Dilbert's a weasel and so are you

The dot-com bubble was tough for cartoonist Scott Adams. But now that things suck again, it's boom time once more for disillusioned cubicle droids.

By Katharine Mieszkowski

Oct 21, 2002 | Quit your smug snickering at those handcuffed executives striving to look manly as they're squished into the back seats of unmarked FBI cars.

We're all a bunch of weasels, says cartoonist Scott Adams in his new book "Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel." Those corporate bad boys like Enron CFO Andrew Fastow are just the top of the weasel pyramid, having perfected the slippery backstabbing that all of us exhibit in our smaller-scale, sniveling, pathetic ways.

Adams built a one-man diversified media empire on his pudgy geek Dilbert, extending his brand as far as a line of health-food burritos, by deploying cutting variations on the theme "bosses are idiots."

But in his newest "Dilbert" book, he expands his thesis to include, as he puts it, "not just management but, dare I say, humanity." Splicing cartoons and e-mails from disgruntled readers in with his own musings, Adams takes aim at everyone from people over 40 to nature lovers, men and women in relationships and, yes, co-workers, like those "techno-weasels" who relish telling their clueless bosses that whatever they want "can't be done," before suggesting that yet another meeting be convened to discuss "setting priorities."

In a way, this is Adams is at his ur-geekiest, displaying the true geek's self-confidence (read: arrogance) that, having mastered one arena -- the workplace -- with his Spock-logical mind, he can deploy his superior brainpower to explain the foibles of the entire human race. His saving grace: He makes fun of his own overreaching. But his humor is still most spot-on when he stays back in the cubicles.

In the boom years, when spending more time with your co-workers than your family was considered a point of pride, not a sign of lifestyle psychosis, "Dilbert" spoofed the work culture that seemed to gobble up ever more hours. And, during that dot-com bubble, when geeks were chic, Dilbert was our iconic geek anti-hero.

But is laughing at workplace inanities still fun in 2002, when slack-jawed, bleary-eyed office workers, now doing the jobs of three people without the hope of a raise, are just happy that they have a cubicle to go to at all?

In a phone interview, Scott Adams told Salon why executives in handcuffs and still more layoffs in the headlines means times are good for "Dilbert."

Is it harder or easier to make fun of the workplace in a down market when people are clinging to whatever jobs they have?

It's much easier for me. My job is a little like an undertaker's if there's a big bus crash. It's bad for society; it's bad for the people on the bus.

Bad news in the economy kind of turns people toward "Dilbert." They like an outlet. My hardest times were during the dot-com bubble.

Why?

I couldn't get anyone to complain. And people would write to me and say, "I think that you're being too cynical."

Really, they were like: "Work? We're all becoming millionaires!"

Yeah. "All we do is show up and we're millionaires. What's not to like?"

Next Page: When things are bad, it's good for "Dilbert"

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