Dilbert is a popular American comic strip. Written
and drawn by Scott Adams, the comic is known for
its heavily satirical humor about a micromanaged
office, featuring an engineer as the title
character. The strip has run in newspapers since
April 16, 1989, spawning several books, an
animated television series, a computer game, and
hundreds of Dilbert-themed merchandise items.



Themes
The comic strip originally revolved around the
engineer Dilbert and his "pet" dog Dogbert, with
most action taking place in their home. Many plots
revolved around Dilbert's engineer nature or his
bizarre inventions. These alternated with plots
based on Dogbert's megalomaniacal ambitions.
Later on, the location of most of the action moved
to Dilbert's workplace at a large technology
company, and the strip started to satirize IT
workplace and company issues. The comic strip's
popular success is attributable to its workplace
setting and themes, which are familiar to a large
and appreciative audience.

Dilbert portrays corporate culture as a Kafkaesque
world of bureaucracy for its own sake and office
politics that stand in the way of productivity,
where employees' skills and efforts are not
rewarded, and busy work praised. Much of the humor
emerges as we see the characters making obviously
ridiculous decisions that are natural reactions to
mismanagement.

Themes explored include:

Engineers' personal traits 
Lack of style 
Hopelessness in dating 
Attraction to tools and technological products 
Esoteric knowledge 
Incompetent and sadistic management 
Scheduling without reference to reality 
Failure to reward success or penalize laziness 
Penalising employees for failures caused by bad
management 
Micromanagement 
Failure to improve others' morale, lowering it a
lot 
Failure to communicate objectives 
Handling of projects doomed to failure or
cancellation 
Sadistic HR policies with flimsy (or purely evil)
rationale 
Corporate bureaucracy 
Stupidity of the general public 
Susceptibility to advertising 
Susceptibility to peer pressure 
Gullibility in the face of obvious scams 
Third world countries and outsourcing
("Elbonia") 
Dilapidation 
Bizarre cultural habits 
Lack of understanding of capitalism 

Characters

Dilbert
Dilbert is the main character in the comic strip.
He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology with an Electrical Engineering diploma
and is an engineer. Although his ideas are
typically sensible and revolutionary, they are
seldom carried out because of his powerlessness.
He is easily frustrated by the incompetence of his
cow-orkers and is often sarcastic and snide. He is
usually single as a result of his poor social
skills.

Dilbert usually has no visible mouth or eyes, and
in all but the early strips his tie usually curves
upward. While Adams has offered no definitive
explanation for this, he has explained the tie at
least as a further example of Dilbert's lack of
power over his environment. A second explanation
given by Adams in the Dilbert FAQ is that he is
just glad to see you. Adams has also hinted that
the tie may be displaying an aversion to him. In
more recent strips the mouth has been drawn on
many occasions when Dilbert is eating, surprised,
furious, or nervous, and in the TV series his
mouth is drawn when he is speaking. Many of the
other "-berts" look very much like he does, with
glasses and no mouth (with the exception of
Ratbert).


Dogbert
Although he is Dilbert's pet dog, Dogbert rarely
acts like a pet. He is a megalomaniac and one of
his dreams is to conquer the world and enslave all
humans, and he has achieved this status several
times through methods such as hypnosis and
masquerading. However, he often quickly
relinquishes his post due to boredom, someone
foiling his chance, his conviction that people do
not deserve to have him as leader due to the
ongoing peace that results, or his desire to go
nap on a soft pillow.

Despite this dislike for humans, he is known to
protect and help Dilbert when he falls victim to
sinister motives. For example, he has saved him
from Mr. Tidy, the
robber-disguised-as-a-cleaning-man, by having the
dinosaurs flush Mr. Tidy down the toilet, and
rescued Dilbert from the trolls in accounting
several times.

Dogbert has made many ventures into the business
world, often as a consultant who hypes new trends
to the Pointy-Haired Boss. In these positions, he
typically takes advantage of stupidity and
gullibility. For instance, when hired as a
consultant to create a new company logo, Dogbert
proposed using a piece of paper with a circular
stain from his coffee cup as the Brown Ring of
Quality, and then charged a large consultancy fee.
(The ring may have borne a certain sneaky
similarity to the Lucent logo.)

