Lessons Learned From Dilbert

For the past who-knows-how-many years, I have given my father Dilbert themed gifts at every holiday for him keep at his desk. Whenever I went to buy one of these calendars or books, I would read a page or two, trying to understand what he thought it was so funny about a comic strip that sounded exactly like his stories about work. (I never understood his stories about work, let alone thought they were funny, but my mom would just tell me to shut up and buy it for him.)

*For those of you who do not know who Dilbert is, he is a comic book character created by Adam Scott based on a typical white-collar corporate engineer working in an environment full of corporate jargon and meaningless meetings with other ridiculously stale and corporate people. It basically a satires technology, workplace, and other company issues.*

Moving on...

After beginning work in the corporate arena myself, I went back and read some of the comic strips my dad kept after his retirement and was soon rolling on the ground laughing. I thought it was hysterical probably because now I understood the key reason why my dad thought it was funny...because it's so closely related to the real topics of communication and management people must deal with everyday at work--almost scary close. And sometimes, it's just easier to laugh at it then to beat yourself into submission over it.

Well, while the comic is funny, it does teach some good lessons on at least NOT how to act in the workplace, and that I can find informational as well as useful in winding down from a nearly 11 hour work day.

So, watch this movie and enjoy the fact that at least for the next 12 hours you don't have to deal with this.