Luck

I’m fairly certain that luck is the biggest component of success. I know it was for me. Dilbert succeeded because of a perfect storm involving a sluggish mid-nineties economy, the rise of technology workers, my stalled corporate career, the Internet, my lack of a personal life, accidentally appropriate talent, the timely retirements of better cartoonists, helpful people in the right jobs, and – assuming chaos theory is correct – a spastic butterfly somewhere South of the equator.

I was reminded of the role of luck today as I was in the Houston airport, walking toward my gate. On my left was a restaurant that served whatever is the opposite of heart-healthy cuisine. I think the name of the restaurant was something along the lines of “Dead Cows and Fried Stuff.” Or at least it should have been. Normally, this would be an excellent business concept in the perfect location. In Houston, gravy is a beverage. It would take a lot of bad luck to keep this business from succeeding.

Then I noticed the bad luck.

I assume that when the owners of the restaurant negotiated their lease, they didn’t ask about the location of the emergency heart defibrillator. It was tragically mounted on the wall next to the Dead Cows and Fried Stuff eatery. I have to believe that was bad luck, and – in all likelihood – bad for business. Across from them was a Subway sandwich place. Subway is most famous for promoting their low-calorie menu options. Ouch.

You might think that no one would make an eating decision based on the location of the emergency heart defibrillator. But as soon as you read “heart defibrillator,” you imagine your own enlarged, blood-starved heart, and hear the paramedics yelling, “Clear!” And that’s if you’re lucky enough to collapse when a trained paramedic is around. Otherwise, the cashier from Dead Cows and Fried Stuff is going to be the first one on the scene. He’ll have one paddle on your forehead and one on your crotch. It might restart your heart, but you’ll wish it hadn’t.

I ate a small sandwich at Subway.

Comments

[steve]

[I ate a small sandwich at Subway]

Wuss

[Christa Bedwin]

Completely unrelated to your "Luck" blog (you know, people who are so far gone as to get a heart attack from fried food will NOT draw any connection at all with the medical device on the wall!), but I'm sure many readers (especially those who have ever tried to help anyone with their computers) will find this hilarious:

Medieval tech support (from the funniest culture in the world, Danes)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=LRBIVRwvUeE

Cheers,

Christa

[butterfly]

LOL! Leora!!! :D

[Billy B]

If the dead cow place had a good meatloaf sandwich I would eat there. I eat what I like to eat, we are all just busy dying anyway, going to do some living while I'm waiting. Life is uncertain, eat dessert first.
Billy B

[Jason Nocera]

Mmm..I love dead cows and fried stuff. I once ate 12 donuts in 30 minutes and 60 mcnuggets in 40 minutes for a bet. Bet you're thinking I'm a big fatty right now..but I'm not. Luck = success? Not sure about that. The examples you gave are pretty much summed up as "being at the right place at the right time with the right stuff." The thing is..if you didn't have the right stuff ready, all of the luck in the world isn't going to help you. Not sure if I'm making sense...maybe the nugget grease has clouded my head.

[TrevOverT]

" In Houston gravy is a beverage " Scott, that is the wittiest phrase I've read all week and it just stopped me dead in my attempt to read the rest of your bit... I think I need a defibrillator close by when I next read your blog... My Angina can't stand much more of this!

[squigs]

You make your own luck.

You have a strong can-do attitude. Sometimes this is indistinguishable from stupidity.

Perhaps if things were different, your comics wouldn't have succeeded. But then you'd have got bored and put your skills to something ele, then realised that you can make money contracting. Or you would have invented something cool. Or done something compeletely different. But the point is, "lucky" people only put their successes down to luck. They blame themselves for their failures and learn from them. The result is they keep on trying.

[Sean H]

The great hockey player Wayne Gretzky once said when accused of being lucky that "I make my own luck." And I think that alot can be said of that. Without a doubt luck plays a part in life of most successful people, but often it comes combined with a good dose of skill and hard work. In your case I think its worth pointing out that none of those elements would matter in less capable hands.

Sure Calvin and Hobbs, The Far Side, and Bloom County all ended at just the right time for you, but you weren't the only new cartoonist on the block.

Sure Dilbert hit a note with millions of workers, but it didn't do so out of luck, it did so because you designed it in a way that anyone who has ever had a boss, a cube, or a lazy co-worker can relate.