An alter-ego of Dogbert is Saint Dogbert, the
patron saint of technology, and Dogbert's
religious form. Dogbert created this form as a
method to eliminate the "demons of stupidity," a
group that includes "buzzword-spewers",
"clueless morons" and "people who press an
extra button to do the job" (Ctrl-Alt-F4-Del,
instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del, the soft reboot, for
example). Saint Dogbert wears a miter and carries
a scepter in his left paw. His right paw heals
broken technology, and the scepter exorcises the
"demons of stupidity."

Another alter-ego is Nostradogbert, a parody of
Nostradamus. Here, he is a psychic, albeit an evil
one. For example, he created a chain e-mail curse
that, if read and sent to others, would turn both
the reader and sender into a dog, but if that
letter wasn't read, the person would die (most
people chose the curse over death). His nemesis is
John Stossel.

There was a series of unaired strips Scott Adams
made that involved Dogbert having a rival, Bingo.
But, Adams never aired the strips for he didn't
want it to become a "cartoonist cartoon". To see
the "Origin Strips", click here.

Before the strip was syndicated, Dogbert's name
was "Dildog". Editors noted that any printing
error obliterating the g in that name would wreak
havoc, and the name was changed to Dogbert.

He often walks in the park with Dilbert, generally
stealing the girls Dilbert is trying to attract.


Ratbert
Ratbert (or to his scientist master in the early
scripts, XP-39C²) was not originally intended to
be a regular, instead being part of a series of
strips featuring a lab scientist's cruel
experiments. Ratbert soon realized that he was the
subject of a hideous macaroni and cheese
experiment (the scientist made him eat huge
amounts of it; he writes in his notebook that it
causes paranoia in rats) and escaped, eventually
finding a refuge in Dilbert's house. He was not
initially accepted by the residents, especially
Dilbert, who was highly prejudiced and
closed-minded against rats. However, he finally
allowed Ratbert to become a permanent member of
the household.

As a simple rat, and having been specially bred to
be susceptible to peer pressure, Ratbert is very
gullible and innocent, although optimistic.
Sometimes, his actions can become quite annoying.
Like Dogbert, he has made inroads into business,
once working as an intern, a concierge, a
consultant (with an external brain-pack tied to
his torso) and vice-president of marketing. He
also became CEO after a cause-and-effect series of
strips that involved the previous CEO jumping into
a volcano. He was fired for varnishing employees.

Ratbert's biggest ambition in life is to become
loved and accepted. He tries to impress those he
considers his friends on various occasions, and
nearly always fails miserably. Just like Dogbert
protects Dilbert on numerous occasions despite his
contempt for him, so do Ratbert's friends and
family. Ratbert is also good friends with the
garbage man, who tries—and fails—to enlighten
Ratbert on the complexities of the universe.


Catbert
As with Ratbert, Catbert was not a planned
regular. In this case, he was introduced for a
series involving an attack on Ratbert, who was
acting as an optimist. When the two got home (and
after Bob shows his stupidity by stomping on
Ratbert's head instead of Catbert), Catbert
rebooted Dilbert's computer. Dogbert eventually
forced him to leave.

Readers of Dilbert enjoyed the character so much
that they spontaneously named him "Catbert,"
encouraging Adams to bring him back. He was
reintroduced as the "evil director" of human
resources, and in a parody of typical cat behavior
he "plays" with his "prey", coming up with
sadistic and illogical policies to enforce on the
employees. He often works in tandem with the PHB.

Catbert officially entered the strip in March
1995, when Dogbert hired him to the company to
handle "the downsizing." Indeed, downsizing is
Catbert's greatest joy, and he has numerous
binders on this subject (and one that says, "hire
losers").


Pointy-Haired Boss
The Pointy Haired Boss (often abbreviated to just
"PHB") is notable for his gross incompetence and
unawareness of his surroundings, yet still
retaining power in the workplace. In the Dilbert
TV series, he was notably smarter and more
actively evil.

The PHB's real name is not known, although in one
episode of the TV series he signs for a package
using his line dancing pseudonym, "Eunice".
Adams has said that this is because it is easier
to imagine the PHB as one's own boss when he is
not given a name.

