Comic Commentary

Your Inaudible Track

Years ago, when I first had a website (no, not this one), I made an audio commentary track for one of my comic strips. It had commentary from the writer, the makeup artist, the cinemaphotographer, the director, and of course from the craft services.

It may have been a tad sarcastic.

But I love real commentary. I quickly read anything cartoonists write about their process and what they were thinking at the time, especially if it was difficult to get inside their heads. Somebody like Richard Thompson was magic to me, both as a writer and artist (not that the two are really separated), and reading his blog was the best thing on the internet.

I’m not attempting to do that. My commentary, like my comics, works better when it’s sarcastic. So let’s go back a month and look at a handful of strips, shall we?

I made Russell because I wanted to draw the type of hairy, crazy character that I used to work with. Sometimes an idea is only there as a drawing. It’s always helpful if there’s an idea to go along with that drawing. Writing is often read when you have something to say.

In this case, the subject is “recovery”. The average person might think of recovery as getting sober. Retail is no different. The store is intoxicated with the fervor of a fantastic sale or, in this case, a holiday that is approaching and customers who are very concerned about your employment. They are so concerned that they make sure that nothing, absolutely nothing, is left where it was originally displayed. In fact, many people just throw things on the floor to make sure that they are nowhere near their origin. This is very considerate of them. They want to make sure you stay employed for however long it takes to put the items back where they belong. Surely that will keep you employed long enough for them to come back and throw everything everywhere again the next day.

Aren’t they thoughtful?

If, like me, you’re a people pleaser, the expectant hopefulness of a customer is enough to make you move heaven and earth to help them find what they really want. Many times, it is immediately obvious that it is outside of your power to help them out, so you try to think “outside the box”. Thinking outside of the box is risky, because you have to send your customer outside of the store, outside of the box if you will, and pick up where you left off.

The customer may mess up and come back to you for more advise, because you’re the only people pleaser that tried to help them that day. Or they may come back and tell you that you solved their problem, which makes you feel like quite a helpful and wonderful employee, but will never make your employer think highly of you because didn’t make a sale at the store where you work.

This always seemed like a minor detail to me. Hey, I made a sale. Sure, it wasn’t here, but that other store should give me a commission.

There’s really no winning in these situations, unless the customer wants you to do everything for them and they happen to be a demanding jerk. That’s easy, but can be difficult to discern. Maybe they seem like a demanding jerk because they’ve been through hell trying to find what they need, and don’t we all get worn out and exasperated when that happens?

You have to mentally draw a line and wait for the customer to cross the “I’m upset because I’m having such a difficult time” line and over the “I’m just a jerk” goal post. Cheering and clapping is permissible when they do so.

This comic was inspired by the person who got the disappointed look on her face as she realized that she had gone as far as she could go. I replaced that disappointed look with a demand to speak to the stock holders.

This was also inspired by a loud guy who complained that our copy machine put a $10 temporary hold on his credit card. Like a gas pump, a copy machine doesn’t know how much you’re going to spend, so it puts a small hold on your card in case you’re one of those unscrupulous characters who will pump and run. Copy and run. Whatever.

This man was so incensed at the $10 hold that he wanted to write “the owner”. I explained that it was a publicly traded company and he would have to speak to the stock holders. He wasn’t happy with that. I explained that the $10 hold was a finance law that had been established decades earlier, so he could write his elected officials. He wasn’t happy with that, either. Finally, I explained that he could write the C.E.O., a person who takes these matters very seriously and would tackle this situation the moment he was back from his tropical island vacation. Shockingly, he wasn’t happy with that and left yelling, never to be heard from again.

Somewhere, this guy is destroying our business by word of mouth, one angry rant at a time, telling all who will listen (or pretend to listen) about the evil $10 hold our copy machine places. Somehow, we shall go on.

Whenever I get sick, Penny gets sick. Poor Penny. I went quite awhile without being sick, but then we stopped wearing masks. Say what you want about masks, and there are people who will whether you want to hear them or not, but I never got sick when I wore a mask. It was wonderful. Sure, it could be a coincidence. I will still be thankful for that year when I didn’t get so much as a runny nose.

One Christmas, everyone got sick. Four people called in sick and there was a crowd unlike any we’d ever seen because Taylor Swift was in town. It was awful. It’s hard to think of number one, especially when you’re a people pleaser and your beloved coworkers are yelling about the horrors of non-stop customer interaction, but the threat of death by germ is usually enough to make most employees lay in bed and watch cartoons, which we all know will cure anything.

Never go into work sick. You’re not helping anybody, not even yourself. You won’t get paid if you don’t go in? You’re still not helping yourself. You won’t get paid when you’re dead, either.

The best is when management is sick. You know that, temporarily, you just need to survive until they come back and act like everything went to hell while they were gone. Dumb rules may be slightly broken, but most people do a fantastic job and there’s a kind of camaraderie that the store has never had before.

Managers will always return and act like terrible things happened while they were gone. Meetings were missed. Important binders weren’t updated. Contractors weren’t summoned for a minor problem with the building. Thank god they are back.

Take your manager out for a drink. After a few, he or she might mumble something about everything being fine, which is high praise indeed.

This is one of those verbatim comics. An employee really did cut off her finger, and she really did take pictures of the whole ordeal and show them to unsuspecting staff members. This is why I miss the good ol’ days. If this were a black and white movie, they would be laid up in the hospital with their hand and forearm in in a comically large cast and complaining about missing the big dance (I’m not sure what they missed back then, but a big dance seems safe). Today, thanks to modern medicine, they are back quickly with a documentary.

The employee situation I wrote about was even worse in real life. She cut her finger off with a can opener. A hand-cranked can opener from the 1950s. Ridiculous! I couldn’t wait to put it in the comic. That didn’t happen because there was a comment on Instagram that said, “Hey, that just happened to me!” and for the first time I was worried that I was writing about someone who was reading my comic.

I’ll never do that again. I was only working with her temporarily and when you cut your finger off with a manual can opener you really should be prepared for some jokes.

I need to revisit this story. It started off happy and cute, but then devolved because, in real life, the Christmas season became overwhelming and there wasn’t a whole lot of time to think about things. That’s the problem with working while making these. One part of me thinks it’s perfect, because I’m right on the front lines of what I’m writing about. The other part says that it’s too much work and can cause the story to suffer. Unfortunately, I know me. I’m at my best when I’m overworked. When I’m underworked I tend to stay at rest, accomplishing nothing except reading and watching movies.

So whaddya think? Is commentary a worthwhile function of this site? It was kind of my original intention when setting up this site. Provide a little backstory and blather on a bit. Fun, I hope.

Oooh, look. I finally made a poll.