
Part of Series
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. Does Dilbert creator Scott Adams have a hidden camera in your office—or is he just completely in tune with the inept managers, wacky office politics, and nonsensical leadership practices that seem to run wild at your company? Stop looking for the camera. Dilbert has become a hugely successful strip because Adams feels your pain. How? Because this former employee of a major telecommunications company has been there. He's seen the road to failure firsthand. And he knows that to successfully navigate the ludicrous world of business, you can't expect common sense to prevail, you need to keep a sense of humor, and above all, you must always be ready to blame the other guy. The strip's enormous popularity stems from the fact that its millions of readers easily identify with the crazy plots and wacky characters found within the corporate environment. Sure, most companies don't have a bespectacled engineer with a tie permanently curled up, a cynical talking dog, and a manager with two pointy tufts of hair. But it's the outrageous things Dilbert characters do and say that leave readers knowingly nodding their heads and, of course, laughing uproariously. The antics of Dilbert's cast are based not only on Adams' own corporate experiences, but on the numerous e-mails he receives each day about the office dramas of his devoted fans.
Author
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information. Adams was born in Windham, New York in 1957 and received his Bachelor's degree in Economics from Hartwick College in 1979. He also studied economics and management for his 1986 MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. In recent years, Adams has been hurt with a series of debilitating health problems. Since late 2004, he has suffered from a reemergence of his focal dystonia which has affected his drawing. He can fool his brain by drawing using a graphics tablet. On December 12, 2005, Adams announced on his blog that he also suffers from spasmodic dysphonia, a condition that causes the vocal cords to behave in an abnormal manner. However, on October 24, 2006, he again blogged stating that he had recovered from this condition, although he is unsure if the recovery is permanent. He claims to have developed a method to work around the disorder and has been able to speak normally since. Also, on January 21, 2007, he posted a blog entry detailing his experiences with treatment by Dr. Morton Cooper. Adams is also a trained hypnotist, as well as a vegetarian. (Mentioned in, "Dilbert: A Treasury of Sunday Strips 00). He married Shelly Miles on July 22, 2006.