The Pointy Haired Boss is mostly bald, except for
a fringe of hair across the back of the head, and
sideburns that rise up in points. Scott Adams has
admitted that the Boss's odd hair was inspired by
devil horns. He used to have jowls at first
because Scott wanted the character to look gruff,
but the boss ended up looking dumb instead.

In early strips, when he was simply "balding",
the Boss was very cruel and uncaring (shocking
people with electric belts or wanting them to work
178 hours a week, although there are only 168
hours in a week — he expected the employees'
families to contribute a few hours). However, when
the hair reached its current state of outright
pointiness, he became a complete imbecile. The
Boss is childish, immature, ignorant, and rude,
yet also annoyingly cheerful and oblivious to his
own actions.

The boss made his most significant change in
appearance during one month in the fall of 1991.
The last confirmed sighting of the jowly boss was
in the strip dated 1991-09-20, although he may
also have been in the strip of 1991-09-26, seen
from the back. He went unseen for several weeks
during a protracted series about Elbonia, then
reappeared on 1991-10-21, without the jowls and
with the pointed hair.

The Boss' family sometimes makes an appearance in
the strips, and are frequently presented as being
as incompetent as him. In 1998, the Boss's son,
who hid in the attic for four years instead of
attending college, was hired for the company and
made VP of marketing due to his complete lack of
knowledge. Years later, the Boss’s wife was hired
as a receptionist for the company. Both the Boss’s
wife and son share his trademarked hairstyle, as
do many managers in the comic strips. The
Pointy-Haired Boss finds pointy hair as a positive
and attractive feature, and often judges people
based on the pointyness of their hair, such as
when he promoted an employee named Ted because of
a pointy "beard" that was growing on top of his
head, or when he became attracted to Alice because
she styled her hair like his.

The term "pointy-haired boss", or "PHB", has
become a generic term for managers who do not
understand what their employees do for a living,
but try to pretend they do.

Within Dilbert's company the Boss represents
middle management. The corporate CEOs and vice
presidents of the firm are constantly changing and
are usually minor characters without developed
personalities. The strip is seldom particularly
shy about killing members of upper management.

There is an unspoken but subtle running joke in
the Dilbert chronicle. While the boss is
"clueless", it is the boss who has a social life
and family, while the "smart" ones who work for
him have no social skills to speak of, and appear
destined never to reproduce.


Wally
Inspired by a co-worker of Adams at Pacific Bell,
Wally is a lazy employee always trying to work the
system, although he is very capable at his
occupation. In Seven Years of Highly Defective
People, Adams explained that his co-worker at
Pacific Bell wanted to avail of the generous
severance packages being offered by the company
during a period of downsizing, which were actually
better than a potential retirement package; he
thus embarked on a mission to get fired. Adams was
inspired by this co-worker's serious dedication
towards this goal, and the concept of a completely
shameless employee with no sense of loyalty became
Wally.

In the animated series, we discover that Wally was
once a great programmer. He is used later in the
episode to solve the Y2K bug while being
hypnotized.

Due to his obsession with coffee, Wally's idea of
"work" is simply carrying around a cup of the
beverage, of which he drinks hundreds of cups a
day. He also has a notable lack of hygiene. There
is, in fact, a group of people that look like him,
which led to Wally once being arrested for
impersonating a dead man (and, since he gave the
police a fake name, also caused Asok's career to
go down the tube). Wally has no feelings for other
people around him, so to him, it's okay to
irritate people, ask poor Asok for frivolous
things during budget requests, and do things at
work that are forbidden by policy. For example, he
got rid of Dilbert's monitor when company policy
asked the employees to get rid of office equipment
they never used, and once turned his cubicle into
a pool.

Wally enjoys viewing pornographic web sites, as
indicated in a couple of strips. He was married at
least four times but is now single and has no
children (his last attempt at reproduction was at
the cellular level). His personal life is a bit
odd, such as having a veterinarian for a doctor.


Alice
Alice is a hard-working engineer who works with
Dilbert. She has long curly hair, which
transformed into a large and distinctive
triangular hairstyle when the character became a
regular.

