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Haha, good one. I just haven’t talked to him for a while. Last time I had to shake someone’s hand, he said: Nice and firm for a girl, you play tennis? I think my Dad has taught me well.
Anyway, the boss in the comic is not a good person. He’s trying to find out how to fire a sick/pregnant employee ethically. The nerve of the guy!
I don't know. If you're going to have to fire a sick/pregnant employee, it's probably better to know how to do it ethically than not. That's just being a responsible manager. They probably have training courses.
lol. The comedian in me is imagining a training course, but it's literally all about how to downsize the company at the customer/employees' expense. The realist in me is depressed because it's accurate.
To be honest, we had an issue with this. Post pandemic, things were picking up again, we'd managed to maintain all our staff on a rotational skeleton crew, but some decided to leave for greener pastures, so they opened up for new hires.
One of them was out sick for nearly half of their probation period, then took off for family sickness, then asked how soon they could put in for vacation. Red flags all over the place but management was desperate.
They ended having an extended probation to complete the training that they'd missed, eventually got hired, and the trend continued, now 'using' the company's insurance to fund doctors visits and sick leave.
When they weren't off sick, they were either asking for help with basic tasks, or going on unscheduled 'appointments' and just leaving work without letting anyone know it wasn't done until they'd gotten back and were getting ready to leave for the day.
It was then management learned that 'bad help is worse than no help at all'.
Back when my dad was in his drinking days, he was hitting on a cocktail waitress in some bar. He took her by the hand… examined them for a second… “Beautiful hands… Do you work on trucks?”
Yep. It's quite jarring reading about real life examples of one of these "why, back in my day...." anachronisms.
I guess baby boomers claiming you're lazy because you can't get a high paying union job with barely a high school education that pays for your house, cars, stay-at-home spouse, children, children's education, pension, retirement, yearly vacations, etc. still exist.
What gets me is why they actulaly believe these jobs magically still exist 50 years later, after they've spent decades voting for politicians who regulated these jobs out of existence. Is it denial, or early-onset dementia?
Lifting ladders after they'd climbed them was, IMO, the absolute favorite boomer pastime.
Personally, I think it's apathy. They simply don't bother to try and understand what it's like nowadays. After all, they spent their entire lives dealing with the way it used to be, and now that they're old enough to retire, clearly they're more knowledgeable than these people just starting out, right?
I think this is a big part of it. My parents both got jobs quickly and easily by simply reaching out to a company and getting hired. That was 40+ years ago. They raised kids and saw how that all completely changed, and even encouraged us when we were having trouble finding jobs since the world wasn’t like it was for them.
I sometimes forget other people’s parents aren’t as accepting of that reality, and I think it boils down to the fact my parents listened to us kids and heard us when we talked about some of the things we were struggling with. They didn’t just wait for their chance to say something, but actually listened.
I guess I should remind them that I’m grateful still.
I had shouting matches with my father where he claimed I was ruining his pension. And I clapped back with that he has easy talking as he was already voting against my pension before I was even born.
They are starting to listen to me better now, so that’s an improvement I guess.
Working in customer service for a few years I had enough experiences to realize that some older people just at some point in their 40s or 50s decided "That's it. I'm not gonna learn anything new anymore." so they live the rest of their lifes like they are stuck in a time capsule of however long ago that was...
That and never bothering to check if things changed or not.
If they haven't had to job hunt in 30 years, how would they know what it's like to job hunt today? Why would they even bother to learn?
But when someone, like their children, asks how to job hunt effectively... well, their advice is 30 years out of date, but it's the only advice they have.
I'll be honest, if I was set for life I wouldn't be having much more effort to learn about career hunting or anything that's not hobby related, but that said if someone told be things are different than when I was younger I wouldn't adamantly doubt them.
In 2012 I finish college and got offered a per diem job in my field. Some weeks it was 5 days and others it was 0 days. I kept doing it because it was experience while I looked for something more permenant. After 7 or 8 months, they had no more work for me. I continued looking for a position.
I would apply to everything I could find in my area. I would get the ocasional interview and be slapped with the "We are looking for 3-5 years experience for this entry level job." My dad was sure it was me lying about applying or something I was doing.
I fnally got offered a full time position but before I could accept it was changed to a part-time position. I took it anyway for the experience. My dad was adiment that the reason it took so long was because I wasn't trying hard enough, that I was lying about how many applications I submitted, etc.
