The Dilbert Principle and other "old" books

My brother gifted me with a hard-bound copy of The Dilbert Principle today. He found the copy at a used-book shop last week and promptly bought the copy. It was almost mint condition and I was surprised that a good copy was available from a used-book shop. Many books I've found there often have torn pages or many with scribbles. Some even have coffee stains. The soft-bound copies usually have worn covers and it is not uncommon to find spines that indicated the book has seen better days. The hard-bound copy will join my flood-damaged soft-bound copy of the same book that I bought when I was still in Japan.

I also like to browse merchandise at used-book shops. Mostly I try to find early editions of books I already have. So far, I've had some success because I've managed to get a First Edition copy of the Silmarillion, and a few chess books that I knew were quite expensive if bought brand new. One time, I bought a hard-bound copy of our preferred reference in our Structural Engineering classes back in the day when I was a senior at university. On a trip in the US, I grabbed a copy of a Gary Larson compilation. And in a small shop near our village, I was able to get a Vietnam War era Doonesbury comic book. While some maybe quick to dismiss this as just another comic book, it should be clarified here that Doonesbury is a terrific political strip that has taken up a lot of issues (politics usually among them) reflecting prevailing perceptions in the US.

Meanwhile, back to the Dilbert book. I collected the Dilbert books from when I was still a student in Japan. I became curious about Dilbert from the comic strips of the Saturday and Sunday editions of the Daily Yomiuri that I preferred over other broadsheets in Japan. Then there was a reference to Dilbert made by my high school buddy John, who was working in the US and probably had first-hand experiences of what Scott Adams wrote and illustrated about in his books.

I must admit that a lot of the material were creative hits on what seemed to me was a lack of common sense at office environments. What attracted me to the comic strip was that Dilbert and his colleagues who featured in most of the situations were engineers. So it appeared to me also that the comic strip was a tribute of sorts to engineers, who were also subject to the (humorous) incompetence of those around them. The only problem was that the engineers were not the decision-makers - the managers and the execs especially one "pointy-haired" boss frequently torment our gang of engineers with the seemingly endless moronic actions. Sounds familiar? Well, I won't go into the details and will leave the reader to be curious enough to maybe Google about Dilbert, and study and enjoy at the same time what Scott Adams has to say and advise us about the workplace. Incidentally, Dilbert books are classified under business books in Japanese book stores, particularly Tower Books and Yurindo, also frequent haunts of mine in the late 90's. But that's another story for another post.