Journey to Cubeville

Imagine the scene: The bees are on the job, buzzing, busy. The hapless worker drones build the honeycomb, ceaselessly, tirelessly, for the good of the hive, every waking moment, hour after hour, day after day, week after week. Then one morning, an industrious bee brings in the latest 'Dilbert' collection. The other bees gather round. Chuckles. Then laughter. Then great, tear-squirting bee guffaws. 'That's exactly what's happening here, man!' All the bees spontaneously take a coffee break and sit around telling unflattering stories about the Queen.

You could be that bee. If, that is, you're the first one at work to get your hands on Jounrey to Cubeville, the latest adventures of Dilbert, Dogbert, and the rest of that crew who offer salvation from the mind-numbing repetition of the daily grind.

Or things could go much differently. Be the last one in your block of cubicles to see Journey to Cubeville and you run the risk of being lost in the watercooler conversation, left out of the e-mail loop, derided behind your back like an upper-management imbecile. Shame and embarrassment galore. It could happen.

Journey to Cubeville takes on the usual suspects (all forms of office-related idiocy) with Adams's characteristic lack of sympathy. Whether it's pointed at the network administrator with the power to paralyze an entire company with the stroke of a key, the accountant who engages you in a heated battle over reimbursement for a ham sandwich hastily gulped on a business trip, or the manager (no specific demented action necessary, because in the world of Dilbert that word is synonymous with 'incompetent fool'), Adams's humor and insight is the kind that only an insider can provide — and it's so universal that the millions of people who read it seem sure that the strip is actually about their company.

So come on — you know you want to be first. Take everyone else along for the ride for a change. You can photocopy the pages and tape them up all over the place. Go crazy. Then e-mail Scott Adams all about it and end up immortalized in the next Dilbert collection.