When Life Imitates The Comics

Most people have read a Dilbert strip at some point. But you can tell people who have never worked in a company of any size -- when they read Dilbert, they might chuckle, or smile, or generally have a minor reaction. To these people -- Dilbert is funny, but they think it's highly exaggerated . . . not real enough to be truly hilarious.

Those who have worked in any medium-large sized company for any length of time know better. As My girl lissa said the other night, "Dilbert is dead-fucking-on."

In many ways Dilbert is not only a reflection of the office workplace but a predictor. Catbert, the evil HR Director, who at one time seemed like a parody of a villain, is now shown to be pretty much standard issue. The willfully stupid things the company and the boss do in Dilbert can be read right off the headlines now.

And I've noticed over the past few years, especially, that employees now are much more likely to show their Dilbert-like awareness of the reality than they ever were before. We office drones who used to toil in silent acceptance of the essential stupidity and meaningless of the office experience now are much more likely to act like we know what we know -- and why not? The worst that can happen -- losing one's job -- is more than likely to happen anyway. If we are not laid off or moved to Topeka or outsourced to Bangladesh or downsized or right-sized, we might hang on for a while . . . or not. After a while the knowledge that there are lots of younger/cheaper/stupider/more naive people they can get for My job loses its power.

So Dilbert is not just a diversion, not just a refreshing bit of humor from a guy who gets it. If you think of it the right way, it's a very subtle reaffirmation of the human spirit. And while our employers have managed to mostly eradicate that spirit from the workplace (and get very big bonuses for doing so, apparently), it's not totally gone.

It's important to remember that. And to laugh. And to adopt the tag line from the strip above as My personal motto:

"I'm tempted to stop acting randomly."

Tempted, mind you.