Editing Dilbert (section)

==Characters==
{{Main|List of Dilbert characters}}
{{More citations needed section|date=January 2020}}

=== Dilbert ===
{{Main|Dilbert (character)}}
The strip's central character, Dilbert is depicted as a technically minded engineer. Until October 2014, he was usually depicted wearing a white dress shirt, black trousers and a red-and-black striped tie that inexplicably curved upward. After October 13, 2014, his standard apparel changed to a red polo shirt with a name badge on a lanyard around his neck.<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-10-13 | title=Dilbert Comic Strip on 2014-10-13 &#124; Dilbert by Scott Adams | access-date=May 30, 2016 | archive-date=August 26, 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170826114630/http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-10-13 | url-status=dead }}</ref> He is a skilled engineer but has poor social and romantic lives.

=== Pointy-Haired Boss (PHB) ===
Dilbert's boss, known only as the Pointy-Haired Boss, is the unnamed, oblivious manager of the engineering division of Dilbert's company. Adams states that he never named him so that people can imagine him to be their boss. In earlier strips he was depicted as a stereotypical late-middle-aged balding middle manager with jowls; it was not until later that he developed his signature pointy hair and the jowls disappeared. He is hopelessly incompetent at management, and he often tries to compensate for his lack of skills with countless group therapy sessions and business strategies that rarely bear fruit. He does not understand technical issues but always tries to disguise this ineptitude, usually by using buzzwords he also does not understand. The Boss treats his employees alternately with enthusiasm or neglect; he often uses them to his own ends regardless of the consequences to them. Adams himself wrote that "he's not sadistic, just uncaring". His level of intelligence varies from near-vegetative to perceptive and clever, depending on the strip's comic needs. His utter lack of consistent business ethics, however, is perfectly consistent. His brother is a demon named "Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light", and according to Adams, the pointy hair is intended to remind one of devil horns.

=== Wally ===
One of the longest-serving engineers, Wally was originally a worker trying to get fired to obtain a large severance package. He hates work and avoids it whenever he can. He often carries a cup of coffee, calmly sipping from it even in the midst of chaos or office-shaking revelations. Wally is extremely cynical. He is even more socially inept than Dilbert (though far less self-aware of the fact). Like the Pointy-Haired Boss, Wally is utterly lacking in ethics and will take advantage of any situation to maximize his personal gain while doing the least possible amount of honest work. Until the change to "business dorky" wear of a polo shirt, Wally was invariably portrayed wearing a short sleeved dress shirt and tie. Adams has stated that Wally was based on a Pacific Bell coworker of his who was interested in a generous employee buy-out program—for the company's worst employees. This had the effect of causing this man—whom Adams describes as "one of the more brilliant people I've met"—to work hard at being incompetent, rude, and generally poor at his job to qualify for the buy-out program. Adams has said that this inspired the basic laziness and amorality of Wally's character. Despite these personality traits, Wally is accepted as part of Dilbert, Ted, Alice, and Asok's clique. Although his relationship with Alice is often antagonistic and Dilbert occasionally denies being his friend, their actions show at least a certain acceptance of him.  For Asok, Wally serves as something of a guru of counterintuitive "wisdom". Wally exasperates Dilbert at times but is also sometimes the only other co-worker who understands Dilbert's frustrations with company idiocy and bureaucracy. While Dilbert rages at the dysfunction of the policies of the company, Wally has learned to use the dysfunction to cloak, even justify, his laziness.

=== Alice ===
One of the more competent and highest paid engineers. She is often frustrated at work because she does not get proper recognition, which she believes is because she is female. She has a quick, often violent temper, sometimes putting her "Fist of Death" to use, even with the Pointy-haired Boss. Alice is based on a woman that Adams worked with named Anita, who is described as sharing Alice's "pink suit, fluffy hair, technical proficiency, coffee obsession, and take-no-crap attitude."

