When there’s nothing much to smile about, at work, I turn to:
A creation of Scott Adams, the history of Dilbert could serve as a sort of inspiration to cubicle inhabitants everywhere. Essentially, Dilbert was created by Scott when he himself was a cubicle-ite, and was an amalgamation of his co-workers. He used Dilbert for his work presentations then was encouraged by the response to try Dilbert for syndication. United Media signed him up and in 1989, Dilbert was launched. Scott still held his day job until 1995, and his work experience (he worked from 1979 to 1995), I believe, is what makes Dilbert and his experiences immediately recognisable to office workers all around the world. So who says all that nastiness you endure at work can’t translate to money, huh?
Dilbert now appears in 2,000 newspapers in 70 countries, and the Dilbert web site, which is fantastic by the way, was the first syndicated comic strip to go online in 1995.
Our Star carries Dilbert in its tech section on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but in black and white. A pity.
At any rate, while you laugh at Dilbert and co (and many times thank the Lord that you do not have a Boss like his), some of his characters and stories will eerily remind you of real life. There is truth in art. And actually, this Dilbert comic strip below is based on a true story:
This guy got fired for posting a Dilbert strip that described managers as “drunken lemurs”; Scott Adams knew about it and created a series of strips around the incident (as above). Not only that, Scott also posted the guy’s resume on his blog, and voila – the guy has now found a new position with one of Adams’s fans. The article quotes Adams as giving this advice though:
“Stick with ‘Garfield.’ No one ever got fired for loving lasagna.”
Heh. I shall continue loving my Daily Dilbert.
Filed under: Collectibles, Playing Favourites, Reads, Work & Productivity , humour, office humour, work
The first strip got me ROFL-ing. Hehe, nice to get a slice of humour on a busy workday. Hope you’re doing well, dear.
Hey Kenny, I’m off work today and stealing time from the kids to exercise my long-atrophied blogging muscles! The Dilbert website is incredible and wonderfully “sticky”. As for me – apart from feeling severely disillusioned and disenchanted – well, I soldier on, and focus on the good things (and good people) that are still around. There’s still a lot to be thankful for.
I used to work for a company which had for its HR manager a lady I swear is Catbert’s doppelganger! She looked so much like him we started calling her “Catbert” behind her back. She wasn’t as evil as Catbert though but at times it did seem that she was getting there…
Love Dilbert. Dogbert is my fave. Regarding Garfield however, I used to have a boss that we called ‘Odie’ for being hyper and a little too eager to please the other bosses. Wasn’t the brainiest guy on the planet. At least he wasn’t PHB.
Ted: LoL…I am sure there are no Catberts where you are right now..:-)
Kalioppe: At least Odie wasn’t malicious!
hehe … yeah, I love Dilbert but stopped my Daily Dilbert Subscription recently as I feared that it was turning me to a negative worker. But, now reading your post made me realize that I miss it
.. time to renew back and get my daily dose 
Thanks
ps/ even if work sucks right now, keep your head up, a silver lining is around the horizon okay !
Love Dilbert’s oddball humor!
Now that Dilbert is subscribed on my FB page, it’s no excuse to miss it!
Cool – Dilbert making you negative? Nahhh…:-) humorous exaggerations are always good anyway!
Theta: Yes, though some of his characters and situations do sometimes strike a chord…is that scary or what?