The Tables Turn For Dilbert’s Creator

THIS is yet another story about a clueless but obtrusive boss — the kind of meddlesome manager you might laugh at in the panels of Dilbert, the daily comic strip.

Scott Adams, creator of “Dilbert,” now runs a restaurant in Dublin, Calif. At left, he tries the risotto with the head chef, Nathan Gillespie.

Emma Lewis, lunch manager of Stacey’s at Waterford, with Scott Adams at the restaurant.

The boss in question operates an upscale restaurant serving California cuisine about an hours drive east of San Francisco. The restaurant, Staceys at Waterford, is in trouble — two decades of rapid population growth in the region has prompted an influx of national competitors like P. F. Changs China Bistro and the Cheesecake Factory.

While the chains have 30-minute waits for tables on weeknights, Staceys at Waterford has more jewel-tone microfiber chairs than diners, and is slowly but steadily losing money. To make matters worse, this befuddled manager has never run a restaurant before or even supervised another persons work in more than 20 years. His greatest qualification for the job, one might say, is 17 years spent satirizing cubicle culture.

In other words, Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator and the progenitor of the multimillion-dollar Dilbert empire, is now a pointy-haired boss himself.

Mr. Adams had repeatedly vowed never to let it come to this, refusing for years even to hire a personal assistant to help with Dilbert-related projects. I did a really good job not being a boss for a long time, and I was happy with that, he said.

But never say never. A decade ago, flush with Dilbert riches, he and the restaurant veteran Stacey Belkin opened a restaurant called Staceys Cafe in downtown Pleasanton, Calif., a bedroom community of San Francisco. Five years later, they opened Staceys at Waterford in an unremarkable strip mall nearby, in Dublin, Calif.

Until this summer, Mr. Adamss involvement consisted of signing checks, writing clever jokes for the menus and leaving big tips for the wait staff after his regular visits. Then a personal battle between Ms. Belkin and a former chef intensified just as the big feed chains began staking their claim on the booming exurbs — thrusting Dilberts creator into the middle of a managerial nightmare.

Staceys Cafe is smaller, in a better location and is regularly packed. But Staceys at Waterford, never profitable to begin with, was suddenly seeing a 10 percent decline in revenue. Ms. Belkin, who was running both restaurants, was overextended.

Mr. Adams, meanwhile, was dispatching his comic-strip responsibilities in just a few hours each morning. So, in July, he agreed to take over day-to-day operations of Staceys at Waterford, thus becoming what he has consistently ridiculed: a boss.

I am highly experienced at making funny comics about managers, he wrote at the time on his popular blog, dilbertblog.typepad.com. How hard could it be to transition from mocking idiots to being one?

Those in his 35-member staff at Staceys at Waterford can gladly answer that one. In interviews authorized by their generously self-deprecating boss, employees describe him as trusting and appreciative, full of off-the-wall ideas about how to turn around the business, and dramatically clueless about the harsh realities of the restaurant industry.

Ive been in this business 23 years, and Ive seen a lot of things. He truly has no idea what hes doing, said Nathan Gillespie, the new, wise-cracking head chef, after discussing a recent dust-up with Mr. Adams over the grilled salmon filet. (Mr. Gillespie had experimented with what he called small changes to the dish; friends noticed them and told Mr. Adams, who admonished the chef that new dishes need to go through a formal review.)

Mr. Gillespie is still miffed. Hes a really nice guy, but he relies on his friends opinions, he said, lamenting that his bosss friends probably think a chain restaurant has good pizza.

Emma Lewis, the lunch manager, describes Mr. Adams as someone who should be shielded from tough decisions the way a crawling infant needs to be protected from household hazards. We laugh and say were not going to let him watch the Food Channel, she said. Hell think he can run a restaurant.

On the other hand, employees also say he knows his limitations and combines deep trust in them with an instinctive ability to motivate people. They understand that to survive in this age of dominant restaurant chains, they must embrace some of his more unusual ideas and obsessions — but more on those later.

No one is more critical of his management skills than the humorist himself. Im quite sure Ive succumbed to the pigeon theory of management, he said. Flying in every so often and dumping on everything.

THE most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.

— Scott Adams

The Dilbert Principle

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