STRIP FOR Jul 24, 2009

Silly Dilbert, the first thing you should do in that sort of environment is book out blocks of time in your calendar for yourself. For instance I knew a guy who had 12-1 booked every single day (I noticed this when I tried to book a meeting with him) so that he could have lunch and wouldn't have to worry about people booking him in meetings throughout the whole day. I also set a start and end time in the hated Lotus Notes so that people could book meetings with me before 8:30 or after 5. If you've got a project due, book out the day as a meeting so no one can bother you with meeting requests. Easy.

I remember attending nine different one-hour meetings in a single day. A PHB who was in our 8:00 a.m. meeting asked me at a 4:00 p.m. meeting "Did you take care of the action items from this morning?"

Why is this company even using LookOut--I mean, Outlook? Oh yeah, because they have a corporate culture of incompetence.

So, "failure puppet" has become a new shared monichre!