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my friend, i’ve been reading for a long time. what you have to say is not nonsense. it resonates with many of us.

On the one hand Thomas has a point philosophically.

On the other hand, what does Reggie actually have to lose on this? Is there something better he’s actually capable of doing with his life that he passed over in favor of proving his worth at a dubious entry-level retail job?

Regardless, knowing what he really wants will clarify how he can work toward it
And he’s got a very capable girlfriend and the loving support of his father if he needs any help with that

I’ve been reading this comic since the aftermath of ‘The Slap’, and I’d given a lot of thought to what Reggie would excel in, career-wise.

– He grew up in construction, and clearly shows a knowledge for it based on the ghost-hunting arc. However, he’s too much of a klutz to be actually working on a site.
– He can spot through bullshit, and has no qualms about calling it out, especially right to the person’s face.
– He’s a bit of a prick, and can easily crank it to eleven when pushed.
– He has morals and extremely high standards for how people should behave and treat their work.
– Deep down, he cares for other people and just wants them to be safe.

Based on all of this, he shouldn’t be working on a construction site, he should be INSPECTING it. A job as an OSHA Inspector would be a perfect fit for him. He knows his shit, will call out lazy or half-done shit if he finds it, and will give people shit if his standards aren’t met. Every state is desperate for them, so he would have no problem becoming one if he puts his mind to it.

I like it. Either OSHA or a County Inspector or similai. (I’m 1800 miles away and we don’t have county govesimilar.

In his father I see a personal ability to sales and maintain customer relationships, more than I see in Reggie (at least at his age now).

Hell if he didn’t want to work ij either of those roles, he could go into private business as a House Inspector, checking over homes for buyers and looking for shoddy work or things that would cause issues down the line.

Inspection work is seems like exactly the kind of thing Reggie would excellent at.

Oh god no. Reggie would be a nightmare at that job. He’d strut around, complaining that the handrails are 1/8th of an inch too short, writing up millions of dollars of nonsense repairs businesses have to do, and go home with an inflated ego over how he’s “saving lives.” He’d be the kind of inspector that businesses would pull “favors” to get re-assigned to Nome, Alaska, because he lacks a sense of perspective and would just enforce every rule, no matter how stupid, to the max. There are inspectors who look for actual safety hazards, maybe stuff that isn’t so obvious (at least in that it’s not just an objective measurement), but then there are the guys who want the safety stickers replaced every 3 months because the yellow gets slightly faded.

Not really. We’ve *seen* Reggie’s inspection technique with the way he reacted to the problems in the basement. He was willing to overlook the minor problems, but not the major – and even then, he gave the owner time to start working on his own rather than instantly going up the ‘chain of command’ to get it enforced immediately.

Thomas’s tongue is green in the first panel, FYI.

You know, it’s interesting; it’s a long-standing trope in the west, especially the US, about the “family business” and the young heir deciding to pass on it. And I get why. But sometimes I wonder what that would actually be like, to be brought up learning a trade, to be given a successful business, to have the support structure to run it (like I’m sure Reggie knows the managers and foremen and other experienced people who would help if and when the time came for him to take over). Like, construction isn’t really my trade, but if I was handed that opportunity, I think I’d jump at it; I would try to MAKE it work, because honestly, most of us either don’t have specific dreams for our career OR our dreams are probably just going to stay as dreams (like, we’re not going be celebrities or brilliant inventors). Sometimes I think Americans get so hung up on “being themselves” or whatever that they pass up such opportunities, because we’re just kinda told that we should do most of the time. I dunno, maybe I’m full of it, but it’d be interesting to see a story where Reggie, or someone likes him, succeeds in making it work despite it not being his precise skill set, instead of the endless stories of “going their own way.” A story of compromising between his desires and this opportunity.

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