Thriving on Vague Objectives: A Dilbert Book

By Scott Adams

Dilbert, Dogbert, Alice, and Pointy-Haired Boss are back in the twenty-sixth collection of the comic strip that hilariously nails corporate culture—and ineptitude.

“I think that idiot bosses are timeless, and as long as there are annoying people in the world, I won’t run out of material.” —Scott Adams

Adams has his finger on the pulse of cubicle dwellers across the globe. No one delivers more laughs or captures the reality of the 9 to 5 worker better than Dilbert, Dogbert, Catbert, and a cast of stupefying office stereotypes—which is why there are millions of fans of the Dilbert comic strip.

Dilbert is a techno-man stuck in a dead-end job (sound familiar?). Power-mad Dogbert strives to take over the world and enslave the humans. The most intelligent person in Dilbert’s world is his trash collector, who knows everything about everything.

Artist and creator Scott Adams started Dilbert as a doodle when he worked as a bank teller. He continued doodling when he was upgraded to a cubicle for a major telecommunications company. His boss (no telling if he was pointy-haired or not) suggested the name Dilbert. Adams is so dead-on accurate in his depictions of office life that he has been accused of spying on Corporate America.

“Once every decade, America is gifted with an angst-ridden anti-hero, a Nietzschean nebbish, an us-against-the-universe everyperson around whom our insecurities collect like iron shavings to a magnet. Charlie Chaplin. Dagwood Bumstead. Charlie Brown. Cathy. Now, Dilbert.” —The Miami Herald

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781449417673

Scott Adams

Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, the comic strip that now appears in 1,550 newspapers worldwide. His first two hardcover business books, The Dilbert Principle and Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook, have sold more than two million copies and have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for a combined total of sixty weeks.

Book preview

Introduction

My publisher just informed me that I should finish writing the introduction to my book Thriving on Vague Objectives, sooner. This guidance is based on the theory that sooner is better, and all things being equal, it’s better to be better, especially if it’s sooner.

My first impulse was to get literal and argue that everything is sooner than something else. Therefore, there’s no real rush. But I can’t do that because one of my other personality defects involves compulsive earliness. I don’t mean that I’m merely punctual—generally considered a good trait. I mean I’m early to the point of being spectacularly