Book Review – Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies

There are a lot of business books out there, most focusing on how to start up a business of your own or boosting your business into a highly successful enterprise. All of this is fine, of course, if you are running a business or want to run a business. But what if you are one of the many people, perhaps even the majority, who are currently working at an office job and want to know how improve your financial situation without starting a business of your own; what do you do then?

Build a Better Life By Stealing Office Supplies attempts to share advice for just those people. Written by Dogbert, the brilliant business tactician (with assistance from Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert), Build a Better Life covers numerous business situations and provides advice for the typical white collar worker. Are the comics used to illustrate the suggestions filled with useful advice, or will they leave you wanting more.

Summary

Each page of Build a Better Life features a comic featuring Dogbert and Dilbert, illustrating a principle of office work and providing Dogbert’s advice, broken into sections according to the topics covered. The first few cover the basics of office lore, such as Dressing for Success (including the tendency of business clothes to gain stains), Business Etiquette (such as how every personal call taken at the office will draw all your coworker’s attention), and Office Politics (how to use kissing up to get to where you want in your office).

The book then looks at Money in the office, stressing the need to request as much money as possible and generally exaggerate as much as possible to get a higher budget. You then have a few illustrations of how The Bureaucracy will ruin your productivity (including the Dogbert Phone Method to end conversations with anyone seeking information from you) and ways to enhance your Performance and Productivity, typically by consuming coffee and avoiding cubicles (as if you had a choice in that respect).

The next several sections look at the people you will encounter at your work, starting with Your Boss, and the types of managers that might be present. There’s then several comics on your Co-Workers, such as the accountants, engineers, and marketing people.

Next, there are a few sections covering more details of office life, such as Perks (including stealing office supplies, as per the book’s title) and Meetings (where the more people present, the more drained your group’s effective intelligence tends to be). There are a few comics about Weasel Words, Bluffing, and Lying (and the power of each to increase your success in the business world). There is a short section on Technology and Innovation (which shares how all progress is the result of faulty assumptions, such as computers eliminating the use of paper), and another on Style versus Substance (discussing how in business, style beat substance every time).

The last few sections of the book share Dogbert’s personal tips to succeed in life. It starts with Getting Away With It, covering how to handle questions, avoid criticism, and enjoy the slow process most big businesses follow when firing workers. There are some of the Dogmas of the office, from how ideas evolve to how the office should handle rumors, and the book finishes off with a few of Dogbert’s Tips, including how to put your job in perspective (mainly, to realize how little it really matters).

Pros

Build a Better Life covers numerous aspects of the typical white collar job, providing plenty of information about how to make things run in the typical office environment. The comics illustrate plenty of examples for how you can apply these lessons to your real life (sometimes, in ways that won’t get you instantly fired). Plus, as you might guess, it’s a pretty funny book.

Cons

Build a Better Life was written in 1991, at the start of the Dilbert comic strip, so if you are a Dilbert fan, many of the characters you enjoy aren’t included (I particularly miss Wally and Alice) and others don’t look or act the way you are familiar with (the Pointy-Haired Boss doesn’t have pointy-hair). It’s not a real guide to work, like The Joy of Work (although that might not be the best source of advice to follow, anyway).  Plus, most of the advice in this book, if followed, will lead to plenty of trouble (legal, ethical, and otherwise).

Overall

Build a Better Life By Stealing Office Supplies is a classic Dilbert book, and it’s hard to resist getting advice from Dogbert on running your office. It’s a bit dated, but most of the example comics are still plenty funny. If you’re a Dilbert fan, it’s definitely a nice addition to your collection.