Customer Reviews

Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies: Dogbert's Big Book of Business

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I cannot say enough positive things about BABLBSOS, Scott Adams' first book and the one that started him on his path to fame, glory, and fortune. I bought my first copy in the early nineties at the MIT Tech Coop bookstore, when a fellow geek friend of mine said I absolutely had to read it - he just shoved it into my shopping tote. At that point in time I had never heard of Scott Adams, and I think the Boston Globe was one of a small handful of papers carrying Dilbert (it subsequently took two years of letter writing before my local paper agreed to carry it).

In BABLBSOS, Scott Adams covers his by now familiar territory of the world of American high tech business for the very first time. BABLBSOS is not a rehash of the daily Dilbert strip like so many other collections of Adams'. Rather, BABLBSOS is original material organized by topics, which collectively cover all major aspects of the workplace experience in a high tech company. Since Adams is exploring this material for the first time, and is not doing it in a daily comic strip form, the results are more hard-hitting and concise than Adams' subsequent books. Each page stands on its own and showcases in the best possible way Adams' brilliantly cynical understanding of how businesses all too often really function.

But BABLBSOS is more than just Scott Adams' best work. It also is one of the best business books and management guides ever created, and certainly the pithiest. All too many business books present prescriptions for how businesses should operate. BABLBSOS is the opposite: an "anti-business" book that shows how businesses actually behave, from the perspective of the employees. The challenge and guidance for managers, then, is to do the opposite of the pointy-haired boss, to avoid the situations that Adams presents.

After I originally read BABLBSOS, I recommended it to everyone I knew who would appreciate it (which is almost anyone who works for a living in a corporation), and used many of the panels in various presentations. I still keep a copy handy in my office for reference. So, as you can see, I cannot recommend BABLBSOS highly enough.

This book is practical, humorous, and has big, simple cartoon pictures so it's easy to understand. Dogbert gives useful insights on everyday situations such as coffee intake, boss classifications, and hallway greetings. A must read!

Before the boss's hair went pointy, before dinosaurs roamed the strip, before Dogbert became master of the universe, there was Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies. From what your clothes say about you ("I hope you'll ignore the stuff that comes out of my mouth"), to change ("You will appear to be a visionary planner if you decentralize everything which is centralized and centralize everything which is decentralized"), to excuses for being late ("Just remember that your excuse must be more dramatic than those who arrive before you"), this book is fall-out-of-your-chair funny while at the same time being spot-on in describing the surreality of the modern corporate environment. Each page is a Dilbert strip, but written for this book. Together they cover pretty much everything you need to know about how business really operates. The final two pages, "When to change jobs" and "Keeping your perspective" do, penultimately and ultimately, put it all in, well, perspective.

There are many book about business etiquette. Many of them talk about all sorts of obscure manners and what to do in the strangest of situations. But this one actually talks about situations that you get into every day, such as hallway etiquette and mettings. But the best part about it is that it is fun to read. Other books have pages and pages of text that talk endlessly like a moron in the hallway. With this book, every page have something funny about it

Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies / 0836217578

Recently I started re-reading my Dilbert collections; this is the second collection of unique strips by my count, but they're not precisely Dilbert strips in the traditional sense: each page is a single 4-panel strip where the first panel is Dogbert explaining a rule of business.

The strips are very funny and actually sadly seem quite a "spot on" reflection, even dated as this volume is. I do wish that there was less of a reliance on female stereotypes in some of the pieces -- there's at least two strips that indicate that nicely dressed women are either likely having affairs with upper management or hoping to skate by on sex appeal. Adams can be funnier than that and doesn't need to resort to these stereotypes; fortunately these strips are two out of ~100 and the rest of the book is very funny and fun. (And his later collections have moved away from these "jokes" entirely, I believe.)

~ Ana Mardoll

This is an old one - first published in 1991, but remains depressingly relevant and just as funny. The cartoons on career advancement, office politics, clueless managers - are bitingly accurate. How funny they are depends on which side of the office desk you sit on.

Since this is an early Dilbert series, Wally is not there. Alice has not yet made her appearance. Nor has Asok. Outsourcing is a decade away. E-mail is not yet a common workplace affliction. The World Wide Web is waiting for the browser. Dilbert is leading a lone charge, or suffering all alone at the hands of his boss. Dilbert is also less sarcastic than he is now - a reflection of the author's growing confidence that Dilbert may be a lowly cubicle dweller, but his Pointy Haired Boss cannot afford to fire him.

Life in the office cubicle has always been difficult, the recent economic downturn has made it even worse. A natural way to cope is with humor, it is a natural stress reliever that can make even the worst of situations lighter and bearable. Scott Adams is one of the best at creating humor related to the office, made effective because there is so much truth in the situations he creates. Nearly all office dwellers can relate the cartoons to their experiences.
If you need a humorous break from your personal office ecology, then this book is what you need. It is funny, accurate and a lifting of the spirits from the tedium and uncertainty of life in modern office world.

This book is simply awesome! It's all made of comics strips of Dilbert and co but all of the content is organzied as a Management book, topic in which you are guided by Dogbert (of course). We can say it's the grandfather somehow of the "Dilbert and the way of the weasel" and the previous half-comic half-written books of Scott Adams because it really is structured like a book and not like a comic collection. Indeed the subtitle is "Dogberts' big book of Business"
With Dogbert you will explore several important matters like Marketing, Business Clothing, Co-workers, Meetings, Tips & triks and so on.
I think that in this way the ironic and sarcastic attack of Scott Adams to nonsenses of Corporate America is even more focused. Totally recommended!

I will forever be grateful to the wise woman introduced me to the world according to Dilbert (and his megalomaniac dog Dogbert) with this book a few Christmases ago. If you enjoy this -- or rather, when you need more Dilbert, you have to get Dogbert's Clues for the Clueless -- my all-time favorite Dilbert book.

Interesting title but the cartoons inside does not match the funniness of the cover.

P.