SO DILBERT! and my Reply from Scott Adams

January 2, 2015 ♦

NerdNotes for Engineers

♦

I was validated from the foxhole by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, and I’ll never forget it. When I was working engineering, corporate telecommunications, I sent a story to Scott Adams and he replied.

I was working, and I mean really working like we work. Day and night and weekends and holidays and internationally on their days and nights and weekends and holidays. I loved it and often still do.

We had an engineering department and a marketing department. Like most west coast tech companies, we also had other locations in Mountain View, Austin Texas, Research Triangle Park (North Carolina), Asia, India, etc.

A struggling intern sent me a HUGE thread of emails which had spanned like a week or more, internationally, regarding what to order for lunch, pizza or sushi.

I was flabberghasted at the length and duration of the email thread.

Topic? For ONE lunch in North Carolina for one meeting. She needed the emails to stop and didn’t know what to do. Yes, one meeting. I was in California. The intern was in California. This lunch was in North Carolina. The intern couldn’t take it anymore and in my constant role as Creative Solutions Expert, she threw up the white flag for a solution.

Product Managers worked for marketing, and the meeting was about a product, and the meeting was in front of some customers visiting from Asia, to the North Carolina office. I mean we are talking easily 60 or more emails.

It started with the Product Manager trying to delegate ordering lunch to the admins for marketing and engineering. The intern worked for the marketing admin. The admins for marketing and engineering were in California. Again, that lunch was almost completely across the country in North Carolina!

The first million emails were about WHO should place the order for lunch (because clearly lunch should only be ordered by an admin):

Were there more engineers that marketing people in the lunch?
- If there are more marketing people than the marketing admin should clearly order.
- If there were more engineering people that the engineering admin should clearly order.

While that was going on, the second dilemma of the email was about the choice of food:

Would pizza or sushi be offensive to customers visiting from Asia?
How about sandwiches?
If we got sandwiches what filling(s)?
If we got pizza what toppings?
- Would pineapple be appropriate?
- Would pepperoni offend them if the customer was vegetarian?
- Is pineapple too exotic?

What Restaurant?

Not to mention the fact that the admins in California had no idea where to order any of this food, for delivery, in North Carolina. This was in the 90’s and we didn’t have restaurant review sites online then.

The Product Manager hosting the meeting was more of a no quality salesman. He could sell a pig a bacon sandwich (but apparently was not capable of ordering lunch). I did a lot of quality assurance for engineering at this job and he was always trying to release product that was not up to my standards. With every product we did the quality dance before release. I was well known and respected (really to this day) among the quality minded.

I was not pleased that this RIDICULOUS THREAD was taking my time away from the projects I was working on!

THIS WAS SO DILBERT!

I solved it quickly by sending to a woman who is still a great friend of mine, who worked for the executive team….with a small note, “End/Solve this please.” She did. She called the Product Manager and told him “no more emails” and directed him to order his own darn lunch in the city of the meeting for his meeting in that city.

Later, on my own time, I scrubbed (cleaned) the email thread. I removed all the names, product name, company name and office names from the email thread. I wanted to see this Dilbert-ized. I went to Dilbert’s website and there was a form. I ‘view sourced’ for the web the form and got an email address for Scott Adams.

I sent Scott Adams the clean thread. He replied! Holey Moley! I don’t even remember what the reply said but I felt so relieved and validated that someone was listening. If he ever used it I have no idea, but it was such a great example of complete wasting of corporate resource time, I had to share it.

Whenever I looked at that Product Manager again, somehow in my imagination, from that day on, he was cartoony, and it made my long work days that much more efficient and stress free.

Thank you Scott Adams, for your reply!

_____

This week I listened to this wonderful interview of Scott Adams by James Altucher. It reminded me of that lunch email thread story. Please listen and let me know what thoughts and memories it provokes in YOU!

The James Altucher Show via Stansberry Radio “Scott Adams The Secret to Dilbert’s Success”

Altucher commented to me online, “He was one of my favorites to interview. Such a good, smart guy who went through extreme failure many times before coming up with Dilbert.”

What makes both Adams and Altucher so cool is that they both started with just a job (notably Scott Adams at Pac Bell and James Altucher at HBO). When you listen to the interview, Scott Adams makes it clear that he’s a “Try Everything” type of guy and rather than a passion based person. He tried a lot of things and became more passionate about what worked (he didn’t start with one passion and limit himself to one thing).

Never afraid to try.

Never be afraid to try to write to Scott Adams!

Altucher loves ideas and encourages everyone to brainstorm ideas, good or bad. You can’t entertain bad ideas if you’re afraid to try!

Thanks Scott Adams and James Altucher for all you do. There were so many great points that we can discuss later.

Need Motivation and Validation?

Also, If you haven’t read Scott Adams book, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life” please do!

Also read James Altucher’s “Choose Yourself” so you can read his book “The Choose Yourself Guide to Wealth” (2015).