Alice is rarely rewarded for her hard work,
although she was for a time the highest paid
engineer in the company. She stands in contrast
with Wally, who does no work and is rewarded
nearly the same. Alice also suffers all the
problems of being a female engineer. She has no
tolerance for the discrimination she experiences.

Alice has a short temper. Her anger is frequently
expressed in physical violence, and she is known
for her "fist of death". In the past she has,
among other things, kicked an Elbonian into his
own hat, stuffed Asok into his shirt sleeve, and
once slapped a man so hard he travelled forwards
in time.

Alice is fractionally more successful in her
social life than fellow employees. She has dated
numerous times. She was almost into a committed
relationship with an emotionally supportive man
but turned him down at the last minute, as it was
more cost advantageous to train monkeys to do
similar work for Alice.

The women in the strip, in general, tend to be
aggressive and sometimes violent, whereas the men
are mostly meek and mild. Some observers might see
this as a modern incarnation of the ancient sitcom
staple of the henpecked husband. However, it may
also be that it is politically safer to let women
do violence. Adams is one of many cartoonists who
admired Charles Schulz. In the Peanuts strip, Lucy
was often violent, either "slugging" Linus or
threatening to. As Schulz once explained, "Girls
hitting boys is funny. Boys hitting girls is not
funny." That same philosophy seems to apply in
"Dilbert".


Asok
Asok (pronounced "Ah-shook") is a brilliant IIT
graduate and an intern in Dilbert's company. The
character is named after a friend and co-worker of
Adams' at Pacific Bell. "Asok" is a common
Indian name, though it is usually spelled
"Ashok". The name is also similar to the name of
an ancient king of India, Ashoka. Asok himself is
Indian, but this is never mentioned in the strip.
Adams says in Seven Years of Highly Defective
People that this is because "I only like
characters who have huge, gaping character flaws.
The world is far too sensitive to let me get away
with a highly flawed minority member."

Asok often solves difficult problems in a few
keystrokes, but he is still naοve to the cruelties
and politics of the business world. As a result,
he often ends up being the scapegoat for his
coworkers' antics. Despite the fact that he has
completed six years as an intern (as of 2005) and
performed the functions of a senior engineer, Asok
has been denied permission to be a regular
employee and the usage of company resources for
his work.

It has been mentioned that Asok once lived in the
handicapped stall; he later moved to a storage
facility (but was only allowed an hour leave by
the Pointy-Haired Boss). Asok is also trained to
sleep only on national holidays, a trait that he
allegedly carried over from his alma mater.


Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light
Phil serves as ruler of heck and punishes people
for minor infractions not worthy of damnation in
hell, such as using copier paper for the printer
or stealing a chair from another cubicle (both of
which Dilbert has done). He also serves as manager
of limbo, which in the strip is a subsidiary of
heck. He is the PHB's younger brother, though
this is rarely mentioned (twice, with a recent
strip involving Phil outsourcing sinners who
partake of carbohydrates to the PHB worker's
cubicles).

Originally, Scott Adams planned to have Satan
become a regular member of the Dilbert cast, but
eventually softened the character after
suggestions by his editor. Instead of a pitchfork,
he carries an enormous spoon, and he has a tail
with a rounded end (although Adams has
"forgotten" about this once or twice). Instead
of damning people to eternal flames he darns them,
as in "I darn you to heck." On occasion, he also
wears a cape (which Adams forgot he wasn't
supposed to have).


Elbonians
The Elbonians are the residents of a fictional
fourth-world country that appears in the comic
strip, named Elbonia. The country is said to be a
newly developing nation which — like the real
country of Albania — has only recently embraced
capitalism. Its neighbour and enemy which it has
threatened with a catapult launched nuclear weapon
is called Kneebonia. Most of the nation is covered
with waist-deep mud. Adams created the country in
order to allow for a "foreign" aspect in Dilbert
without using any specific location, in order to
avoid a backlash by readers who may be from that
region. Dilbert's company often uses Elbonia as a
source of cheap labor and general outsourcing.

