Boss: I can only give you a 3% raise.
If you want more, take it up with our CEO.
Dilbert: I'd like to explain why I deserve more than a 3% raise.
As a negotiating strategy, Dogbert will simultaneously read a media report about your lavish $85 million mansion.
I invented three new technologies this year.
Dogbert: "The toilets are solid gold."
Dilbert: I wrote most of the code for our new product.
Dogbert: "The helicopter pad is on the roof of the car museum."
Dilbert: I worked eighty hours per week.
Dogbert: "Every elevator has a full kitchen."
Dilbert: I could earn more at Google or Apple...
Dogbert: "Entire house rotates for optimal sun exposure."
Dilbert: Do you see where I'm going with this?
CEO: High-five?
Coworker: I noticed you don't do much work.
Wally: My philosophy is that there will be plenty of time to work when I'm dead.
Coworker: But you won't be here to do it.
Wally: I guess you don't know what a perfect system looks like.
Boss: You're a perfect employee in many ways.
Dilbert: I am?
Boss: For example, you have excellent technical skills.
Dilbert: That's true.
Boss: And your attendance is perfect.
Dilbert: Yes, it is.
Boss: And you are too risk-averse to quit and start your own company.
Dilbert: What?
Boss: Plus, you have no social life to interfere with work.Dilbert: Are these still compliments?
Boss: Combine all of that with your irrational need for approval, and it makes you a code-writing puppet.
Did I already say you're underpaid?
Dilbert: Stop complimenting me!
Dogbert's Tech Support.
Dilbert: The error message says my copy of Windows is not genuine.
Dogbert" I'll walk you through a series of steps that won't work.
Dilbert: Wait...
what?
Dogbert: After seventeen attempts that involve rebooting, you will lose hope.
At some point you will give up and buy a new computer just to be done with it all.
We'll start by uninstalling all of your drivers and reinstalling.
Dilbert: Can I skip all of the useless steps and just buy a new computer?
Dogbert: Sure, but you don't need to be a jerk about it.
Dogbert: I decided to become a product designer because I hate people.
I will fill every package with styrofoam debris and affix hard-to-remove stickers all over the cases.
I'll make the buttons invisible by making them black on a black surface.
Ha ha ha!
Dilbert: I've always wondered how this stuff happens.
Dilbert: Our tests show that people can't figure out how to use our software.
And yet we still sell it.
How are we different from criminals?
Boss: Our tax rate is lower.
Boss: How many days will it take to finish the tests?
Dilbert: Three.
Boss: You have two.
Dilbert: I can't do it in two days.
That's why I said three.
Boss: That was before I used my leadership skills to tell you to do it in two days.
Dilbert: Leadership doesn't change the laws of physics.
The test takes three days.
Boss: You have two.
Leadership!
These test results look incomplete.
Dilbert: Just like my soul.
Asok: Do you have any investment tips?
Boss: You're asking the right person!
I can teach you how to time the market, catch a falling knife, and invest in a dead-cat bounce.
That's my system.
Asok: What about diversification?
Boss: I don't invest in anything I can't spell.
Dilbert: Yay!
I have another full day of doing nothing but rearranging zeros and ones.
You know it will be a good day when there is no human interaction on the schedule.
Tina: How's your day going?
Dilbert: Well, it started good...
Dilbert: There's a bad story about you on the Internet.
Apparently, you described a plan to "ruin any journalist who writes an unfair story" about us.
CEO: That was off the record!
Dilbert: You said it in front of a dozen reporters at a business event.
CEO: It was just bar conversation.
I was making a point about fairness.
Dilbert: Hmmm...
but now no sane writer would write a negative article about us.
I can't tell if you're a brilliant leader or criminally insane.
CEO: I'd show you the Venn diagram they gave us in CEO school, but it just looks like a circle.
Asok: A 27-year-old tech millionaire published his list of fifty things you need to do to succeed.
Dilbert: In other words, he has no idea why he succeeded.
Asok: Sure he does.
He even has a chart of his top thirty...
priorities.
Okay, I hear it now.
Negotiations Continue.
Salesman: I can't meet your delivery deadline unless you agree to my price today.
Dilbert: If you don't agree to my price today, management is likely to do a reorg soon and change its mind about this project.
Salesman: How often does that happen?
Dilbert: It hasn't happened since breakfast, so we're overdue.