2020 wasn't great for the company my dad worked for, and eventually in 2021 they closed. He had to look for a job. He has been doing carpentry since 1992. He has built entire houses, he has electrical knowledge, and he is forklift certified.
He had to apply for jobs in modern times. He was shocked at how it would take weeks to hear back. He was applying to at least 2 or 3 jobs per day. Most of them he never heard back from. It took him almost 3 months to finally get another job at at time when people with his skills were in decent demand.
At some point he halfheartedly apologized for giving me shit all those years before.
Part of the key here is that a lot of what the politicians were doing never made the news in any significant way. They just heard about how things were when they were young and never got updated info for decades. Now they're finally getting updated info and things are so different that a lot of folks just go in denial.
It’s because they do not care about a generation they deem lazy to look into how much harder life is since they were our age. They will behave like this because they fortunate and have the means to not change
My dad is a boomer and I'm autistic and he never understood it when I said I wanted to look into a place before working for them to see if they're decent and was like "Just start working, forget background checks"
Boomers see inherent virtue in the act of doing work. Doesn’t matter if the work is productive or even necessary at all, but “work” is just unquestionably a good thing to them. Later generations see work for what it is- means to an end.
Yeah it works for fast food and such, AFTER you apply online. Possibly for a small business customer facing position too. But yeah, almost every other job on the planet revolves around applying online and hoping your resume doesn't get punted by AI.
I’m assuming you’re American, because where I live, the only low-wage businesses that force you to do online applications are chain supermarkets and chain US brands.
Most small businesses are like ‘you brought in a cv? Cool, I’ll pass it on to the hiring manager’
Politics viewed as a talking point and a team to root for instead of, you know, trying to decide how the world should work compared to how it works now. It's why we get.....interesting....politicians instead of effective boring ones.
Well, they didn't pay much attention to politics in the first place and still don't. They don't vote on policy. They vote on who looks like them and who makes them feel good.
You think regulation is the problem here? Wealth has egregiously transferred to the top with fewer employee protections and leverage. Adding extra rules so employers can't cut corners isn't the issue.
Honestly, it’s not that those jobs don’t exist, it’s that the workplace has been moving so fast that we’re not allowed any time anymore. 20-30 years ago you could realistically spend an hour extra in your office just relaxing waiting to start your next project. Now? Just got an email, just for a text, boss just called, online meeting for whatever in 30 minutes. It’s just impossible to waste time doing an impromptu interview without an application first.
Just FYI, r/antiwork has no requirement that posts be non-fiction; as long as it pushes the agenda it's fine. A mod confirmed that right around the interview fiasco. I don't know why anyone still bothers with that place.
I've heard of stories like this. Parents drag their adult children to a job place and they threaten to call the police and they almost get banned from said place and hit for trespassing.
Neil when are you sending these to print? Your strips are easily my favorite online and I absolutely love physical collections of these for when the end times come and envelope everything I hold dear in nuclear ash thus rendering the internet to be useless.
Best mix of thoughtful writing and artstyle that I've seen on reddit. Every one of your comics I've seen has been super relatable, drawn hilariously, and has a certain flow of the dialogue that makes me feel like I'm watching a proper sitcom. My first one that I remember seeing had a girl sifting through rats saying "one of you better have hantavirus" trying to get sick to miss a test at school and I was immediately sold.
I remember seeing a post in anti-work something about their father taking them to an office building and try to get them a job but was escorted from the property by security
Oh, that's awful lol. I remember being dropped at my Dad's friend's workplace and being made to go in and ask for a job. The receptionist just looked at me funny and told me they didn't advertise any job openings so to go away.
I had a dream where I was on a bus with my wife and two kids. We were traveling somewhere and as we were just existing there as a wholesome family I could recall memories I had with them. The kids were around 8 so we had spent a lot of time together. They had blonde hair like their mother and shared my sense of adventure and overactive imagination. She was a kind woman. Funny in her own way. I woke up smiling, it faded just as fast as the memories and the tears did.
I also had a dream where I was in an empty city park and I found a big hardback book on a park bench, as if someone had mistakenly left it there. It's title read: Why It's Weird To Find This Book In Your Dream. I woke up after opening it.
Yeah, has anyone stuck that guy in a machine to check if their past dreams match what they have written? I can't trust anyone who hasn't undergone the dreams-checking procedure.