Almost all of the Elbonians have beards (even the
women and babies), tall hats, and mittens. Their
technology is very outdated: "phones" are
actually cans attached to the ends of strings and
the means of "air transportation" (Air Elbonia)
is flinging people from a giant slingshot
(something Dilbert hates to do because he loses
his luggage and gets head-deep into mud).
Elbonians are commonly portrayed as idiotic and
backward, yet the PHB seems to approve of
outsourcing programming or documentation tasks to
them. For many years the country has been mired in
a civil war between the left- and right-handed
Elbonians.

Dogbert once became their ruler for a while, but
then he and Dilbert (who acted as his adviser)
fled the palace when they mistook the Elbonians'
coming to them bearing farm tools as an uprising.
It turned out they were calling him to preside
over a farm holiday. In fact, this was the
protracted series during which the "jowly" boss
was replaced by the Pointy Haired Boss.

Some strips reference a "North Elbonia" which is
Communist and appears to be loosely based on North
Korea. North Elbonia was destroyed when they used
a machine manufactured by Dilbert's employer; the
manual had been made by Tina out of anger on how
women in North Elbonia are mistreated (at least
according to Dilbert).

A spinoff comic strip called Plop follows the life
of an Elbonian with no hair, which is a rare
trait.

Elbonia might be either a conscious or
coincidental parallel to one of the venues in Al
Capp's long-running strip Li'l Abner: a nation
called Lower Slobovia (based on Siberia), whose
citizens were perpetually seen in waist deep snow
and ice.


Other characters
The World's Smartest Garbageman — Philosopher and
scientist. Sometimes solves extremely complex
problems for Dilbert. When Mother Nature had three
deer shoot Dilbert, he saved Dilbert's life by
repairing a cloning device Dilbert had thrown out.
In the TV show, it was revealed that he was the
only garbageman in the entire city, and was able
to accomplish this by travelling from house to
house instantaneously with wormholes. Owns a
working phaser. 
  
Dilbert's Mom, also known as Dilmom — Homely but
intelligent. Often selfish and openly uncaring
towards her son. Wanted Dilbert to work on
typewriters. She has nearly the same technical
knowledge as Dilbert... although it may be the
other way around. She is obsessed with Scrabble,
and has been accused of cheating with
"counterfeit vowels." In the TV series, she
dances a jig after playing a high-value word. 
  
Dilbert's Dad, also known as Dadbert — An unseen
character in the comic strip (although he appears
in the animated series, a la Wilson from Home
Improvement) who lives at the all-you-can-eat
restaurant because he hasn't eaten all he can
eat. 
  
Bob, Dawn, and Rex, the Dinosaurs — Not extinct,
just (usually) hiding. Bob issues wedgies to the
deserving, and is often a lackey in Dogbert's
schemes. He told Dilbert he was a thesaurus,
although admitted it was a joke. Dawn claims to be
a "nobodysaurus" (a pun on "nobody saw us").
Since Bob and Dawn appear to be different species,
Rex is presumably a hybrid. Bob cannot tell the
difference between Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings,
as he revealed in one strip when he told Dilbert
that dinosaurs are incapable of lying. 
  
Carol — The PHB's misanthropic and bitter
secretary. She has attempted to rid herself of the
PHB in several different ways, including sending
him on trips to New York City with several
stopovers in countries experiencing violent
rebellions, holding a press conference that the
PHB was a serial killer, and shooting him multiple
times with a crossbow. 
  
Tina, the brittle tech writer — A feminist, but
less inclined to react than Alice. Once had a
crush on Dilbert. 
  
Stan — The all-too-slick marketer. Temporarily
turned into a weasel by the power of suggestion. 
  
Ming — Webmistress. Once dated Mordac. 
  
Mordac — Preventer of Information Technology. His
job is to refuse all requests for new computer
hardware and the like. Once dated Ming. Once, he
changed Dilbert's password to the entire text of
The Da Vinci Code, excluding the parts he didn't
believe. He also configured Alice's screensaver
to log her out after two seconds of inactivity. 
  
Ted — The Generic Guy. Never the focus of events
himself, but appears wherever an
otherwise-insignificant employee character is
required. People who have known him for years
still cannot describe him. He has taken on various
roles, and often does not speak. The TV show
points out something that was already implied in 7
Years of Highly Defective People: there may be
more than one Ted, but since they're all generic,
there's no way to know for sure. 
  