=== Dogbert ===
Dilbert's anthropomorphic pet dog is the smartest dog on Earth. Dogbert is a megalomaniac intellectual dog, planning to one day conquer the world. He once succeeded, but became bored with the ensuing peace, and quit. Often seen in high-ranking consultant or technical support jobs, he constantly abuses his power and fools the management of Dilbert's company, though considering the intelligence of the company's management in general and Dilbert's boss in particular, this is not very hard to do. He also enjoys pulling scams on unsuspecting and usually dull customers to steal their money. Despite Dogbert's cynical exterior, he has been known to pull his master out of some tight jams. Dogbert's nature as a pet was more emphasized during the earlier years of the strip; as the strip progressed, references to his acting like a dog became less common, although he still wags his tail when he perpetrates his scams. When an older Dilbert arrives while time-traveling from the future, he refers to Dogbert as "majesty", indicating that Dogbert will one day indeed rule the world again, and make worshipping him retroactive so he could boss around time travelers.

=== Catbert ===
'''Catbert''' is the "evil director of [[human resources]]" in the ''Dilbert'' comic strip. He was supposed to be a one-time character but resonated with readers so well that Adams brought him back as the HR director. Catbert's origins with the company are that he was hired by Dogbert. Dogbert hired him because he wanted an H.R. Director that appeared cute while secretly downsizing employees.<ref>{{cite web| url = https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-03-20| title = Dilbert.com}}</ref>

=== Asok ===
{{Main|Asok (Dilbert)}}
A young intern, Asok works very hard but does not always get proper recognition. He is intensely intelligent but naive about corporate life; the shattering of his optimistic illusions becomes frequent comic fodder. He is [[Indian people|Indian]] and graduated from the [[Indian Institutes of Technology]] (IIT). The other workers, especially the Boss, often unwittingly trample on his cultural beliefs. On the occasions when Asok mentions this, he is normally ignored. His test scores (a perfect 1600 on the old [[SAT]]) and his [[IQ]] of 240 show that he is the smartest member of the engineering team. Nonetheless, he is often called upon by the Boss to do odd jobs, and in meetings his ideas are usually left hanging. He is also seen regularly at the lunch table with Wally and Dilbert, experiencing jarring realizations of the nature of corporate life. There are a few jokes about his psychic powers, which he learned at the IIT. Yet despite his intelligence, ethics, and mystical powers, Asok sometimes takes advice from Wally in the arts of laziness, and from Dilbert in surviving the office. As of February 7, 2014, Asok is officially gay, which never affects any storylines but merely commemorates a decision by the [[Supreme Court of India|Indian Supreme Court]] to uphold a British-era anti-gay law,<ref name="SHYAMANTHA">{{cite news|last=Shyamantha|first=Asokan|title=India's Supreme Court turns the clock back with gay sex ban|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-rights-gay-idUSBRE9BA05620131211|access-date=December 11, 2013|newspaper=[[Reuters]]|date=December 11, 2013}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2014-02-07/ |title = Dilbert Comic Strip on 2014-02-07 &#124; Dilbert by Scott Adams}}</ref> a decision which was overturned on September 6, 2018.<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/09/indias-supreme-court-overturns-sodomy-ban-landmark-ruling/ |title = India's Supreme Court overturns sodomy ban in a landmark ruling|date = September 6, 2018}}</ref>

=== The CEO ===

The CEO of the company is bald and has an extremely tall, somewhat pointed cranium. He is only slightly less clueless than the Pointy-Haired Boss.

=== Ted ===
An engineer who is often seen hanging out with Wally. He is referenced by name more often in older comics, but he is still seen occasionally. He has been accepted into Dilbert's clique. He has been fired and killed numerous times (for example, being pushed down a flight of stairs and becoming possessed), in which case a new Ted is apparently hired. In addition to this, he is often promoted and given benefits over the other employees. Ted has a wife and children who are referenced multiple times and seen on at least one occasion. Adams refers to him as ''Ted the Generic Guy'', because whenever he needs to fire or kill someone he uses Ted, but slowly over time Ted has become his own character.

