Hey - If We Can Say Bugs Bunny Was A Cause of Violence..

Just to let everyone know, because I'm sure you all would be frigging interested - but I do find my current job much more appealing than the one I previously held. The reason for that is simple. I feel like the odds of someone walking through this office with an automated weapon are significantly less here than my last place of employment. I honestly wish I was kidding, but that office had a few characters that kept me on a constant 'Amber Alert'.

Frighteningly enough, I think that feeling of apprehension is true for most of Corporate America. It certainly isn't as bad as the current anxiety associated with air travel (where anyone with an overactive bladder can be a possible terrorist), however, it always looms on the periphery. Now free of the confines of the postal industry, incidents of work-related violence are just way too common - BUT I think I have found the root of this particular evil.

Dilbert.

Before you start wondering if I'm the most likely candidate to go on a killing spree, let me lay out my theory.

This past weekend, I was reading through the Sunday Paper and, of course, perused the Comics section. (FYI - I do read more than just that section. Sometimes.) I got a good laugh from this week's Dilbert, primarily due to the similarity between one of the cartoon's characters and one of my eccentric coworkers. It really is the basis for the success of Scott Adams' comic strip. While overblown and cartoonish, the serial does offer up viewpoints and characters remarkably similar to the common corporate environment. There lies the problem.

By equating coworkers to simplistic cartoon characters, their humanity becomes diminished to our perspectives. They cease to be three-dimensional human beings and, instead, become two-dimensional caricatures. And if cartoons have taught us anything, it is that two-dimensional caricatures can be eliminated with extreme prejudice with little guilt or remorse.

Let's take Midge from Human Resources for example. Aside from her fetish for Precious Moments figurines, Midge is a lovely person and I wish no great harm to fall upon her. (Small amounts of harm, however, are always good for office gossip.) However, if I, thanks to the dogma of Dilbert, view Midge as some quasi-demonic cat that is the purest essence of evil, well, I just might have to pop a cap in her rotund ass (and if I'm taking her down, I'm taking those stupid porcelain figurines down with her). And that's just me. Just imagine what is going through the mind of some temp that thinks the quickest way to Justine Bateman's heart is to mow down dozens of people with his M16. (Stupid little man, doesn't he know Justine Bateman is in love with me??)

So, the point of my whole tirade is this: Bill Watterson needs to bring back Calvin & Hobbes. No one got killed over the story of a little boy and his stuffed tiger.

(And a warning to Fred in Legal: That limp is not fooling me for a second. I know you're a threat and I'm watching you. The second I think you're packing heat; I'm taking you down, Mister. Taking you down to Chinatown.)

wojr (aka Mr. Mallory Keaton)  ¶ 10:53 AM