Feature Story |
Civil
Rights ...
Even At Work
|
![Civil Rights ... Even at Work (Gary Huck [after Scott Adams])](lpp44_dlbrt_a.gif) |
Gary
Huck (after Scott Adams) |
"Free
speech, without freedom
of association, means basically
that you can only whisper to yourself."
Almost everyone who works in an office these days will sooner or later
encounter a Dilbert cartoon. Passed surreptitiously by a co-worker or posted boldly on a
bulletin board, Dilbert often serves to deliver a nonverbal message to the boss. And the
message is: We’re on to you.
Dilbert, the nationally syndicated cartoon strip by Scott Adams about life
among the corporate cubicles, is subversive because it speaks that truth that can never be
safely spoken in the workplace: most bosses are incompetent jerks, and we don’t like
them. They put us down, patronize, micromanage, and even spy on us. And although we
pretend to care about the company we work for, most of us actually don’t. We’re
just there for the paycheck.
For all his subversiveness, Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams,
apparently thinks that bosses are salvageable, since he gives presentations to management
groups and now is under contract to produce a series of books on how to be a good boss.
The gist of his message to the boss seems to be: be nice.
But the real problem with bosses is deeper than that: They have too much
power. In fact, argues Cornell researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner, employers are robbing
workers of their basic civil rights. And that’s no laughing matter.
More (page two) ->
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