fall.''

Since so much of The Promotion takes place at one location, the film's budget was low enough ($6 million) for Conrad to persuade producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein to give him his shot at directing. ''Those guys scrutinized the movie like crazy,'' Conrad says. ``They watched the rushes every day. I think [Bob] knew he could fire me if he didn't like what was going on.''

But despite the Weinsteins' reputation for sometimes being too hands-on, Conrad says the brothers let him do his thing.

''The only thing Bob asked me to stress in the script was that these are guys who are trying to do their job well,'' Conrad says. ``He had a personal beef with most workplace comedies in which the characters do their jobs ironically or half-assed. That doesn't square with the way Bob sees the world. He thinks most people get up in the morning and work like hell in order to get ahead. And if you take the time off from your job to mess around, you're going to get passed up in America. That's what this movie is ultimately about, really.''

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