Hammerhead Bob — Summoner and buttinski of long,
boring conversations. He has a spring-loaded butt,
handy for inserting himself into other people's
discussions. He appears in only two strips. 
  
Trolls — Sadistic trolls from the accounting
department whose bodies are 95% saliva. As Dogbert
shows, their brains are so hard-wired that seeing
someone wearing a baseball cap backwards causes
their heads to explode, which he referred to as a
"paradigm shifting without a clutch". 
  
Loud Howard — Another coworker who, despite
appearing in few comic strips, became a regular
character in the TV series. In the series, Loud
Howard is incapable of speaking quietly, and his
overpowering voice often breaks anything and
everything around him, including people's
eardrums. When he sneezes, it is highly advisable
to take cover, as the resulting blast has blown
the flesh off of people, leaving only a skeleton
(at least in the marketing folks). 
  
Zimbu — A monkey who humiliates Dilbert and Wally
by constantly outperforming them. He uses his tail
to use the computer mouse while using both hands
to type and is therefore the fastest programmer at
the company. Not unlike Dogbert, he appears to be
superior to human as a species. This could be yet
another indicator that Scott Adams does not think
much of humans as a species. This is also
supported by some of his comments in the 7 Years
of Highly Defective people: "I support equal
rights for pets," on page 80 and "Imagine an
advanced race of aliens who talk to the average
human; do you think they'll be impressed?" on
page 112. Zimbu also appeared in the TV show
(helping Wally prevent the company's computers
from crashing on Y2K). 
  
The Useless Guy — A person who never works at all.
He would rather take up the space of other
co-workers and eat their doughnuts. Sometimes he
will clip out articles and publications and leave
them on other people's chairs. He makes an
appearance in the TV series. 
  
Bottleneck Bill — Shaped like a bottle and true to
his namesake, believes that "anything worth doing
is worth delaying". 
  
Topper — Man who has been known to "one-up"
conversations. He cannot start a conversation, as
it "ruins his system". 
  
Techno-Bill — One of the most popular characters
that was shown briefly in 1993. Wears a belt of
electronic tools & uses auto-dialing to defeat
Dilbert's lesser assortment of personal
electronic devices. Was voiced by Phil Hartman in
the Desktop Diversions game "Techno Raiders". 
  
Lola — Seduces Dilbert after giving up on going
for men who care about appearance. 
  
Liz — Dilbert's temporary girlfriend. He met her
at a soccer game, where she rebounded a ball off
his head to score a goal. She eventually breaks up
with him. 
 

Dilbert in popular culture
The popularity of the comic strip within the
corporate sector has led to the character of
Dilbert being used in many business magazines and
publications (he has made several appearances on
the cover of Fortune).

The Toronto Star, Montreal's La Presse, the
Indianapolis Star, the Washington Post, the Los
Angeles Times, the Brisbane Courier Mail and San
Francisco Chronicle, among other publications, run
the comic in the business section, separate from
other comics, which together have their own
section. This is done in much the same manner that
Doonesbury is now often carried only in the
editorial section due to its pointed commentary.

It is the basis of a popular (though unproven)
theory suggesting that the morale at a given
workplace is the inverse of the number of Dilbert
comic strips taped and posted at various desks and
cubicles. A larger number of Dilbert comic strips
reflects general frustration with the bureaucratic
administration at the company, whereas a generally
satisfied workforce sees less identification with
the character of Dilbert, and consequently fewer
Dilbert comic strips are displayed as mementoes.
An office with no Dilbert strips, however, does
not necessarily have high morale; rather, it may
indicate that a truly authoritarian administration
has prohibited employees from displaying them.


Criticism
The adoption of Dilbert as an icon for corporate
America has led to Scott Adams being criticized,
in some circles, for allowing his creation to be
adopted and embraced by the very same corporate
world his strip satirizes.

