Getting Scott Adams to find the positive side of workplace issues is like trying to get the managers in his Dilbert comic strip to behave intelligently.

But then, Mr. Adams's livelihood depends on cynicism, his own and that of his readers. His latest book, "Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel," is full of workplace shenanigans that support the artist's - and Dilbert's - dark view.

Adams, who has an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley, started out in a cubicle himself, first at a bank, then at Pacific Bell. He launched the Dilbert comic strip in 1989, and today it is syndicated in 2,000 newspapers around the world.

He criticizes CEOs, but is one himself - of a food company that bears his name. In a phone interview he is jovial, though adamant that we're all weasels - except Dilbert, of course.

So, how did you develop this rather dim view of the world?

Well, it's something I've been developing all my life. The most recent part, the weasel part, is really the recognition that ... people are more weaselly than at any time in history. Part of that's no surprise, because crime has never paid so well. It used to be that if you mugged somebody all you could get is a wallet and watch. And now you can go to business school, become a CEO, and not only do you get to rip off hundreds of millions of dollars, but you get a dental plan.

Were you working on this book before Enron, Martha Stewart, and WorldCom made headlines?

I started and then Enron hit. I definitely had the weasel germ before most of it hit. I could see the beginning of it. I was seeing stuff like the historians making up the history, and the skating judges cheating, and the movie studios making up their own movie reviews.

And you see this behavior extending to rank-and-file types?

I'll give you the perfect example: I asked a number of my friends this question, "If you found $1,000 and you knew it had been lost by a billionaire and hypothetically he could never find out that you got it, would you keep it?" Almost all of my friends said they'd keep it. And it perfectly illustrates that everybody's good when they're being watched. But as soon as they can get away with it, they're weasels.

Is Dilbert a weasel?

He's a fictional character so he can be the only person who's not. But I think the big breakthrough weasel-wise was when I realized that I was one, too. I think everybody figures, "Boy, other people sure are bad, why can't they be more like me?" But there was some point where I looked at my life, and I realized, you know, I do shade things a little bit. I make myself look a little bit better than I really am in a whole bunch of different ways. None of them criminal, none of them anywhere outside the norm, and none of them even in the worse end of weaselness. But there sure are a lot of them.

What are some of the other changes, besides an increase in deception, that you've seen in the workplace?

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