[TRENCHES] Thursday, April 5, 2012 - Phantasm
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Phantasm
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/phantasm1
5:00 O’Clock Shadow
AnonymousWhat some people don’t realize about the QA department is that the vast majority of the testers are temps. The game company keeps testers on only for as long as they are needed for a particular project and will then discard them in a manner most people discard Chinese food menus.
As a result all testers learn to fear 5:00 pm when the project they are working on is starting to come to a close. A typical day shift ends at 5:30, but if a company wishes to get rid of you a member of the management rounds up the unlucky few at 5, makes sure you have all of your personal belongings, and then instructs the fired-testers-walking to follow them for a “quick meeting”. This meeting involves a thank you for your hard work followed by the ceremonial handing over of the security badge and finally topped off with being escorted out of the building.
Case in point; I was working on a project that was almost complete.
As the days wore on members of our team were being picked off and sent to other projects. With our team slowly dwindling like sand in an hour glass you could feel the tension in the remaining members each time someone from management so much as walked by our table.
Finally, with our team but a shell of its former self, our lead walked up and hovered over us awkwardly for a few moments. I glanced at the clock on the computer monitor. 5:00 pm. I looked up at my lead.
There was a hint of melancholy in his eyes. We had become pretty good friends over the course of the project.
“Gather your personal belongings and follow me please. We need to have a quick meeting.” he said.
Posts
The snuffler would totally have spotted Missingno.
Thanks.
Snuffler's a bro.
Edit:
Also the story was great this week.
Personal Quote: "I stare into the void as her molted carapace unfurls, her soaking thorax begging for my gentle touch... and she whispers: "krev unda xcryu!!!". Her slender neck riddled with eggsacks and vestigial maws beckons for my tender head, but what is that I see? Tis a hedgehog, nested upon one of her seven shoulder, her quills beckon for me as well. I now surrender myself as I am filled with countless fertilized eggs and my hands grace the spiky sensuous quills... Yes, yes - a thousand times yes..."
Steam: betsuni7
the snuffler needs to be on a shirt.
(sorry, I am so picky but that is driving me crazy
Comic would be better without the last two sentences. Still, I feel like this strip has been making great strides since the tail end of "season 1."
Pony knows about interacting with things that turn out to be drug-fueled later.
STEAM
conclusion; I didnt get kept on.
I've had the "Oh by the way your contract ended yesterday, don't go into work today" phone call.
Or the personal meeting where they secretly sent off the rest of the department except those fired to an extended lunch, so they don't have to watch you perform the ceremonial desk packing of shame.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Note that all of these people were full time hires, leaving a building full of scared contracted employees (and the few surviving fulltimes as their supervisors) hunkering down and watching their backs. From what I hear the place is quiet as a graveyard now as that undercurrent of fear grips them all. Also some of the stuff the people let go did just legally can't be done by contracted employees, meaning the remaining full times now have to learn how to do that stuff as well as do it for probably no increase in pay. It's just a fuckfest all around.
That sounds like our local Call Center company, AFNI. I don't know of anyone who enjoys working there, and many of my coworkers are former AFNI employees. It's the local job for right out of high school/college, while looking for something better, and the turnover is INTENSE. And brutal, exactly like Opty's story there.
I made two promises as a young lad: Never work in fast food, never EVER work for AFNI.
I think it's because the story doesn't seem like it's missing entire strips worth of content like the first season.
The early parts, save for the msytery of Issac, were very close together too. It was in the back half, when they decided to show an entire QA cycle, that things seemed rushed.
Now the cycle should be slower, yes?
The last two sentences are what makes this strip funny.
Hey, it was a call center she worked at. How eerie.
On a reversed experience where the employees bail out on the company due to its wonky management:
I've recently departed a work place where most of the veteran employees took a voluntary retirement and they've been barely managing with second-rate quick hiring to replace us.
I visited a while ago and, while they do manage on a certain level to conduct day-to-day business, it's quite messy and nothing compared to the clockwork and clean order it used to operate by.
The snuffler and the explanation of how he came to "exist" are what makes it funny. The last two sentences, after that, are redundant.
Pretty sure the overtime was mandatory, not "all you could like." But hey. Welcome to Illinois. Union-run, Conservative laws.