Your New Job Title Is "Accomplice": A Dilbert Book

By Scott Adams

“Dilbert and his cubicle cohorts continue churning out the laughs . . . Their latest shenanigans are sure to brighten a dreary workday.” —Baton Rouge Advocate

As fresh a look at the inanity of office life as it brought to the comics pages when it first appeared in 1989, this fortieth Dilbert collection comically confirms to the working public that we all really know what’s going on. Our devices might be more sophisticated, our software and apps might be more plentiful, but when it gets down to interactions between the worker bees and the clueless in-controls, discontent and sarcasm rule, as only Dilbert can proclaim.

“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

“Confined to their cubicles in a company run by idiot bosses, Dilbert and his white-collar colleagues make the dronelike world of Kafka seem congenial.” —The New York Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781449432775

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.

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Introduction

Have you heard of the famous study where researchers manipulated ordinary citizens into administering painful electric shocks to strangers? The study showed that normal humans are—and I don’t think I am exaggerating—Hell-born, soulless demons who will embrace any dumbass excuse to torture their peers. The only thing that stops most of us from being serial killers is a fear of consequences and, in some cases, laziness. Apparently, if you give the average person a cup of coffee and a nudge, he turns into Pol Pot right before your eyes.

I graduated college as a fairly decent human, or so I imagined. But ten minutes after entering my corporate career I was already referring to the early adopters of our products as the stupid rich. I understood our marketing efforts to be a conspiracy to mislead our customers. And I learned that our revenue was entirely dependent on keeping customers so confused that they wouldn’t understand what they were buying. I wasn’t so much a team player as an accomplice.

I rationalized my total embrace of evil by telling myself none of it was my fault. I was just part of the system. And besides, our customers had it coming; if the situation had been reversed, they would have

Reviews for Your New Job Title Is "Accomplice"

[malcrf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Typical Dilbert, perhaps less biting than some collections.

[seanbata · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some great gems about the current corporate climate in the new release by Scott Adams.

[burnit99 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Dilbert universe is the bleakest I know of in comic strips. Its denizens are joyless, self-absorbed soulless beings who are only cheered after another life-sucking work week by the thought that they are now seven days closer to the sweet release of death (sample quote from Wally: "They can't hurt you if you're already dead."). The only happiness I ever see in the strip arises from the misfortune of others. Is it any wonder it has become such an iconic personification of the corporate world in America? Another fine collection of strips here, with a rare gut-buster on page 85.