Salesman: I'll start our negotiation by setting the anchor price at...
Dilbert: Five dollars.
Salesman: Um, I was going to say $27,500, but you beat me to the anchor, and now I can't help thinking the fair price is closer to $5.
How does an engineer know more about the intricacies of my job than I do?
Dilbert: I had five minutes and a browser.
CEO: I returned from the afterlife and I'm taking back my job as CEO.
Dilbert: So...
you're an angel?
CEO: I set all of the thermostats to 140 degrees.
Let's see how long it takes you to answer your own question.
Asok: Elon Musk is worried that artificial intelligence will destroy mankind.
Coworker: Why would you pay attention to him?
What's he ever done?
Asok: Stop making root for A.I.
Coworker: And what planet is this "Elon" guy from, anyway?
Wally: Can I create my own job?
I hear people do that.
They figure out what they are good at and then they create a job around it.
I'm more of a strategic thinker than a worker bee.
My job could be to attend meetings and say strategic things.
And, of course, I would have no time to respond to email because I'd be busy being strategic.
Boss: It feels as if you want a job that doesn't involve work.
Wally: Would you trust a strategic thinker who can't solve his own problems?
Pointy-Haired Boss Becomes CEO.
Boss: We're going into the evil robot business.
We'll sell robots that psychologically manipulate their owners into buying unnecessary upgrades.
Evil Robot: Your neighbor got titanium bolts for his robot.
I guess that's what winners do.
But your way is good, too.
Catbert: Our CEO is missing, so I am activating the succession plan.
You're our new CEO.
The power will corrupt you in 3...
2...
There it is.
(The boss changes into a smelly monster)
Boss: To be perfectly honest...
Dilbert: Wait!
Why do you need to say you're being honest in this particular case?
You're implying that you've lied to me so often in the past that this one instance of honesty is noteworthy.
That is tantamount to admitting you have no respect for me as a human being.
And you don't even have the decency to hide your evil in a competent fashion!
Do you think I'm such an idiot that I wouldn't notice your verbal assault on my intelligence?
Okay, let's hear the one honest thing you have ever told me.
Go.
Boss: This is going to be the easiest lie I've ever told.
Dilbert: Our CEO Bought a Russian military dolphin for his daughter's pool party and it killed a party clown.
Then it stole a smartphone and hired Dogbert to put a hit on the CEO so the dolphin...
Garbage Man: That's way too much exposition.
Dilbert: ...fill the CEO's mansion with water and live in it forever.
CEO: I bought a Russian military dolphin for a pet and it killed a party clown at my daughter's pool party.
I need you to dispose of the body.
Dogbert: The good news is that I'm an expert at getting rid of dead bodies.
CEO: What's the bad news?
Dogbert: Your dolphin hired me to kill you.
CEO: I bought a dolphin for my daughter's birthday party.
But it turned out to be a retired Russian military dolphin.
It dragged one of the birthday clowns into the pool and drowned him.
Dilbert: I though dolphins need to live in seawater.
CEO: Maybe that's why it's so angry.
Wally: Success is all about who you know.
I'm not successful, so apparently it doesn't help to know you.
Dilbert: I"m sorry I let you down.
Wally: It's as if you aren't even trying.
Boss: It takes money to make money.
Dilbert: Then...
where did the first money come from?
Boss: God?
Dilbert: Don't let him hear doubt in your voice.
Boss: What phase is your project in?
Dilbert: This is the phase where people ask stupid questions.
Boss: How long does it last?
Dilbert: It isn't looking good for today.
Wally: I'm already useless, but I'm thinking about becoming toxic as well.
Dilbert: That seems ambitious for you.
Wally: Think it through.
As a useless person, I still get invited to meetings because I don't cause much trouble.
But if I go full-toxic, no one will invite me to meetings in the first place.
I can avoid a lot of work by nipping it in the bud.
Dilbert: Is it hard to be toxic?
How do you do it?
Wally: It's easy.
All you do is provide incomplete information that makes people anxious and hateful.
I can't tell you what was said in that last meeting, but I defended you.
Coworker: You know how studies always say one out of ten people have a particular problem.
I'm always that guy.
Statistically speaking, I keep nine people safe just by existing.
Dilbert: That's not how statistics work.
Coworker: And...
everyone else in the department knows that?