Trenches comic: Tuesday Nov. 29, 2011 - Muckraker

Bogey

The other side of the coin.

11/29/2011 - Anonymous

I began my career with little experience working part time. I started with a 21 hour work week, which slowly crept up to 33 hours.The job became my 2nd home, and for 9 months, all I experienced was the game. It wasn’t as bad as most of these people made it out to be. I talked to friends on IM, watched youtube and played the game. Some of the tasks they’d have us do were tedious, but none were impossible or too hard.

The title grew to a point where over 6 million people played it, so eventually we had to start doing weekends. Staying past ten was optional but not recommended - some people did the optional work because they needed the money. We get paid a little over minimum wage here, but the work isn’t bad at all. I don’t know if it’s just because my studio is lax, but some of the people bitching over a job like this is terrible.

I love my job, I may quit soon as I need to get more money. But I love this job.

Preacher

This is possibly the worst story under the comic ever. It reads like a bad forum post (and I should know a bad forum post). And going from 21 hours a week to 33 is horrific? What the hell does he think 40 hours is? Slave labor?

halkun

Oh My God what if he ever got Overtime! That would be the end of the world!

Jam Warrior

An important lesson to be learned there? When the overtime is both optional and paid then the wage slaves seem to gain a positive relationship with their employers rather than slowly growing resentment and cynicism? Nah, must be some kind of crazy outlier. Back to the whips.

Preacher and Halkun, you fail at reading. He describes his hours as how his part time job grew toward full time. He doesn't complain at any point. Him loving his job is kind of the entire point.

Peter Ebel

It's called the other side of the coin, cause the man likes the hours he puts in.

Preacher

21 to 33 hours is not a huge leap especially when he starts with "I began my career." Career implying you know working full time being the goal, which would be forty hour work weeks.

And the story is just badly written. And fails to be really interesting. I mean the last line alone is ridiculously stupid.

I love my job, I may quit soon as I need to get more money. But I love this job.

I love this job for reasons I don't really go into, but not enough to deal with I'm not being paid enough. I'm really at a loss as to what this story shows other than he's probably being paid exactly what he's worth.

Jam Warrior

He says exactly why he loves the job in the last sentence of the first paragraph!

But yes. It is a dull story. When not being abused with compulsory unpaid overtime then testing is a doss job. Doss jobs are nice but never go beyond minimum wage so eventually if you have any ambition in life you'll have to move up or on . Woop de doo.

Henroid

FOR

REALSIES

LTM

Jam Warrior wrote:

Preacher and Halkun, you fail at reading. He describes his hours as how his part time job grew toward full time. He doesn't complain at any point. Him loving his job is kind of the entire point.

Except he left us hanging at where the hours stopped creeping.

I started with a 21 hour work week, which slowly crept up to 33 hours.

This implies that the hours stopped creeping at 33. I'm sure that wasn't what they were meaning to imply, but still, its just poorly written.

I'd love my job, too, if I could pretend I was "living my work" and was only here 33 hours a week.

Delzhand

Isaac continues to be completely unlikeable, and the comic is still young enough that I can't tell if that's the goal.

see317

So, has it been confirmed that we're supposed to dislike Cox? I try seeing him as something other then a dick, and it's just not happening. Now, he's added "immature" to that.

azith28

I think its pretty obvious why Isaac is living in his car. When he does get a job hes not smart enough to keep his mouth shut until he knows whats going on around him.

Unfortunately this attitude is so common in the workplace.

Preacher

No one is likeable in the comic. The comic itself is a horror story.

Homeless person takes poorly paying job and is tortured by asshole for percieved slights. That's the story so far.

see317

I don't know, Cora seems like a decent human being.

Lord_Asmodeus

I'm liking the comic so far, but for what conceivable reason would you tell your supervisor that you tattled on them to his boss and that boss didn't care?

collinc

azith28 wrote:

I think its pretty obvious why Isaac is living in his car. When he does get a job hes not smart enough to keep his mouth shut until he knows whats going on around him.

Unfortunately this attitude is so common in the workplace.

This was my thought as well. The earlier comic where he is the first one calling it a day at 5 I was like "what is he not even bothering to look around at everyone else?"

ninja.iceberg

I suppose there's always an exception to the rule. While this story is boring, it's not that far from my job as a tester. I work for one of the largest video game companies in the world and all I do is check DLC items to make sure they work. In the meanwhile, I watch Netflix or Hulu on my second monitor. This is in stark contrast from when I first started working here. In that first year I made over 32 thousand dollars at the company because we had so much overtime. I started at 11 dollars an hour. We had no internet, no IM. Our only source of entertainment was inter-office emails we had with each other. So our work day was long, tedious, overly boring and infuriating, exactly like most testing places.

Preacher

I guess my point about the boringness of the story. Is that who cares? "Boring job is boring but I like it because I play video games." Ok that was worthy of being read good sir!

Kreutz

This comic is becoming a trap for critics. Don't like the characters? That's the point.

Gaslight

33 hours. That poor dear. I work that many hours some weeks in my menial part-time retail job, and I'm sure as hell not getting to play video games the whole time. And when I do, I don't complain, because then I get a more relatively decent paycheck.

