Back in my time in retail I lived in an apartment complex, guess you’d call it, that was strips of apartment running parallel to each other for five or six rows. One row over from mine the apartments had all somehow gotten rented by the management at Target. I never really thought about the implications of that. So when my store ended up with another new manager, who was looking for an apartment, I suggested my complex. He ended up in the one directly across from my unit. What I then realized is that I could never leave work. Unless I hid my vehicle he always knew when I was home, so if anything was going wrong at the store he would come get me so I could help fix it. It was a nightmare. He wasn’t a terrible guy or anything, but he was also not a very good manager. His youth made it difficult for the older employees to take him seriously. Which wasn’t helped by the fact his ideas weren’t very good most of the time. He was also kind of bad with people in a hard to describe way. Sometimes it seemed like he didn’t quite know how to be a human.

This is unrelated, but they actually fired him on his birthday. It was coincidence, but it was one of those things that was unintentionally funny. He comes out of the office after it happened like “Happy birthday to me!” then proceeded to basically just do whatever he pleased for the rest of the day like a man having a very obvious mental episode. He was a trucker the last time I saw him.

There were many things that contributed to my slow mental breakdown in retail. He was one of them, even though it wasn’t a malicious act. He just didn’t understand boundaries and I didn’t understand how to set them without ruining my own position. A lot of the small disasters in the comic come from incidents during his tenure. I don’t know if that was happenstance, or because of his actions, but it just happens to be the case. Especially poop incidents. I had to hose down a restroom, literally, on his watch.

Anyway, let’s leave memory lane for the time being. The present concerns of funding are probably more important. To that end I direct you to the support links above the blog. As always, I hope you have a pleasant start to your week. On Wednesday be sure to return for more low stakes adventure on Between Failures.

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I’ve a feeling this will be when Carol asks Thomas about moving in together.

That

Yeah, her eyes in that first panel read concern, but also “here’s a window, Carol. Take it!”

Does Carol get the feeling that relationships all over town are, um, advancing?

Use it! There’s her icebreaker!

Yup. Employer thinks they can get away with less, even when it’s just sporadic to help workers out, they’ll start going with less.

I meant to comment on the previous page, but I love Carol’s new style, Jackie. The rounder face and the way you draw the eyes + their expressions just made her that much more endearing than she already was to me. Also love that you’re adding her freckles now, it adds character to her face! I’ve been really enjoying her looks these last couple pages. Thanks!

Huh.
I just wanted to report a possible bug:
On page 746, the icon or button- that chooses a random, Between Failures [tm] page for you, does not work.
I just thought I’d point that out. Cheers.

The majority of managers high enough up the chain to be called corporate (whether they actually work for corporate or not) don’t see the employees below them as people. We’re numbers to them. Numbers don’t have free will. Numbers don’t have sick days. Numbers can be reduced, even to the point of store closings. They don’t need to care. If a store closes, they write it off with whatever excuse they think their bosses will accept and move on to the next one. Ones become zeroes. Zeroes don’t need to be worried about.

Zeroes don’t have lives.

I did 10 years of my time in the publishing gulag at one camp of a multinational corporation that got acquired by a larger multinational about 3 years into my stint. The new CEO acted like he slept with a picture of Chainsaw Al Dunlap under his pillow. Learned from Google that when he took over the corporation that took us over, he moved its headquarters to his city and fired nearly all of the management and staff that had built the place to that point.

When we were acquired, the boss at our location, who was really a good boss, supervised over 200 employees. By the time I was laid off, it was down to 15 or 20, as an office at another local plant they acquired. It was obvious that there were quotas for getting rid of people every quarter. They were pumping blue smoke into their reports to make it look like they were increasing efficiency by spending less on employees. And after the 2008 economic collapse, they imposed a 10% salary cut, and many people never got another pay increase. You couldn’t complain about morale, because there wasn’t any. The best people in my unit started leaving for a smaller competitor. I got the boot when my main customer’s contract came up for renewal, and they hired the competitor. (My customer then hired me as a full-time remote employee, and the competitor became my customer, so it worked out great for me, in the end. Best job I ever had. Retired just a few months ago, after 9 years there.)

A few years after I was thrown overboard, the corporation fucked up the 2020 census by getting a government contract to produce and mail the materials and going bankrupt before they could deliver. If you think corporations are people, don’t forget that some people are sociopaths.

“If you think corporations are people, don’t forget that some people are sociopaths.” Love this line, thank you!

Just wanted to offer sympathies that you have poop incident stories. Many people do, but it’s always crappy

We had a real Karen of a commercial account wipe her ass with her hand and smear it all over the walls to “teach us a lesson about keeping the toilet paper well stocked”
She looked at me one time and said “I’d never hire you with hair that long…” I just said “the feeling is mutual; I’d rather starve to death than ever work for YOU.”
There was a tale at the local gas station where she demonstrated her racism. She looked at the mixed race girl at the counter and said “you’re really pretty, for a nXXXXr…” the girl had to be restrained by her fellow employees.
Evil people exist under the radar everywhere

Especially these days. Crying out loud; retail pilferage in New York these days is the stuff YouTube channels are made of. Just ask Cash Jordan.

Hell, the flagship store for Macy’s can’t keep control of shoplifters. I’m blaming NYC for that mentality.

It’s happening in small towns and nice suburbs all over. This is not a NYC mentality.

And in the era of “rightstaffing”–as mentioned at Megatainment–it will only happen more.

Maybe it’s me, but I kind of expect corporate to close the store and them to open it as an independent operation.

2675 Vulnerabilities.

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