Dilbert's irony admits few serious alternatives
to the corporate lifestyle, as if Adams
anticipated criticism but planned through irony to
disarm the critics. Norman Solomon believes the
strip is insufficiently critical of CEOs and
disrespectful of ordinary working people (The
Trouble with Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets
the Last Laugh, Common Courage Press, 1997). The
idea that white collar people might be in need of
more respect contrasts with a common belief that
white collar career is a free choice, but
downsizing and some of the pressures on Dilbert
have been predicted in the 1970s by Harry
Braverman (Labor and Monopoly Capital, Monthly
Review Press, 1998 being the most recent reissue).
Dealing with those pressures would require Dilbert
to be more blue-collar in terms of struggle over
his work process, but in Dilbert the boss can be
lampooned but has to be obeyed.

David Noble (Forces of Production, Oxford 1986)
narrated a cyberstruggle of the 1950s over control
of the programming of then-new computerized
machine tools with a clear beginning (management
introduces tools programmed by back-office
Dilberts ignorant of shop floor requirements),
middle (union men stand and watch the improperly
programmed tools create "scrap at high speed")
and end (management agrees that the union guys
should do the programming). Solomon seems
humor-challenged in his own book, but the irony in
Dilbert, he feels, is a good way of avoiding
serious confrontation over the best allocation of
workplace control.

Peter Drucker and C. Wright Mills both pointed out
the paradox on which the strip is based but does
not address: Dilbert, Wally, Alice and the rest of
the gang are at one and the same time supposed to
compete with each other, and produce a collective
product. The strip satirizes the victims of this
double bind. Solomon's concern is that it
reconciles people to their fate, and doesn't show
them a way out.

The possible flaw in all these criticisms is the
assumption on the part of their authors that
people would use Dilbert as a role model, as
opposed to merely finding it a one or two minute
"funny" on a daily basis.


Language
Terms invented by Adams in relation to the strip,
and sometimes used by fans in describing their own
office environments, include "Induhvidual." This
term is based on an American English expression
"duh!". The conscious misspelling of individual
as induhvidual is a pejorative term for people who
are not in the DNRC (Dogbert's New Ruling Class).
Its coining is explained in Dilbert Newsletter
#6.

The strip has also popularized the usage of the
terms "cow-orker" and PHB. The word
"frooglepoopillion" is now occasionally used to
describe an extremely large number, after a strip
which revealed that the company for which Dilbert
worked owed so much money that no name existed to
describe the number, so the marketing department
was promptly set to work on it, coining
"frooglepoopillion".

Some fans have used "Dilbertian" to analogize
situations in real life to those in the comic
strip.


Management
In 1997 Scott Adams masqueraded as a management
consultant to Logitech executives (as Ray Mebert),
with the cooperation of the company's
vice-chairman. He acted in much the way he
portrays management consultants in the comic
strip, with an arrogant manner and bizarre
suggestions, such as comparing mission statements
to broccoli soup. He convinced the executives to
replace their existing mission statement for their
New Ventures Group, "to provide Logitech with
profitable growth and related new business
areas", with "to scout profitable growth
opportunities in relationships, both internally
and externally, in emerging, mission inclusive
markets, and explore new paradigms and then filter
and communicate and evangelize the findings".

In order to demonstrate what can be achieved with
the most mundane objects if planned correctly and
imaginatively, Adams has worked with companies to
develop "dream" products for Dilbert and
company. In 2001 he collaborated with IDEO, a
design company, to come up with the "perfect
cubicle", a fitting creation since many of the
Dilbert strips make fun of the standard cubicle
desk and the environment it creates. The result
was both whimsical and practical.

This project was followed in 2004 with designs for
Dilbert's Ultimate House (abbreviated as DUH). An
energy-efficient building resulted, designed to
prevent many of the little niggles which seem to
creep into a normal building. For instance, to
spare time from having to buy and decorate a
Christmas tree every year, the house has a large
yet inapparent closet adjacent to the living room
where the tree can be stored for later holiday
seasons.