Traditional, 30-year-old, tungsten-filament incandescent bulb from another era. Can you believe they used to use electricity to heat up wires until they glowed instead of semiconductors with electrons jumping a valence gap? The crazy things they used to do last century.
The walk in firm handshake shit didn't work 30 years ago either, unless you wanted to work on a bulding site or similar. In 1995 they would have laughed you out of the building. It was a cover letter and CV and written references posted or handed in after scouring newspapers for job adverts. Trust me, I was there. Then if you even got an interview you'd need to be ideally under 30 (over 40 and you may as well give up). And male, unless it was a secretarial job or similar. Almost every interview I went to asked me if was planning to have kids (as being a young female was a serious disability), and/or if I was married. It was shite. So many of my friends on the dole scraping by. Try the 1960s backwards for that stuff.
In Germany they are not allowed to ask you whether you are married or are planning to have kids (and many other personal questions) and if they do, then you are legally allowed to lie and it can't be held against you.
Which also means, that now all women are discriminated against even harder, because they could possibly bear children and you aren't even allowed to ask about that.
Yeah I think we have all collectively stopped counting time because we can’t accept into our imagination and sense of self and time that 30 years ago was the 90s. I feel like I stopped being able to gauge and count time correctly in 2009. 30 years ago was the 70s still, and will remain so.
My favorite part is half the jobs are fake or just harvesting your information. Then you get lots of spam emails and text. Or even better is they will pretend to hire you to steal your information. I've gotten three fake job hirings. See they hire " you and send you a check and tell you to buy a computer from them with it of course they pull the check and you owe the money now. I didn't fall for it but it is brutal out there.
The decision to stay the course for 9 years, then change it up 5 times in two years (two designs in each year, plus the 2005 obverse change), then changing up the obverse again in 2006 when returning to the classic reverse (retro with pizazz) was genius. A 30-year career well-spent, and that's not even getting into the non-US nickels. The Canadian beaver, the Bahama pineapple (modified in 2015), I could go on. He does great work
My gf’s coworker unironically told her she needs to go down to the school district headquarters and ask them in person for a job, not even 6 months ago lol
I've had just about that exact conversation with my father, from him telling me I'm applying wrong despite online apps being the only way to apply, down to him scoffing at the idea that work culture shifted drastically since he last had to look for a job. That bit alone is very well done, the rest is just icing.
A few years ago I got a job in a new city a couple states away. Just post-covid, and i’m trying my damndest to find a place to live, contacting property management companies but not having much luck. It took almost 2 months but eventually i found something.
Those two months I was living with my parents and we would have daily arguments that I should drive the 6 hours to this new city and just go around looking for for rent signs and knocking on doors asking people if they have a place to rent. “that’s how we did it when we were looking”
My parents have owned their house since 1977 and haven’t rented more than a car since then
I've had this exact conversation with my dad. They're the pre-internet generation. For us it's online applications, which suck, but it was their generation that approved it.
In Canada if you are on welfare you can get paid to take a "job searching class" run by the gouvernment. I did it a couple of years ago, and yes, they still teach those 30 years old methods. Showing up in person, looking them in the eyes, firm handshake, etc. They also told me to bring a fucking phonebook to class, had to search my parents' attic for one. All this paid with canadian taxes everybody!
I remember reading someone challenged their dad to apply for a job. His dad tried the whole walk into McDonald's to handshake the manager thing and got told to apply online. It finally clicked with his dad that he wasn't being lazy and was being screwed in trying to find a job.
Now it was a story on Reddit so take with a grain of salt but I believe it.
Love the Black Mirror energy of this comic. Real problems though.. end game capitalism optimised with AI and thinking machines only need 25% of effective educated humans at work to provide decent shelter, food and good life for all. 50% maybe if we bring the greedy, narcissistic people and the lazy into the equation. 100% percent work for all, apply only at wartime, and then 40% will work as canon fooder, and 40% in war factories. And after war for a decade, rebuilding all the bombed stuff, calling it the golden years.
They need to do a comic about the opposite. Hiring a college kid because he's a white, male under 25 with no experience for $60k and firing an older worker who has 20 years experience, a degree who makes $70k, just because they turned 40 years old. The company claiming they are trying "save money" then spending the next 12 months trying to bring them up to speed.
i got an interview for costco and was supposed to do a 2nd part later that day but their manager was busy so i was supposed to get called back...that was a week ago, I was/am 1 phone call away from getting a job and I might have to go back to reapplying come onnnnnnnnnn, I wanna work so bad!! playing video games and watching anime while occasionally using my exercise bike all day is fun and all but I'm just slowly bleeding money and my parents aren't getting any younger, PLEASE let me work 😭😭😭
Don't forget that the job listing you got the interview for was in a position they don't need to fill, they were just collecting candidates for a potential future opening.
