An Iowa man who worked with Catfish Bend Casinos in Burlington was fired for posting a Dilbert cartoon on the office bulletin board.  Apparently the boss didn’t appreciate the comparison to a drunken lemur.

Dilbert creater, Scott Adams, offers this advice:

If you intend to mock your boss with Dilbert comics, the trick is in knowing which comics to pick. Apparently there is a fine line between posting a comic that criticizes a particular policy decision, versus a comic that calls your boss an inebriated prosimian. (Thank you, Wikipedia.) 

It’s important to remember that humor is in the eye of the beholder.   If humor is used too much or at the wrong time in the workplace bad things can happen.  A hostile work environment occurs when jokes, suggestive remarks, pictures, cartoons, or sexually, discriminatory or otherwise derogatory comments alter the circumstances of the workplace.

On the other hand, humor in the workplace is important to job satisfaction.  I really can’t imagine working in a place without some humor here and there.  But at the very least it’s best to still maintain professionalism and have a good sense of how people will react to your humor.  Calling your boss a drunken lemur?   Even Adams agrees that one was a little more cutting than the typical Dilbert strip.  In an interview with the Register reporter he said, "I can see how this one may have been a tad bit over the line."