Sitting in the Catbert Seat

Name: Catbert

Age: 4

Occupation: Director of human resources Experience: Torturing captured birds and rodents

Residence: Never sleeps in the same place twice

Motto: “Downsizing people is fun!”

Work and family life can seem as different as yin and yang, night and day, Frick and--well, you get the idea. It’s tough to balance the two, because their demands tax the same human resources: patience, charity and resistance to homicidal tendencies.

To bring us a fresh perspective, we’ve asked Catbert, the evil director of human resources at Dilbert’s office, for his thoughts on work and family. We posed our questions through Dilbert creator Scott Adams.

We hope you find Catbert’s answers enlightening.

Times: What’s the most important thing a company can do to help an employee balance work life and home life?

Catbert: The company should try to eliminate the employee’s personal life. That’s what’s causing the problem. I recommend making the employees work unpaid overtime for no particular reason. It might take a year or two, but the home life conflict will eventually go away.

Times: Why is it difficult for an employee to strike a balance between work and home? Can’t people keep their respective problems at one place or the other?

Catbert: They can keep their problems at home, but they keep dragging their ugly bodies into the office. I have a saying, ‘You won’t care if your knee itches if your head is caved in.’ The solution is to make sure they have enough problems at work so they don’t think about home so much.

Times: Employees who don’t have families often feel they get the short end of the stick because family-friendly policies have little positive effect on them. How can employers improve life for their single workers?

Catbert: I’ve always advocated forced marriage. Once you’ve married off the single people, everyone gets the same benefits. That should stop all the whining.

Times: How much should a company be expected to do to help an employee when a family crisis arises?

Catbert: That’s a slippery slope. As soon as you start being nice to the employees, when there’s a death in the family, they’ll try to nickel and dime you for time off every time there’s an organ transplant, coma or open heart surgery. You don’t want to open that door.

Times: A recent study suggests that whether or not a mother works has less effect on family cohesiveness than if a father works long and “unsocial” hours. Why don’t more fathers take advantage of flextime, family leave and other family-friendly options?

Catbert: Based on the data, I have to assume that most men don’t like their own families. I’ve met some of the families of my co-workers, and I understand completely.

Times: Many companies are opening day-care centers on-site. Is this the best way to help workers with families?

Catbert: That’s not why it’s done. Used properly, on-site day care can provide a valuable source of strategic direction. That might be hard to believe, but if you look at your company’s mission statement, I think you’ll agree it couldn’t have been written by adults.

Times: Is being a workaholic always bad? Aren’t these the people who get the most done and provide the best living for their families?

Catbert: Workaholics might seem harmless, but they’re dangerous behind the wheel of a car. They get all high on work, and suddenly they’re weaving all over the road. Sometimes they get belligerent. I’ve known people who could take one sniff of a “to do” list and immediately pick a fight.

Times: Some anthropologists say that work-family conflicts are rooted in a 1950s world view that assumes men will be the breadwinners and women will tend the hearth. What can we do to change outdated cultural assumptions?

Catbert: We could kill the anthropologists. Then we wouldn’t know our cultural assumptions were outdated. I’m always looking for the quick fix.