=== Tina ===

Also known as Tina the Tech Writer. She has a less forceful personality than Alice and often seems to get taken advantage of by the other employees.  Her job of writing technical directions for her company's software cannot be an easy one as none of their products work as designed.

=== Carol ===

Carol is the long-suffering secretary (she prefers the title Executive Assistant) to the Pointy-haired Boss.  Her hair style is a much smaller triangle than that of Alice.  She hates her job, but once told Dilbert that spending time with her family of a husband and two children is like fighting porcupines in a salt mine, although when the job gets to be too much she is glad to get back to them.

=== Dave ===
Introduced in 2022, Dave is the strip's first black character, although he identifies as white, messing up the company's [[Environmental, social, and corporate governance|ESG]] and diversity scores, possibly deliberately, as it is not clear whether he is serious or not.  Dave has proved controversial, with at least one newspaper chain deciding not to run the strips featuring him.<ref>{{Cite web |date=May 3, 2022 |title=Dilbert Presents Black Character, Gets Dragged |url=https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2022/05/03/dilbert-presents-black-character-gets-dragged/ |access-date=June 22, 2022 |website=The Daily Cartoonist |language=en-US}}</ref>

=== Elbonia ===
Elbonia is a fictional non-specific under-developed country used when Adams wants "to involve a foreign country without hurting overseas sales". He says "People think I have some specific country in mind when I write about Elbonia, but I don't. It represents the view that Americans have of any country that doesn't have cable television—we think they all wear fur hats and wallow around waist-deep in mud".<ref>Seven years of Defective People"&nbsp;— page 184, "Elbonians"</ref><ref group=note>However, in a storyline from November 21–26, 2016, Dilbert visits Elbonia. The only location seen is his hotel room and a car rental, neither of which are covered in mud.{{cite web| url = https://dilbert.com/strip/2016-11-23| title = Dilbert.com 2016-11-23}}</ref> The entire country wears the same clothing and hats, and all men and women<ref>{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G0KlbdTvOE8C&q=elbonia+beard+women&pg=PA89| title=Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert| author=Scott Adams| date=October 21, 2008| access-date=July 1, 2021| publisher=Andrews McMeel Publishing| isbn=978-0740777356| page=89| quote=".. I made all Elbonians look identical, even the women, with long black beards ..."}}</ref>
have full beards. They are occasionally bitter towards their wealthier western neighbors, but are quite happy to trade with them. The whole country is covered in mud, and has limited technology.

Elbonia is located somewhere in the former [[Eastern Bloc]]: a strip dated April 2, 1990, refers to the "Tiny [[East European]] country of Elbonia." It is an extremely poor, [[Least Developed Countries|fourth-world]] country that "has abandoned [[Communism]]".<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/1990-04-02/| title = Dilbert.com 1990-04-02| access-date = April 24, 2018| archive-date = October 24, 2013| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20131024131729/http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/1990-04-02/| url-status = dead}}</ref> The national bird of Elbonia is the [[Frisbee]].<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/1991-10-14/| title = Dilbert.com 1991-10-14| access-date = April 24, 2018| archive-date = January 9, 2015| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150109092234/http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1991-10-14| url-status = dead}}</ref>

=== Phil ===
The Pointy-Haired Boss's brother Phil.  His full title is Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light & Supreme Ruler of Heck. His job, one step down from Satan, is to punish those who commit minor sins.  His 'Pitch-Spoon' is feared by those who do. He is known to 'Darn to Heck' people who do things like using cell phones in the bathroom, steal office supplies, or those who simply do something annoying. In one strip, it was mentioned that being in Heck is not as bad as being in a cubicle.

=== Ratbert ===
Ratbert is an escaped lab rat who lives in Dilbert's house. Ratbert was not originally intended to be a regular, instead being part of a series of strips featuring a lab scientist's cruel experiments. The character is often seen in strips set in Dilbert's home and is frequently a foil / co-conspirator in Dogbert's machinations.