Man Fired For Posting Dilbert Comic

Some of you already saw this story. A man was fired for posting a Dilbert comic that suggested his management was a bunch of drunken lemurs.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071219/NEWS/712190360

Over the years, a number of people have approached me in public, or e-mailed me, to say they also got fired for posting Dilbert comics on walls. I don’t know how many of those stories, if any, are true.

If you intend to mock your boss with Dilbert comics, the trick is in knowing which comics to pick. Apparently there is a fine line between posting a comic that criticizes a particular policy decision, versus a comic that calls your boss an inebriated prosimian. (Thank you, Wikipedia.) 

In order to get his unemployment benefits, the perpetrator had to convince a judge that he was merely stupid, not intentionally misbehaving. He succeeded, but it’s not the sort of victory he should feel good about, as in “Yay! The judge agrees I’m an idiot! It’s going to be in the newspaper and all over the Internet!”

The moral of this story is that if you plan to circulate a Dilbert comic calling your boss a drunken lemur, the best way is to use your boss’s unattended computer to e-mail it to the entire company.

Comments

[lucy0909]

Okay ... I live in Burlington and just got back from "slumming" with the drunken lemurs. They robbed me.

As for the Dilbert comic strip? I e-mail Mr. Baum and suggested a casino promotion in light of the fact that when the press calls for comment, the answer is ALWAYS ... "No one at Catfish Bend Casino could be reached for comment." Which I find hysterical!

For the most part, the locals are finding this incredible?! First, for firing Mr. Stewart in the first place, then for contesting the unemployment, then for LOSING the unemployment hearing, THEN for the most recent Dilbert comic strip, and NOW ... for trying to ignore the whole thing?

I suggested the following promotion to Mr. Baum ...

A Drunken Lemurs Night with drink specials ... a reception area so players could meet and greet management ... and a "Dilbert Dollar" giveaway!

I haven't heard anything back yet??????

Hmmmm ... some people are so very, very important.

[Dave Steward]

I want to thank Mr. Adams for the comics. Although they don't tell the story exactly as it took place, I think they are very funny. I am still getting calls for interviews, but I hope I can find a good job and this helps, not hurts that.

[REB]

Wally is my hero and although everything he does is not right, he can do no wrong in my eyes. It's nice to see that before he gets out the door, he remains indispensable by exerting his double talk prowess.

[Jim DZ]

Kudos to Scott for bringing this to the forefront as a plotline in his comic.

Does the fired guy get a percentage of the money made on this series?

[SueB]

it's much worse when your co-workers leave you new Dilberts on your deak every morning that the strip refers to your line of work. isn't it?

[Katrina]

I have a dilbert comic strip up on my wall to make fun of almost every person in my office. It's amusing when co-workers read the dilbert and figure out who in the office it is making fun of. And even more funny that they don't seem to figure out there is one up there for them. I also commonly email dilbert's that are extremely fitting for events that happen in the office on a regular. I even send my boss dilbert's that are making fun of people like him! He'd ever fire me for it though.

[John]

I want to to a live reenactment of a Dilbert cartoon at work. That would probably get me fired. Unless I worked for a theatre, then people would probably just clap.

http://awritersblock.com

[the man in the trout mask]

What's up with Bruce Harrison? ...... look at me Scott,I'm just like you! Listen to all these funny things I said and did - don't you love me?! It's harmless enough I guess - there are worse things than wanting to be Scott Adams when you grow up.
Just struck me kinda funny,that's all.

[vlad_tsepes]

I have several Dilbert strips mounted over my workstation but the best one is a large image of Dogbert dressed as a shaman, shaking his little shaman stick and proclaiming "Out, Out you demons of stupidity!!"

Whenever our boss comes over with a silly idea we just look him straight in the eye and point to that poster.

If he's childish enough to want to sack someone for trying to do something to help the business then bad luck. We can all find jobs elsewhere pretty easily and it would leave them in a pretty bad way.

[Polymath]

Shortly after my ex-boss laid off half the company (which he was forced to do because of previous insane decisions) I digitally pasted the picture of his face from the company website into the comic where the PHB says "Obviously you chose an uninteresting subject line" in order to blame an employee for his own failure to heed an important email, and sent it to everyone except him. Since his head was exactly the same shape as PHB's, and since he had used exactly this excuse more than once, the result was sufficiently hilarious to provide some consolation to my ex-coworkers.

[Alice in Wonderland]

All I know is, Tina the Brittle Tech Writer did not like the cartoon I showed her.

[black spot]

The lemurs had no free will.

[Jorrath Zek]

That's a New kind of Smart there!

We'll call it the "Dynamic Unique Massively Brainy" (D.U.M.B.) kinda smart.

