Weasels at Work

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How does a guy who works at home keep up on the latest gripes of the cubicle-bound drones whose lives Dilbert's is supposed to mirror? Adams says he monitors hundreds of e-mails a day from spies in the working world. He has noticed an uptick in the message volume since the onset of the recession. "People are a little more bitter and angry," he says, "so they're far more interested in not only embarrassing their boss but using company time to do it." Not that a little plunge in the stock market is going to alter the basic dynamics of the worker-boss relationship. "It doesn't change that much," he says. "You put three people in the room, and one's in charge, and the other two are going to be disgruntled."