Media

Compilations of newspaper strips
Always Postpone Meetings with Time-Wasting Morons
— April 16, 1989 (first strip) to October 21, 1989

Shave the Whales — October 22, 1989 to August 4,
1990 
Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy! — August
5, 1990 to May 18, 1991 
It's Obvious You Won't Survive By Your Wits
Alone — May 19, 1991 to December 13, 1992 
Still Pumped from Using the Mouse — December 14,
1992 to September 27, 1993 
Fugitive From the Cubicle Police — September 28,
1993 to February 11, 1995 
Casual Day Has Gone Too Far — February 5, 1995 to
November 19, 1995 
I'm Not Anti-Business, I'm Anti-Idiot — November
20, 1995 to August 31, 1996 
Journey to Cubeville — September 1, 1996 to
January 18, 1998 
Don't Step in the Leadership — January 12, 1998
to October 18, 1998 
Random Acts of Management — October 19, 1998 to
July 25, 1999 
Excuse Me While I Wag — July 26, 1999 to April 30,
2000 
When Did Ignorance Become A Point Of View? — May
1, 2000 to February 4, 2001 
Another Day In Cubicle Paradise — February 5, 2001
to November 11, 2001 
When Body Language Goes Bad — November 12, 2001 to
August 18, 2002 
Words You Don't Want to Hear During Your Annual
Performance Review — August 19, 2002 to May 25,
2003 
Don't Stand Where the Comet is Assumed to Strike
Oil — May 26, 2003 to February 29, 2004 
The Fluorescent Light Glistens Off Your Head —
March 1, 2004 to December 5, 2004 

Special compilations
Telling It Like It Isn't — 1996; ISBN
0-8362-1324-6 
Work is a Contact Sport — 1997; ISBN 0-8362-2878-2

Seven Years of Highly Defective People: Scott
Adams' Guided Tour of the Evolution of Dilbert —
1997; A grab bag of strips from 1989 to 1995, with
handwritten notes by Scott Adams 
Random Acts of Catness — 1998; ISBN 0-8362-5277-2

Work—The Wally Way — 1999; ISBN 0-8362-7480-6 
Alice in Blunderland — 1999; ISBN 0-8362-7479-2 
Dilbert Gives You the Business — 1999 
A Treasury of Sunday Strips: Version 00 — 1999;
Color version of all Sunday strips published in
newspapers from 1995 through 1999 (typical
compilations have black and white Sunday strips) 
What Do You Call A Sociopath In A Cubicle? Answer:
A Coworker — A compilation of select comic strips
from 1989 to 2001 
It's Not Funny If I Have To Explain It — 2004;
Another grab bag of strips from 1997-2004, with
Adams' handwritten notes, again 

Related Merchandise
Corporate Shuffle by Richard Garfield — 1997; A
Dilbert-branded card game similar to Wizard of the
Coast's The Great Dalmuti and the drinking game
President 

Business books
Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies —
1991; Original cartoons with Dogbert as a guide to
the business world 
Dogbert's Clues for the Clueless — 1993; Original
cartoons with satirical advice on life 
Dogbert's Top-Secret Management Handbook — 1996 
The Dilbert Principle — April 1996 
The Dilbert Future — May 1997 
The Joy of Work — 1998 
Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel — October 2002 

Non-Dilbert:
God's Debris — May, 2001 
The Religion War — Sequel to God's Debris 

Animated series episode guide
The production number is shown in parentheses.

Season 1 Season 2 
The Name (101) 
The Competition (103) 
The Prototype (102) 
The Takeover (106) 
Testing (104) 
Elbonian Trip (105) 
Tower of Babel (108) 
Little People (107) 
The Knack (110) 
Y2K (109) 
Charity (111) 
Holiday (112) 
The Infomercial (113) 
 The Gift (201) 
The Shroud of Wally (202) 
Art (203) 
The Trial (204) 
The Dupey (205) 
The Security Guard (206) 
The Merger (207) 
Hunger (208) 
The Off-Site Meeting (209) 
The Assistant (210) 
The Return (211) 
The Virtual Employee (212) 
Pregnancy, part 1 (213) 
The Delivery, part 2 of Pregnancy (214) 
Company Picnic (215) 
The Fact (216) 
Ethics (217) 
 

The first season followed around a creation of a
product called the "Gruntmaster 6000". Episodes
1-3 involved creating it, 5 involved having it
survive "Bob Bastard", and the sixth was
production. The last one was the testing (to an
incredibly stupid family in Squiddler's Patch,
Texas).