Product Description

'I cried because I did not have an office with a door, until I met a man who had no cubicle.' - Dilbert. Following on from his previous bestselling business books, "The Dilbert Principle" and "The Dilbert Future", Scott Adams applies his acute wit to the workplace and delivers a deceptively perceptive take on the place that we all spend so much time in: the office. Using the same blend of essays and cartoons that kept the "Dilbert Principle" on the bestseller list for almost a year, this hilarious treatise on office life will have Dilbert fans rolling around with laughter in their ever smaller cubicles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #191126 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Scott Adams' latest work is not a collection of Dilbert cartoons (though recycled strips are liberally sprinkled throughout); it's a dialogue between the man and his fans disguised as a tongue-in-cheek guide to surviving the corporate life. There are chapters on "Office Pranks," "Surviving Meetings," and "Managing Your Co-Workers," with enough weird stories and practical jokes to make any middle manager nervous, especially as many of the tricks and tips come from e- mails sent to Adams by his fans (one tip: never let anyone else use your computer). If these messages are any indication, the creative tide has turned, and now the corporate world is following Dilbert's lead. In the office blocks of America, life is imitating art imitating life, creating a pleasantly postmodern working environment. The final chapter of The Joy of Work, "Handling Criticism," includes a response to Norman Solomon's The Trouble with Dilbert, which accuses Adams of selling out and supporting the corporate hierarchy that he claims to satirise. Adams' response is thorough and convincing, with just enough nastiness (jokes about Solomon's hair, for example) to demonstrate that though Dilbert may not have a mouth, he certainly has teeth. --Simon Leake, Amazon.com

Customer Reviews

Excellent insight but can be difficult to read
Another marvellous offering from Scott Adams that has transformed my perception of hitherto dreary office life. Unfortunately the new style of this latest edition means that some of the longer cartoons can be a little difficult to read without some serious concentration.

Funny and Useful
Not just funny and with a few cartoon strips thrown in, like all of Scott Adams books he actually manages to teach something about life as well by talking about the things he knows.

This brings together two totally incompatible concepts - joy and work
Another book by Scott Adams all about the joy of work - yes, you heard it "THE JOY OF WORK". About 250 pages on work, and nothing but work - from managing your boss (in itself an admirable objective), through laughing at the expense of others (another excellent pastime), to managing your co-worker (just you try, and see what I do to you!). In this book we wander from one strategy to another - from withhold information (everyone knows this), through boss deletion (I like it!!!!), to the sublime joys of sarcasm (otherwise know as common sense). This book is so true it is positively alien (Is he watching us all the time? Where are the cameras installed? He must have an army of little-Dilbert's reviewing all the footage?). For example, how does he know that bosses don't read their emails, or that bosses need to feel that they have "helped", or that everyone dreams of strategy 14 - how to turn you boss into a mindless zombie slave (let's face it, bosses come pre-packed as mindless zombies, so just adding the slave bit should not be that difficult). I refuse to comment on the chapter entitled the joys of work (as a matter of principle), but the chapter on managing your co-workers is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of modern business practices. Cubicle flatulence offered a new avenue of investigation for me, but dealing with irrational co-workers added little to my arsenal of techniques. The section on how to harness the power of your own incompetence was an eye opener; I had never thought to approach the problem by re-defining the meaning of corporate efficiency.
A person who can write more about office pranks (44 pages) then about "surviving meetings" (6 pages) is a must for any self-respecting middle management wallah. A must read for 20% of all Europeans, and 99% of all Americans (of those that can read of course).