Book Review: 2009 Dilbert Day by Day Calendar

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Plenty of work related humor

Cons: Now completely out of date

The Bottom Line:

Relieve your work stress

By laughing at a worse job

Dilbert fits the bill

2009 - A Year Well Spent with Dilbert and the Pointy Haired Boss

I used to read comic strips faithfully.  But as I got busier with other things, it became harder and harder to find the time to do that.  So I have settled for getting my favorite strips in the page a day calendar (or as I like to call it, a daily rip off calendar).  There are three strips I make sure to get every year, and Dilbert is one of them.  The 2009 calendar, sub-titled We Have a Motion to Adjourn, is now old, but provided many great strips as always.

Dilbert has become the comic strip for the working people.  Our main character, Dilbert, is a cubical dweller at an unnamed company where he works as an engineer.  While at work, he has to deal with his crazy co-works like Wally, who just walks around and does no work, and Alice, the super aggressive female.  Worse yet, he is faced with his nameless boss who makes arbitrary decisions and too many unreachable demands.

Things aren't much better at home, where Dilbert lives with his dog, Dogbert.  Dogbert is the smartest character in the strip and is always coming up with some new way to get idiots to give him money.

I've been getting these calendars for years, and I noticed something new with 2009 that I really liked.  All the strips were in color.  The last several years have featured the Sunday strips in color since they originally run in color, but the other six days have been black and white.  I enjoyed seeing all the characters in color for all 365 days.

And that's another thing I appreciate about the calendar - this truly is a page a day calendar.  Many of the other ones I get have one combined day for Saturday and Sunday.  Here, we get seven pages a week.  The ironic thing is, this calendar actually sits in my office where I don't see the weekends while the other strips stay at home where I could flip the pages for every day.

The strips in the calendar originally appeared in 2006, but they aren't really that topical.  The humor still applies.  Over the course of the year, the employees are subject to a company picnic, on a Sunday.  Dogbert buys out the company and fires Dilbert because he is tired of Dilbert's whining about his job.  Dogbert also writes a best-seller that is part fake autobiography and part plagiarized.  The boss gets caught for embellishing his resume.  And Dilbert drinks so much coffee it starts giving him unusual abilities.

I just use the calendar for a daily laugh (and I don't like to cheat ahead), but if you needed to jot a quick note to your self on a page, you could.  While there are no lines, there is plenty of white space to make notes.  If there is a National or International holiday on that date, it shows up on the bottom of the page.

I discovered recently just how used to having this calendar I've gotten.  I look at it several times a day, not necessarily for the joke, but to double check the date before I got to write in on something at work.  It's nice to have for that reason alone.

Obviously, now, you don't want to get the 2009 calendar.  But if you want some work related humor, keep your eyes open for other Dilbert page a day calendars.  You'll laugh your way through another great year.