Dilbert

Dilbert is the name of a satirical comic strip created by Scott Adams that has appeared in newspapers since 1989, spawning several books, an animated TV series and numerous related products ranging from stuffed dolls to ice cream.

The plot of this comic takes place in the context of everyday life for millions of employees and office workers, especially in the software or telecommunications industry (Adams actually worked at Pacific Bell): unusual office politics, incompetent bosses, co-workers annoying work, meaningless affairs, eternal meetings, etc. The same kinds of things that people hate in their day job are what make Dilbert laugh.

Characters

The main characters of this strip embody the worst defects of the work environment, some of them are:

• Dilbert: main character, excellent engineer who does not know how to relate in society.
• Dogbert: his irreverent and lying dog that takes advantage of the system.
• Ratbert: rat that escapes from a laboratory and is installed in Dilbert's house. Fight to win the affection of Dilbert and Dogbert.
• PHB (Pointy Haired Boss; in Spanish, Chief Pelopunta): the despota chief, who always demands responsibilities beyond logic. He has no idea of technology; he is the archetype of the incompetent manager.
• Wally: the co-worker who never works and tries to get achievements from the work of others.
• Alice: it detests the company, but it is committed to its work and that causes it high levels of stress; it has a violent character.
• Loud Howard or Chillón Howard: He is a very annoying guy by the way he expresses himself. Having a huge mouth can't control the bell of his voice.
• Asok: the young man in practice in the company, idealist who gradually meets the reality of life.
• Ted.: he's an engineer. It represents the generic individual.
• Carol.: the bitter secretary of the head of pointed hair, who hates her boss and all her coworkers.
• Catbert: A cat who is also the evil director of human resources, who enjoys the suffering of his employees. In his first appearance the color of his coat was chestnut and had no lenses. It wasn't planned to be a regular character. But he quickly won the backing of fans who instantly baptized him as Catbert. In his first appearance Catbert enters Dilbert's house. Attacking Ratbert and damaging Dilbert's computer until Dogbert finally manages to kick him out of the house.
• Dilmom: mother of Dilbert, she is a simple and intelligent woman. She has almost the same level of technical knowledge of Dilbert.
• Bob the dinosaur: a vegetarian dinosaur that is the wedgie executor in the office. It was found when Dilbert calculated that dinosaurs could not have been extinguished, and therefore they should be in hiding.
• The C.E.O.: The incompetent executive director of the company for which Dilbert works. Since 2003, the C.E.O. has been drawn as a young man with a big, bald head.

Theme

The comic strip originally revolved around engineer Dilbert and his 'pet' dog; Dogbert, with situations taking place in their home, many strips dealt with Dilbert's engineering characteristics or his weird inventions, alternating with strips based on Dogbert's megalomaniac ambitions. Later, the setting for most of the action moved to Dilbert's workplace: a large technology company, and the comic strip began to satirize the IT work environment and office situations. The popular success of the comic strip is attributed to the situations of the work environment and the themes that are familiar to a large part of its audience, which feels identified with Dilbert and makes a kind of catharsis with the strips. Everyone who worked in technology ever went through a situation reflected in the comic.

Dilbert portrays corporate culture as a Kafkaesque world of bureaucracy for its own ends and productivity-supporting office politics, where employees' skills and efforts go unrewarded, and hard work is praised but praised. pays back badly He also satirizes about the upstarts, the lazy, the ignorant who take credit for others, and various tragicomic situations in the world of work.

The thematic topics presented in Dilbert could be summarized in the following points:

• Personal traits of engineers
• Charity of style
• Desperation for dating
• Passion for technological tools and products
• Esoteric knowledge
• Incompetent and sadistic administration
• Unable timetables
• Problems to reward success or punish laziness
• Sanctioning employees for failures caused by a bad management
• Micromanagement
• Problems to improve the morals of others, lowering it instead
• Challenges to communicating objectives
• Managing projects condemned to fail or to be cancelled
• Sadic human resources policies with weak (or purely evil) analysis and reasoning
• Corporate bureaucracy
• Public stupidity in general
• Susceptibility to advertising
• Susceptibility to punctual pressure
• Guilt on the face of obvious dyes
• Third world and outsourcing ("Elbonia")
• Excessive expenses
• Strange cultural Habits
• A lack of understanding of capitalism
• Marketing and Sales as leeches of engineers
• They don't do real work.
• They take all the benefits from the work of engineers
• Promise customers impossible things to do thus complicating the existence of engineers
• They prioritize aesthetic and marketing issues about the correct functioning of products

Titles published in Spanish

Some of the titles published in Spanish are:

• Dilbert 1: Always postpone your meetings with any asshole who will waste your time (1997)
• Dilbert 2: Bring me the head of Willy the relayer! (1997)
• Dilbert 3: Form using the mouse (1999)
• Dilbert 4: We fight the whales (1999)
• Dilbert 5: Fugitive of the cubic police (2000)
• Dilbert 6: It is clear that it will not survive only because of its wit (2000)
• Dilbert 7: Fridays have come too far (2002)
• Dilbert 8: Anti-business? No, anti-idiots (2002)
• The Principle of Dilbert
• The Future of Dilbert
• The pleasure of working