Words You Don't Want to Hear During Your Annual Performance Review: A Dilbert Book

What would the world of work be like without Dilbert? Downright insufferable!

When it became syndicated in 1989, Dilbert struck a nerve with workers everywhere. Through its frames they saw life on the job as they knew it, with all the absurdity, craziness, and dry humor that underlies any living, breathing organization. The fact that the strip focused on a hapless engineer and his cynical dog just made it all the more funny.

Now work life seems downright unimaginable without Dilbert and Dogbert's take on everything from management ill-practices to nonperformance reviews. What Would Wally Do?, delivers that same combination of pain and humor that readers count on. This collection especially highlights Wally, Dilbert's colleague, fellow engineer, foil, and fool.

Wally's that short quirky guy with little hair, plenty of horn-rimmed frames, and almost zero work ethic. After all, who's got time for a job, thinks the self-proclaimed "Lord Wally the Puppet Master," when you're busy surviving the "Mobility Pool," turning your cubicle into a tourist attraction called "Sticky-Note City," and selecting a mail-order bride from Elbonia? Weasel-Boy makes a point of highlighting his poor performance and lack of respect . . .and usually gets another raise for his efforts. Such is life in Dilbert and Wally's world. Such are the laughs in What Would Wally Do? 

He's the icon of millions of corporate workers, the most popular cubicle dweller on this planet. He spends his days in endless meetings with incompetent supervisors, performing perfunctory tasks mixed with the occasional team-building, brainstorming, or management fad-of-the-day session. He has entertained us for more than two decades: He's Dilbert.

Created in 1989 by Adams, in his own cubicle as a doodle distraction, Dilbert has found a home in the workplace, this generation's home away from home. Adams amuses readers with his portrayal of the absurdities of this environment with unfailing accuracy and precision. As readers of more than 2,000 newspapers, millions of books, and the newly revamped Dilbert.com site know, the familiar mouthless character with the upturned tie, his dog, Dogbert, the pointy-haired Boss, over-achieving Alice and underachieving Wally, Human Resources director Catbert, depict a world that's all too easy to recognize, complete with shrinking cubicles, clueless co-workers, focus groups and ill-conceived management concepts.

In this all-new chronological collection, Adams further exploits the fodder of workaday life, making even the most cynical cubicle dweller laugh at our shared, absurd work lives.

Scott Adams still has the corporate world guffawing about the adventures of nerdy Dilbert and his power-hungry companion, Dogbert, plus Ratbert and the pointy-haired boss, as they make their way through the travails of modern work life. Only a cartoonist with been-there-endured-that experience could make us laugh so hard. When Did Ignorance Become a Point of View? captures it all, even those Sunday strips that make it into the office each Monday morning. 

Office workers, cubicle squatters, and corporate drones everywhere read Dilbert in their morning papers and see their own bosses and coworkers in the frames of the strip, enacting on newsprint the weird rituals and bizarre activities that are conducted each day in the American workplace. The characters' names and hairstyles have been changed to protect their identities, but Dilbert's readers aren't fooled. After all, they spend every day with these idiots and lunatics.

Jargon-spewing corporate zombies. The sociopath who checks voice mail on his speaker phone. The fascist information systems guy. The sadistic human resources director. The technophobic vice president. The power-mad executive assistant. The pursed-lip sycophant. The big stubborn dumb guy. They're Dilbert's coworkers, and chances are they're yours, too. If you know them, work with them, or dialogue with them about leveraging synergies to maximize shareholder value, then you'll recognize this comic strip as a day at the office, only funnier!

Since 1989 Dilbert has lampooned not only the people but also the accepted conventions and practices of the business world. Office politics, management trends, business travel, personnel policies, corporate bureaucracy, irrational strategies, unfathomable accounting practices, unproductive meetings, dysfunctional organizations, oppressive work spaces, silly protocols, and inscrutable jargon are all targets of Adams's darkly goofy satirical pen. Dilbert strikes a deeply resonant chord with fans because it casts such a dead-on reflection of the realities of the white-collar workplace, even with its off-the-wall delivery.

It's Not Funny If I Have to Explain It, features Adams's personal all-time favorite selections, along with his own handwritten commentary about the strips.