`DILBERT' CREATOR SHARES SECRETS; WORKER-NEEDY BOSSES MAY PUT UP WITH PRANKS IN GOOD ECONOMIC TIMES.

Byline: David Zielenziger Bloomberg News

Good economic times are liberating for employees with a cubicle view of working life because they can have a little fun and probably won't get fired, said Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip character Dilbert.

``Employees were reeling from the ricochets of the bullets from layoffs,'' he said about the early 1990s. ``Then all the sudden, the job market's great. Suddenly you feel it's pretty good to be an employee.''

Adams offers a comic office-survival guide in his new book published by HarperBusiness, ``The Joy of Work: Dilbert's Guide to Finding Happiness at the Expense of Your Co-workers.''

He also details hundred of pranks for office workers, especially those in cubicles, from leaving hidden messages in paper that's about to be used in the office copier to putting oil spots under the luxury car your boss just bought.

``You can inoculate yourself from any of these pranks by buying my book,'' Adams told the Bloomberg Forum.

Many of the pranks are mean, he acknowledged. Try them if you might want to get fired, ``go across the street and get a higher-paying job somewhere else,'' he said. ``That all depends upon the economy's being good.''

In the book, he also suggests ways office workers can appear busy but sleep in their cubicles: Wear neck braces that keep the head up while dozing and dark glasses that hide if you've nodded off.

Adams recommends sleeping in a position with one arm drooping over the desk, so that if the boss walks by and interrupts a nap, you can say you were trying to scoop up a fallen pencil or a paper clip.

The latest Dilbert book also advocates using telephone headsets for personal phone calls while giving the impression you're really busy by simultaneously using a personal computer to play games and surf the Internet.

``Quit any job that monitors your Internet access,'' Adams said. Offices usually provide higher-speed access to the Internet than homes do, so you can ``turn your cubicle into a gambling casino, literally,'' he added.

Adams recommends online brokerage services, shopping and all kinds of Internet surfing at company expense.

Getting away with pranks is toughest where management monitors performance, such as numbers of calls answered, customers contacted or keystrokes executed, he said, but ``any system can be beaten.''

For example, people in a customer-service department that monitors numbers of calls handled ``can call themselves and not be online with a customer,'' and nobody will catch on, said Adams, 41, who holds a master's degree in business administration from the University of California at Berkeley.

Voice-mail systems can be turned against managers. Nasty rumors can be spread about the boss.

Adams, now self-employed from home in the Bay Area, worked for Crocker National Bank and Pacific Bell Corp. before turning to full-time Dilbert activities. He wasn't fired from either job because he quit Crocker just before it was acquired by Wells Fargo & Co., and he quit Pacific Bell after he'd started doing ``Dilbert'' and before it was taken over by SBC Corp., he said.

Adams acknowledged that ``if I sell 10 million books, we're all doomed,'' but said that's not too likely. ``Dilbert'' and its office humor don't travel universally. In Japan, despite its bureaucracy, ``the insolence, the ability to say bad things about your boss'' doesn't translate.

The humor works just fine in the U.K., Australia and the Netherlands, he said.

``Dilbert'' appears in about 1,900 papers daily through United Media Group Inc.'s United Features Syndicate, including the Daily News.

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PHOTO (1--2--Color) Cartoonist Scott Adams, below, and Dilbert, left, give humorous advice.

Lynsey Addario/Associated Press