[spiffy]

["Most 'Dilbert' comics don't come right out and call management a bunch of drunken lemurs," Adams said. "So I can see how this one might have been a tad over the line."]

I'm very disappointed in you, Scott. It is so unlike you to refrain from calling a drunken lemur a drunken lemur. I think some lawyerly advice was offered, and you wimped out with this lame quote just when your fan needed some moral support.

I mean come on, they run a CASINO. It's the one business where "customers" simply hand over money without inconveniencing you by making you provide some good or service in return. And they are FAILING at it. They certainly aren't sober lemurs.

[banker]

My managers are obsessed with taking surveys measuring how satisfied staff are and then looking for the measurements to improve without actually doing stuff likely to improve them.

It can all be summed up by the joke:
An Englishman, and Irishman and a Scotsman went into a bank.
The Englishman held a survey including "Do you feel proud to work for HSBC?". The Scotsman wanted an inquiry as to why the answer was "No". And the Irishman said because the form didn't provide an option for "**** No".

[iamexluxtroxl]

I had a boss once who was actually a decent person and good at what he did. He told me he judged morale in the office by the number of Dilbert cartoons posted on cubihell walls.

And yes, he was fired eventually and replaced with a series of morons.

[jasonrelliott]

What better proof that you have more time than talent than to scour surveillance tapes to see who posted a comic.

[Huey]

http://www.burlingtonderailed.com/

The man in Iowa fired for posting the drunken lemur strip was employed by a casino going bankrupt. More than just the casino, incompetents totally rule the area he lives in.

Check out the above. Put Catfish Bend Casino in the search and read. If further intrigued by the stupidity, enter Drunk Mayor.

The City has "invested" in a swimming pool at the failing casino complex.

[A-unit]

I was formerly an employee at the Casino, and the "perpetrator" was one of my supervisors. I believe that they were just looking for an excuse to fire anyone. He just had bad timing. I can't believe Scott Adams cuts down his fan either. I personally hardly ever thought twice about Dilbert until after this incident. He just needed to be there. People were very worried about their jobs, people cried. I myself made many friends at the Casino in the short time I worked there. The comic made people laugh and it just shocked us all when he got fired for putting it up...Its a casino and they waste their time searching through servaillance tapes for a the "comic strip poster" ...and who was the stupid one

[Boris]

Hmm. I've posted Dilbert strips and never gotten in trouble. On the other hand, the ones I post tend to be the more technically oriented ones, like the one from 12/13/07. I don't know that I've ever posted one of the "management is made up of [insert epithet here]" ones.

Sounds like this guy's bosses are, indeed, humorless control freaks, and I make no excuses for them. Still, when you already know that the company is in trouble, it's not the smartest time to give them a pretext for firing you.

[Dave1-20-2009]

from the linked article:
""Most 'Dilbert' comics don't come right out and call management a bunch of drunken lemurs," Adams said. "So I can see how this one might have been a tad over the line.""

Very disappointing.

[Rodrigo]

This reminds me of a real story that happened to me.
Everyday, after our lunch break, me and a few colleagues would gather in the back of the company building to chat a bit, and read the latest Dilbert comic on the newspaper. On this particular day, the comic was one of Dilbert and friends laughing about a comics, the phb arriving and saying he would forbid anti-management comics strips. At that point, Dilbert would say something like: Today's comic was exactly about that.
We all found that funny (of course), and we laughing ourselves when our boss arrived, and asked what we were laughing about, for which we answered: today's Dilbert strip. His comment: I think I'll forbid these anti-management comics strips.
At that point, 2 of us fell to the ground laughing, and it took us a couple minutes before we were able to tell that the strip was exactly about that.
I'm happy to say none of us were fired.

[Andrew Weaver]

Great stuff, as usual! I sent this link to a guy at work. Next thing I knew he had printed out your comic (the very one that got this poor "idiot" fired) and plastered it proudly on his desk.

I'll let you know if the guy is canned any time soon.

[Paul H.]

If they have gravity on whatever world these managers live on, I hope it's at least ten times as strong as ours.

[rewboss]

I am an English teacher, and often teach at local companies (I'm in Germany), some of them very big names.

I actually showed one group of students that very strip (we were practicing interrogative pronouns -- trust me, the strip was relevant to that), and they laughed while nodding sagely.

Then they asked me how many other German comic strips I knew had been translated into English.

Further interrogation (and more, albeit impromptu, practice of interrogatives, especially "What" as in "What are you talking about?") revealed that their official company newsletter always has a Dilbert strip on the back page. In German. Apparently, they thought Dilbert had been created especially for their newsletter, and were really chuffed that he'd gone international.