The Dilbert Gauge

I initiallly thought I might re-post some various bits and pieces I've written about Scott Adams over the years, pointing out how he was a racist and sexist asshole years before he got Dilbert canceled. But I came across this anecdote from 'Ride Theory' on Mastodon in the wake of Adams' death. It doesn't speak to the worst aspects of Adams' ideas and demeanor, but I think it does a fair job of illustrating how Adams -- even before his most egregiously awful rants -- pretty much always peddled in bitterness and spitefulness.

In the 1990s, I worked as an office temp. I logged a lot of hours in a lot of different offices, and I had an instant and accurate way to sense how dysfunctional and toxic a workplace was as soon as I walked in.

I took note of how many Dilbert comics were pinned up, and where.

If I saw one or two Dilbert comics scattered around, I knew people had their gripes and complaints about their co-workers, but it was nothing too serious.

If virtually every cubicle had more than one Dilbert comic pinned up, I knew everyone working there disliked each other. The atmosphere probably wasn’t going to be too terrible for me as a temp, but I wouldn’t want to work there permanently.

Whenever I saw a disproportionate number of Dilbert comics in one cubicle, I knew to avoid that person. They were clearly the asshole in the office, and they were usually on a hair trigger. I once saw a cubicle that was practically wallpapered with Dilbert comics, including several where he had labeled the characters with co-workers’ names, and then pinned them on the OUTSIDE of his cube. Yikes! Steer clear of that dude!

If there was even one Dilbert comic pinned up to a communal bulletin board, watch out! The hatred went from workers up AND management down.

God forbid someone had used the photocopier to enlarge it; that meant they wanted everyone to see how much they hated everyone.

In this last situation, I would usually call my agency at the end of the day and ask if they had any other assignments.

If I saw Dilbert plush toys, I’d just tell my agency I couldn’t continue the assignment.

The Dilbert gauge never failed me. The more Dilbert comic strips I saw, the nastier the place was.

I worked at a one place where Dilbert was banned. Specifically, just Dilbert. Sounds extreme, but the bosses knew exactly what Scott Adams was peddling, and they didn’t want any.

That office ran smoothly and was among the nicest.

So Dilbert was my canary in the coal mine. I can’t think of another comic strip that functioned like this. Cathy was drawn almost exactly as badly as Dilbert, but the only thing I learned from seeing that strip in an office was the person pinning it up had body image issues. Peanuts meant the person had self-esteem problems. (Or, contrarywise, they identified with Snoopy.)

If anyone had ever pinned up a Mutts strip or Zippy the Pinhead or Nancy, I would have wanted to hang out with them in the lunchroom. Even Tumbleweeds might have been a welcome change. Sadly, it was almost always fuckin’ Dilbert, all the way down.

So I guess the moral here is: Scott Adams was a thin-skinned, egotistical monster who wrote and badly drew a hateful comic strip called Dilbert, and all his “humor” punched down, and he used sock puppet accounts to brag about his own genius, and was a racist, and he thought Donald Trump was great but for all that, if I were forced – I donno, at gunpoint, maybe -- to utter one nice word about Scott Adams, I guess I’d say that for a few years, he was... USEFUL.

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