The Joy Of Work is Scott Adams’s fourth business/humor book trading on his experiences in corporate America that became fodder for his daily Dilbert strip.  In this book, Adams comes up with funny ways to amuse yourself at work by harassing co-workers and avoiding work.  He also details how to make humor, and the different types of criticism one may come upon while trying to be successful at creating humor.

This book came out in 1998, when Dilbert, and Adams, were at the top of their game.  I’ve likely had it since then (the sticker on the back says I bought it at Crown Books, which went out of business in 2001), but just never got around the reading it until now.  Some of the clever tricks to avoid work will likely still work, but some stick out now as having been taken down by technology.  One obvious example of this is the suggestion to use a white board to avoid anyone tracking what was written.  Today, there are white boards which automatically upload to computers.  For those that don’t, cell phone cameras have become the norm in documenting what is written on the white board.

Dilbert is not the cultural phenomenon it was over a decade ago, and I’m not as big a fan as I was at the time.  That said, this book still had some charms and I’m glad I pulled it out from the bottom of the to-read drawer.