Scott Adams started cartooning while still working in a telephone company. After being repeatedly passed over for promotion, he realized that it doesn't matter even though he's not being promoted because he started having time for his hobbies, and one of those was to illustrate cartoons. 

The title "Dilbert" was actually suggested by one of his coworkers, and the jokes behind the comics were based on what he was experiencing at work.

Sometimes, Scott Adams doesn't have to write the text himself: some are sent by his readers and some are directly quoted from his experiences. And Adams knows how to capture the readers' suggestions, even if he doesn't know their situations personally.

People may laugh a...