Workplaces are fun. I mean, at the end of the day, when you are done with cribbing, bitching, cursing and wondering about the “WHY? Why ME?”, it gives a lot of fodder for humour — funny, sarcastic, dry, dark — every kind of humour. And one must admit, although we complain that creative juices are sucked dry by these offices, they sure have ‘nurtured’, well, in their unique way, artistic spirits.
One such creative outburst — workplace comic strips. ‘Dilbert’, first published on April 16, 1989, was born out of Scott Adams’ experiences at different workplaces. In the official site, Adams says, “Dilbert is a composite of my co-workers over the years. He emerged as the main character of my doodles... Dogbert was created so Dilbert would have someone to talk to.” It has satirical, subtle humour and parodies office culture through characters like Dilbert, Dogbert, The Boss etc.
Apart from appearing in 2,000 newspapers, Dilbert has starred on TV, in PC games and books.
‘Working Daze’, with an obvious pun on ‘days’, written by John Zakour. It was originally drawn by Andre Noel in 2001, replaced Kyle Miller in 2003, who was also replaced by Scott Roberts in June 2008. So, the strip has evolved a lot. But it has always revolved around the staff of MicroMacroWare, a computer firm, which has a super rich CEO, and takes a dig at the life inside a modern, hi-tech office, where you get to meet Jay, the everyman programmer, Ed, the lazy veteran programmer, Rita, the evil manager, Dana, the overworked office manager and other interesting characters.
A new innovation is the web comic ‘Player vs Player’, which doubles up as a game too. Scott Kurtz lives through the life at a fictional gaming magazine called PVP, inhabited by employees Francis, Brent and Jade, boss Cole and an intern troll, Skull. Game-based fantasy meets the nitty-gritty of daily office grind.
So next time you are bored at office, enjoy some comic fun!