[TRENCHES] Thursday, November 15, 2012 - Lineage
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Lineage
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/lineage
The fun stops when you get keys.
AnonymousI worked at a major game retailer. Let’s call it a place you’d Stop. For Games. I started as seasonal help, but I was good, so I got keys a couple of weeks before Christmas. Within a year, I had a store of my own.
The thing is, selling games, particularly on the preorder/buy used model, turned into a hard sales gig a lot faster than I was really comfortable with. I saw district managers order store managers to break the rules to boost numbers, then fire them for said violations in order to look good to Loss Prevention. After all, high turnover rates mean you don’t have to pay anyone more than 28 grand a year for a 50 hour a week salary position. It was a mess. I was one of the few managers making quota without doing anything shady, so I knew my time was limited.
They transferred me to the middle of nowhere, 50 mile commute each way. I was given 3 months to fix a store that had been run into the ground by three years of bad management. I figure most people could have turned it around in half a year, but I still almost made it.
Funny thing though, I kept getting really tired, started showing up late. I thought it was from working 70 hour weeks with that hour drive on each end of every day. After a few months of that, they fired me.
Two weeks later I found out I had cancer. With no family history or chemical exposure, stress was considered the main contributing factor. But hey, they gave me rehire status…
Posts
When the fuck did this become a thing?
Ok, i'll have a stiff drink .... nope that too will do it.
A steak? Nope.
A sandwich? Nope.
A fried breakfast? Nope, that'll be heart disease.
Crack? Too moreish and illegal.
I think I might have to resort to self-pleasure. If they ever link cancer or heart disease to that then i'm done with life.
On a more serious note, I hope Anonymous is now all recovered and flipping the bird to his ex-employers from a more successful position.
Well gosh, I suppose I might as well settle in for a nice cuppa ...... this is gonna be good!
It's not a proven thing, just a theory - being stressed can mess up your hormone balance, which could mess with cell growth. It's not like stress is a mutagen though, and studies into it amount to asking cancer patients if they were stressed before being diagnosed. :P
The story is sad, but the comic is cute; love Isaac and Gwen in the ballpit.
Also mysterious developments!
Had a friend develop a severe ulcer and various gastric issues from stress, so I could believe this. The sad thing is that this was in university when he was 20. The game industry may suck guys, but architecture will fuck you up as well! :P
On the other hand for the love of god apply that level of dedication to anything other than Doing a Gamestop until you get stress cancer, christ!
On the black screen
Well, as near as I can follow the story, the player revolt led by Cora is what led to Lawstar going F2P, and going F2P not only probably saved the game but made it wildly successful and profitable. So I guess Q is willing to let bygones by bygones? I agree this whole second half of the "season" has been a bumpy ride in terms of plot development, though.
Stress increases gastric acid production, which can lead to ulcers. That said, in the last 10-15 years or so we've discovered that virtually all ulcers are linked to H. pylori. Eradicate that bug and ulcers go away, although various other GI upset can persist. As for stress causing cancer, that's nothing I've ever heard of and I'd be very suspicious of anyone who tried to make that connection.
The part of the story that really amazes me is that he started as seasonal help and actually got kept on and promoted.
That's actually ridiculously common... This story... is likely true for many areas of the country
What other stress did he mention in his story?
I'm going to get so much NOT prostate cancer it's going to be amazing.
Without getting too much into it, this my basic understand I've been taught...
This is essentially your answer. Our cells could have become cancerous and be devoured, via immunity, before we ever knew. You could be a cancer survivor and didn't even realize! But if stress (usually coupled with lack of sleep, possible depression) has caused you to become immunocompromised, what may have been handled could start to emerge.
IN ADDITION! There's new research coming out on telomeres.
Stress also reduced your telomeres. And healthy telomeres help reduce the signs of aging. They also play a role in cancer.
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/traits/telomeres/
So there's all kinds of evidence piling up that stress could be a key player in cancer due to it's effect on other mechanisms.
Warframe: TheBaconDwarf
If so, Mr. Anonymous, this fellow survivor gives you the one-ball salute. We are a proud fraternity with a more manageable scrotum.
If not, enjoy your uncompromised junk.
Baaaad science. A classic misinterpretation of cause and effect vs correlation.
They used to think stress gave you ulcers.
Science has now proved that Helicobacter pylori bacteria give you ulcers, and crippling stomach pains make you stressed.
"What's taking so long in there?"
"Preventative medicine!"
cora needs to be fired
god this series
well he obviously needs her father for whatever he has in mind
I really wish they'd just replaced all references to stores (Unless it's particularly important to the story or the storyteller really wants everyone to know what happened and who did it) to the name of one store representing the collective evils of game companies and stores.
...Videojuegos, Inc.? Path-E-Tech? Comp-U-Comp?
Not entirely sense-making but it's the best theory I could come up with.
Yup, no cancer here then. A distinct lack of electrolytes possibly, but certainly no cancer.
Well gosh, I suppose I might as well settle in for a nice cuppa ...... this is gonna be good!
Or Cora's dad has the rights to an IP of some sort.
One of these two things.