Great Throughts Treasury

"I developed a conceptual model for a perfect company. The primary objective of this company is to make the employees as effective as possible. I figure the best products come from the most effective employees, so employee effectiveness is the most fundamental of the fundamentals. The goal of my hypothetical company is to get the best work out of the employees and make sure they leave work by 5 o'clock. Finishing by 5 is so central to everything that follows that I named the company OA5 (Out of Five) to reinforce the point. If you let this part of the concept slip, the rest of it falls apart... The goal of OA5 is to guarantee that the employee who leaves at 5pm has done a full share of work and everybody realizes it. For that to happen, the OA5 company has to do things differently than an ordinary company. Companies use a lot of energy trying to increase employee satisfaction. That's very nice of them, but let's face it ? work sucks. If people liked work they'd do it for free. The reason we have to pay people to work is that work is inherently unpleasant compared to the alternatives. At OA5 we recognize that the best way to make employees satisfied about their work is to help them get away from it as much as possible. An OA5company isn't willing to settle for less productivity from the employees, just less time. The underlying assumptions for OA5 are: (1) Happy employees are more productive and creative than unhappy ones. (2) The average person is only mentally productive for a few hours a day no matter how many hours are 'worked'. (3) People know how to compress their activities to fit a reduced time. Doing so increases both their energy and their interest. The payoff is direct and personal ? they go home early. (4) A company can't do much to stimulate happiness and creativity, but it can do a lot to kill them. The trick for the company is to stay out of the way."

"I don't even bother walking to the couch, because there's nobody going to come in and see me. When I wake up I ask myself if I feel like working, and if I do, I get back in the chair and I work. If I don't, I do something else."

"I don't have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem."

"I don't think I'm ever going to run out of ideas, ... The beauty of the office environment is that you put a bunch of dysfunctional employees in one room and they will find new ways to be dysfunctional that you could never imagine. I think I have an infinite well of ideas to work from."

"I don't think I ever really go more than 30 minutes before I've got two or three things in my mind and I'm trying to decide which of them to use,"

"I don't usually do this." "Do what?" "Be helpful... But I do have a list of employees who have recently been terminated. They're still on the payroll for two more weeks.""

"I fired everyone who used the internet for personal stuff. The only wrinkle in that policy is that you and I are the only employees left. And frankly I use the web for personal stuff too. "Can you teach me how?"

"I don't understand your new dress code policy, Mr. Catbert." "It's simple. Fridays are 'Casual'. But you can't wear jeans because jeans look good and feel good and you already own several pairs.""

"I feel sick every morning. All day long I feel like either crying or punching people." "You've got a bad case of Mahjobis Crappus.""

"I got to get me one of these space shuttles."

"I had several different bosses during the early years of 'Dilbert.' They were all pretty sure I was mocking someone else."

"I hated my work. It never seemed to me to be what I should be doing."

"I get mail; therefore I am."

"I have a theory that everyone is born with a similar quantity of luck, but it?s distributed unevenly over a lifetime. Some people have their bad luck early in life, followed by good luck for the rest of their lives, and vice versa."

"I have infinite capacity to do more work as long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."

"I have to turn the paper upside down to draw Dilbert upside down."

"I have a perverse attraction to risk. Not physical risk but emotional, financial risk - anything than can't kill you immediately."

"I have an ethical question about telecommuting Dogbert. Do I owe my employer 8 productive hours, or do I only need to match the 2 productive hours I would have in the office?" "Well, when you factor in how you're saving the planet by not driving, you only owe one hour." "And this meeting counts.""

"I hired a new director of Human Resources to handle the downsizing. I needed somebody who acts like a friend but secretly delights in the misery of all people."

"I love magazines. It's such McNugget kind of information."

"I love deadlines. I especially love the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by."

"I learned to listen with my heart. I gained respect for others. I understand Sanskrit. I got my HAM radio license. I can divide by zero."

"I keep hearing the argument that some things are constitutional while other things are not. The idea is that we should be in favor of all the things that were decided over two hundred years ago by a bunch of slave-owning cross-dressers who pooped in holes."

"I make a motion that the board of directors double my pay. All in favor, bleat like sheep." "Ba-a-a. Ba-a-a. Ba-a-a." "...I think we're missing a check or a balance somewhere.""

"I made a few thousand suggestions on your first draft." "Of all the pleasures in life, I think nit-picking is the best." "That could explain the break-up of your marriage." "You wouldn't believe what she thought was fun.""

"I love you like a fat kid loves cake!"

"I need to promote one of you to the district manager position. Dilbert, your technical knowledge is too valuable to lose. Ditto for Alice. Neither of you can be promoted. The only logical choice is to promote Al because he has no valuable knowledge."

"I made a list of skills in which I think every adult should gain a working knowledge. I wouldn't expect you to become a master of any, but mastery isn't necessary. Luck has a good chance of finding you if you become merely good in most of these areas. I'll make a case for each one, but here's the preview list. Public speaking. Psychology. Business Writing. Accounting. Design (the basics). Conversation. Overcoming Shyness. Second language. Golf. Proper grammar. Persuasion. Technology ( hobby level). Proper voice technique/"

"I never knew what an engineer did for a living when I was a kid. I still don't."

"I never liked New Year's Eve anyway. And this one's no different. I will not be pressured into having fun just because we arbitrarily use a base Ten counting system and a big round number is coming up."

"I prefer the "playful despot" form of government."

"I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination."

"I scheduled the meeting for 6 am so everyone can make it." "I assume you'll show up at 8 and blame traffic.""

"I should have written that down."

"I tell you Bob you're like a celebrity around here. Grotesque and evil, yet famous and surprisingly polite. Do you golf?"

"I think 'Dilbert' will remain popular as long as employees are frustrated and they fear the consequences of complaining too loudly. 'Dilbert' is the designated voice of discontent for the workplace. I never planned it that way. It just happened."

"I think she really likes me." "Like is such a strong word.""

"I try to avoid giving advice."

"I think I'll invent some illogical policies to annoy employees. My diabolical new dress code will make them question their own sanity."

"I was no longer surprised to find unlocked doors in the city. Maybe at some subconscious level we don?t believe we need protection from our own species."

"I used to be into gadgets but it just seemed gadgets got boring."

"I try to manage my day by my circadian rhythms because the creativity is such an elusive thing, and I could easily just stomp over it doing my administrative stuff."

"I was raised in the country, where touching meant you're standing on the same carpet. Any closer and you're engaged."

"I would sometimes sit in a crowded restaurant, and say, 'You know, I'm the only person in this restaurant who can't draw.'"

"I wish, I wish, I wish I had a spine."

"I wouldn?t expect you to become a master of any, but mastery isn?t necessary. Luck has a good chance of finding you if you become merely good in most of these areas. ... Public speaking, Psychology, Business writing, Accounting, Design (the basics), Conversation, Overcoming shyness, Second language, Golf, Proper grammar, Persuasion, Technology (hobby level), [and] Proper voice technique"

"I'd like each of you to tell the team what you learned in my workshop."

"Idiocy in the modern age isn't an all-encompassing, twenty-four-hour situation for most people. It's a condition that everybody slips into many times a day. Life is just too complicated to be smart all the time."

"If a job's worth doing, it's too hard."

"I?m slowly becoming a convert to the principle that you can?t motivate people to do things, you can only de-motivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles."