Lately I’ve been researching a book on the joy of work. And the serious lack of joy too.
Which brings me to Dilbert, white-collar worker-turned-cartoonist Scott Adams’ daily strip about the utter stupidity of some aspects of work-life we all know too well.
My problem is that I’m getting a depressing overdose of Dilbert. Because I’m not just looking at a cartoon now and then. I’ve been studying Dilbert. I’m deep in Dilbert. I am reading The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions, a hardcover book with 336 pages of Adams’ philosophy of work, along with some cartoons for spice. Then I’m reading the largest book I’ve ever seen, Adams’ Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert, a folio-sized 576-page book of cartoon strips, with embedded commentary.
I’ve had to force myself to stop reading. It’s too much. Too much cynicism. Too much frustration. Too much despair.
Which brings me to pepper. Pepper, like Dilbert, is good in small doses but terrible in quantity. Studying Dilbert this way is like having eggs with my pepper instead of pepper with my eggs. Too much pepper ruins everything. So does too much Dilbert.
So does too much of so many other things. Like talk radio. Nightly news. Ice cream. Time with relatives. Solomon agreed when he penned this nugget: “If you find honey, eat just enough. Too much of it and you will vomit.”1
The lesson is, too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
1Proverbs 25:16 NIV