Anyways, I am just trying to say you are selling yourself short. You are talented, insightful and hardworking, and I suspect would have risen to the top eventually anyway; or at least to fourth place. ;)

(p.s. someday could you elaborate on how someone could steal 25 million dilbert comics for profit; every time I try to come up with a plausible senario, the math doesn't work out)

[kelli]

But aren't you a healthy-eating vegetarian, O inventor of the Dilberito? Is there any reasonable circumstance that could have led you to choose Dead Cows & Fried Stuff rather than Subway? (Or did you not intend for that last little sentence to imply causality?)

[Marius]

Let me just get this straight: you don't believe in free will, but you do believe in luck?

;-)

[Jayne Marie]

Would you mind terribly if I changed the name of MY restaurant to "Dead Cows & Fried Stuff"??? Okay, we do have a veggie burger on the menu...but, it's a couple of notches away from the "Suicide Slide" 1/2 lb dead cow, butterflied hotdog, 2 strips of bacon & cheese...and yes, all the veggies on the menu are deep fried...
In my own defense, I DID write and ask about selling Delberito, but, alas, no response. (LA Clay, I feel your pain!)
OK...I admit, I am not gonna change my restaurant's name...but...if you'd posted this earlier, I might have!

If anyone wants to see my menu...either to salivate or make the decision to buy your own defib unit...
http://fansonlyzone.com/homerunmenu.htm

[sfeldner]

No, that's good luck! In a pinch the emergency heart defibrillator could be used to re-warm your deep-fat fried lard sandwich purchased at the "Dead Cows and Fried Stuff". (it got cold waiting in line at Subway for a chocolate chip cookie).

[Leora]

Didn't you write a few days ago about how you've been the victim of more crime than anyone else? Or do you count yourself lucky that you lived through it all, and have managed to succeed anyway?

I think you're the only freak looking at the defibrillator and imagining his own clogged arteries. Everyone else is thinking, "I hope someone clutches his chest and falls to the ground so I get to use that thing!" Or maybe that's just me...

[lamby]

Back at you.

[Peter]

"I'm looking for a Japanese Girlfriend" in kanji. On a t-shirt? I have two of those, one in black, one in white. They've provided me with endless amusement messing with South East Asian's of all ethnicities. No actual Japanese girlfriends, but I figured it was an outside chance. :D

I think you need luck and hard work and bravery to take advantage of the luck. Has any one had good fortune thrust upon them without their making _any_ effort? Not even buying a lottery ticket I'm talking about.

[cph]

Bad Luck: I was playing texas hold-em last night and really only bet heavy on 4 hands. I had a flush and lost to a straight flush; I had an ace high flush and lost to a four-of-a-kind; I had an ace high straight and lost to a full-house; I had a full-house and lost to a better full-house. Totally sucked. I'm sure a loved-one will die today.

[lamby]

My kids always hated fast food and fries. My son as a toddler, would act like we were trying to poison him if we offered him McD's.

I guess I'm just lucky they never saw the commercials.

[Arby]

There are other incongruities that defy explanation and logic. For example gourmet chefs that smoke, and you are going to trust their fried taste buds?, “Genuine artificial leather" and caffeine-free diet sodas, what the hell is left?.

[Peter Payne]

The other day, I found $100,000 in my sofa cushions, in a manner of speaking. Our accountant had marked down a CD our business cashed as new income and we were about to pay hefty taxes on it, but fortunately we caught the error. That was pretty awesome.

I guess I agree about luck being a factor, in so far as timing = luck. When I started J-List (www.jlist.com) there wasn't a single other person on the web selling Japanese anime related stuff and T-shirts that say "I'm looking for a Japanese Girlfriend" in kanji. If we'd been doing this in 2007, it would have been a different ball game.

[JoNa]

Thanks for the laugh. Loved the Dead Cows and Fried Stuff.
I'll be praying for that same spastic butterfly when my book is finally ready for publication.

[Mary]

Scott,

Obviously you've never travelled with small children. They are addicted to fat cows and fried stuff.

And sometimes you just give into them if the PROMISE if mom gives them dead cows and fried stuff they'll be QUIET on the plane.

A mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do.

[Lee Bruns]

And you didn't take a picture with the defib and the storefront in frame?? Curse you Scott Adams. Curse you.

[Ron Hardin]

It was reported to me that in the middle of the Anna Nicole Smith Media Funeral Motorcade there was an entrapped truck labelled ``Potato Rolls.''

[Minister of Silly people in green]

Spastic butterflies cause hurricanes. Gary Larson's gas causes cartoonists.

[CLB]

Made me think of the current TV ads - for Subway I believe. A couple pulls up at the drive-thru and orders things like "quarter pound of lard, spare tires and thunder thighs".