The "O-word" or "What does this Dilbert comic mean?"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have a Dilbert per-day calendar at work. The strip for 8/18 (originally published 8/18/97) goes as follows:

Frame 1: Pointy-haired Boss: “You’ll be on the task force to recruit the smartest college seniors to work here.”

Frame 2: Pointy-haired Boss: “Remember to lie often. And don’t mock them for their lack of life experience.”

Frame 3: College kid: “So you’re saying meetings are just like parties?”

     Dilbert: "Well, I'm not allowed to say the "O-word"..."

I know this is going to be a simple answer, but I don’t get it.

2

orgy

3

He’s implying that the meetings turn into Orgies.

4

Thanks. I figured it was something simple. I guess I’m just to pure a person to think of such things. (insert smiley here)

5

and thanks for my first “simulpost”…

6

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

You thought it was something worse. Didn’t you.

7

quickly followed (thanks Matt) by my second!

8

On August 18, the Pointy-Haired Boss actually did something smart! I’m astonished!

(He announced that due to “bad weather” all the “non-essential” employees could go home. Then he videotaped who left.)

9

tangential hijack: Does anyone else see the suspicious resemblance (allowing for differences in drawing style) between Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss and W.A. Thornhump, the CEO of “Bloom County Inc.” that used to appear in Berke Breathed’s strip <i>Bloom County</i> from time to time, usually to make simpering, insincere apologies to some group Breathed had insulted?

10

Now that you mention it, yeah. Adams wouldn’t care tho, he’s out for money, pure and simple.

11

Breathed also used the word “Dilbert” in a strip before the Dilbert strip existed. I don’t recall the date, but I read it in one of the books recently. The cockroach was insulting Opus, and that was one of the insults he used.

12

Mmmm…Cmkeller, I’m not positive that Dilbert didn’t exist at the time that the strip you refer to was published. I seem to remember Dilbert in the Chicago Sun-Times in the 80s, but it had a different tone to it; it was just the story of A Boring Guy. It wasn’t until the 90s that Adams focused in on the corporate satire. So Breathed may have been making an, at the time, obscure reference. I dunno; I’d have to see the strip. In what collection did you see it?