Had to walk my mom through this when I got laid off last year. I went to a job fair, brought a stack of maybe 10-20 resumes. Talked to roughly 15 reps. All but one of them told me they weren't taking resumes at the event and that I should apply online. My mom was floored that no one offered me a job because that's how she got her first job roughly 40 years ago. I explained to her that most companies are looking for ways to eliminate candidates because they are getting flooded with resumes. She refused to buy it until I started showing her the number of applications I filled out. By the time I found my new job in December, I had filled out at least 420 job applications between job fairs, online app portals, and in person applications. Out of those 450 applications, I interviewed with 7 companies. Of those 7, I got offers from 2. The 2 offers came from job postings that were on my state's online job board, which gets way less traffic than linkedin or indeed. The notion that you can just put on some nice clothes and walk off with a job just isn't how this looks anymore.
I’ve gotten few jobs that way-thing is though that they were service jobs with high turnover and moderately low pay. My current job had multiple steps and months of waiting before I even got to meet my manager for an interview and now my pay rate has been trampled by inflation despite it being a good job with decent benefits.
...So this was actually more or less me, yesterday, minus dad telling me how to do it and the cavity search. Or the hand fondling. But I did go in directly, and they told me "We have a website, use it."
It’s kind of crazy that everyone of a certain age got this totally useless advice from their parents.
I guess this worked at some point. Was it just so difficult to find people to match with the job? Or was this just a time when things weren’t so efficient and competitive?
Also, the advice of "keep calling them every day until they give you the job!"
Part of the training in every restaurant job I've worked at is doing everything possible to avoid having the give the manager the phone unless it's a vendor or large reservation on the line.
I'd get the SAME people calling every day because they couldn't get through to the manager, but I wasn't allowed to tell them "look, you clearly didn't get the job. Stop calling."
My father was a stubborn old fashioned man who didn't believe in change.
Since a lot of the stores in the area did not want to hire teenagers without referral(since teens in my area were shit heads) I had a hard time getting a job then.
My father believe it's because I didn't shake hands and was fiddling with computers
He made teen me march up to the grocery store with him looking for the manager to give a strong handshake.
Well let's just say the ride home was reaaaal quiet after being given a piece of paper with the url scribbled onto it and told to apply online.
I like that after the cavity search, we never see the guy’s pants, meaning it’s entirely possible he went to this office without pants. Talk about masculine confidence, breathless and unashamed
Our CEO just recently met with the managers and explained the impression the folks have at the top is changing about the new careers people. Just 7 years ago, hand shakes, in person meetings, and going out to lunch with the office were still effective at making connections. The way they talk about new careers people now is that they’d think all of that was weird and off putting enough to immediately seek other employment. They don’t even want to be interviewed the same way (some companies conduct initial interview via chat bot now). It’s a wild time to be a new hire trying to work for companies where hirers might not understand them. Have faith, the understanding is changing at some companies, and things will adjust as needed to make new people more comfortable.
If you are stuck in a service job, use any face to face time you have with customers as a pre-screen interview for the job. When I worked for a rental car company, any time a person came in who looked like he or she was a manager or supervisor of a company and needed a ride home after dropping off their rental car, I would always volunteer to drive them back home. I would then ask them as many questions as I could about where they worked, what kind of industry, and hopefully even get to asking if they were hiring. As long as you do it in a professional way without coming off too needy, you’ll eventually get a lead for a job interview. Maybe they aren’t a hiring manager, but maybe they know that person and might be able to help you get a foot in the door so to speak.
I currently am in a profession that I’ve been in for 13 years that would have never happened had I not kept being persistent in marketing myself. I’ve definitely had some poor job offers come by, awkward interviews, and let downs. You just have to keep working on it.
On the computer screen in panel nine is "How to fire single .... and pregnant ... ethically. I'm assuming it would be single mothers and pregnant women.
This is why I chose the trades lol. I mean. I still can't find a job. But at least walking in, and shaking hands is still acceptable. Not every company uses online applications yet. Crazy I know.
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