But then he says he's there until 10pm or working weekends so I have to assume he works more than 33 hours a week now, right? I guess it really is just poorly written.

I get the sense that there is virtually no screening or editing process for the tales that people send in at all.

Preacher

I've felt that for a while with the stories. They've gotten shorter and very similar to each other. On top of some reeking like day old bullshit. I don't know if there is an editor or someone selecting them, because if they have one, he/she should be fired.

Draygo

I didn't read his post as whining at all. If you enjoy it you wouldnt mind doing it for more hours while still getting paid.

Its not like the average story of being forced to work 'optional' overtime and not getting paid a cent. Lighten up will you? Not every post needs to be some sort of 'feel sorry for me' essay. I think that is the entire point. It was probably some guy reading the comic every day and the message along with it was always about the work enviroment being very much like slave labor. Probably wanted to write a response to it, did, and one of the comic authors put it up because they probably rarely ever get any positive stories. Too bad positive stories are not interesting because they often lack conflict.

And saying someone should lose their job over this? Really? Preacher you are a silly goose.

Tube

I don't think I've ever seen anyone miss the point as spectacularly as Preacher did in this thread.

Locke6854

A non-admin would get an infraction for talking about another forum member negatively.

Tube

Are you also amazed when employees at stores are allowed to go into the stockroom while you have to stay on the shop floor? Your input on the moderation of the forums is not required.

Henroid

I like the characters because of how ridiculous they act to one-another.

I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I like that. Because that's my experience in life.

THESPOOKY

azith28 wrote:

I think its pretty obvious why Isaac is living in his car. When he does get a job hes not smart enough to keep his mouth shut until he knows whats going on around him.

Unfortunately this attitude is so common in the workplace.

I don't know, it's been hinted at that he did some seriously heinous stuff at some point, that might've even gotten him arrested.

BusterK

Is the Owlguy wearing a kilt?

That Dave Fella

I was just about to ask the same thing.

He's wearing a utilikilt.

Aurich

Am I the only one who sees Isaac as having stood up for himself in an ineffectual way here? That's an admirable trait, innit?

Andy Joe

"In Dutch"? Is that an actual thing people say as a synonym for "In trouble"?

bwanie

i thought it said "in a ditch" at first.

Tarranon

Henroid wrote:

I like the characters because of how ridiculous they act to one-another.

I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I like that. Because that's my experience in life.

I've gotten a lot more fond of them over the past couple of weeks

maybe because none of this is giving me PTSD style flashbacks

azith28 wrote:

I think its pretty obvious why Isaac is living in his car. When he does get a job hes not smart enough to keep his mouth shut until he knows whats going on around him.

Unfortunately this attitude is so common in the workplace.

what if it's because 'Isaac, horrified of being tossed back out on the street, keeps his head down and does his job to the best of his abilities while slowly dying inside' would be a boring comic

azith28

You mean like Dilbert? yeah your right, completely unsuccessful comic idea that.

admanb

Locke6854 wrote:

A non-admin would get an infraction for talking about another forum member negatively.

Um... no they wouldn't.

I feel quite safe saying that someone with six posts knows nothing about the forum policies or culture and would be insane to comment on them.

Tarranon

azith28 wrote:

You mean like Dilbert? yeah your right, completely unsuccessful comic idea that.

piffle, half (all?) of the people in Dilbert would have gotten fired too if we were viewing it through the lens of a realistic office

admanb

azith28 wrote:

You mean like Dilbert? yeah your right, completely unsuccessful comic idea that.

Dilbert is workplace madness, but viewed through the lens of the competent, dead-inside protagonist. Trenches is the same madness through the lens of a mad protagonist -- a villain or antihero, as it were. This formula should come as no surprise to anyone who has read either Penny Arcade or PvPonline, which both feature villainous/insane protagonists.

Evermourn

I've just figured it out - the hero of the comic is the supervisor, and Cox is one of the many obstacles he has to deal with. If you read it like that, the comic actually makes sense. Hopefully he gets Cox fired, gets the other guy back and we can have an entertaining comic about the games industry.

Athenor

Has anyone tried decyphering the files under the "New readers" section? I think there's 1 character we haven't seen yet, and given that post a few months back regarding the cryptologist, it wouldn't surprise me if the "gibberish" in those files was a real character description.

Tarranon

Athenor wrote:

Has anyone tried decyphering the files under the "New readers" section? I think there's 1 character we haven't seen yet, and given that post a few months back regarding the cryptologist, it wouldn't surprise me if the "gibberish" in those files was a real character description.

http://home2.paulschou.net/tools/xlate/

Base64

Also Isaac is da best, eff the haters

collinc

Athenor wrote:

Has anyone tried decyphering the files under the "New readers" section? I think there's 1 character we haven't seen yet, and given that post a few months back regarding the cryptologist, it wouldn't surprise me if the "gibberish" in those files was a real character description.

I think we've seen all the characters. This is the list I gather:

1. Isaac
2. Quentin Mckenzie, aka Q
3. Cora
4. Credenza
5. Marley
6. FOB

Okay so maybe we haven't met number 6 yet. I just realized something going back over the comics to compile the list. Isaac talked to Marley about having to test the million doors but Marley didn't mention it was cut. Surely he would have known if Cora knew and she just got re-hired.