Thanksgiving holidays got away from me folks, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to invoke “Keep the Story Going” and just admit this is what I got. I don’t think I’ll have time to line or color it with the holidays going on.
A lot of people out there are not well informed on what they do or do not have a right to.
I am FINE with ‘The Show must go on’ and a half-done comic.
I was WAITING for this 😀
Inside my heart is breaking,
My makeup may be flaking
But my smile still stays on…
Half-finished comic > than no-update, always. 😉
(Though one does hope you find time to come back and finish it up later!)
Creating a regularly updating webcomic is basically a job, and if you’re the boss, you owe it to your staff (yourself) to give yourself time off for any official family holiday (Or else you’re just being a dick boss, to yourself, and if you’re going to do that, what the hell is the point of self-employment?)
Spending time with your family is 100% a valid reason to take a day off. Now on the OTHER hand, if you’d said you were taking the day off to go shopping on “Black Friday’s Eve”… I’d push you in front of a bus, even if the comic was early. 😉
Definitely ok with half-done. My inner-justice seeker is cackling with much malice! 😀
My inner-justice seeker, on the other hand, is doing fist-pumping motions and shouting “Yes! Yes! Yes!”.
The artwork(and Principal McClueless getting some karmic returns), I like.
But Chris’ being so seemingly passive (or fearful of Ashton?) and unaware of his rights feels “off” to me. I know there are a lot of people who aren’t aware of laws and civil rights in detail, but–if he joined his workplace’s union, he should’ve had some basic information given him about it. He’s been employed by that school for at least a couple of years now. If it were Jessie saying that, I’d find it more believable.
Agh. I’m maybe overthinking this.
*sits down to watch the Hobbit get crushed*
Some school districts, everyone’s covered by the union whether they are officially members or not (and a bit comes out of each paycheck for it–more if they are actual members, but there are additional, non-workplace-rights type advantages, such as discounts on things, if you become a full member). And not everyone reads the brochures.
The most frequently told lie in all of history: “I have read the fine print/agree to the terms and conditions”
I don´t see Chris as being fearful of the Hobbit. I see him as being fearful of Todd, since he was blaming himself for the shirt incident.
It seems to me that he’s trying to be humble in brining all this down on Ashton’s head. I think he’s planned out what he’s saying (hence Mina hushing him a bit [a friend told him]) and is trying to stay with what he’s prepared while expressing his apologies for the shirt incident, and containing his anger at getting thrown under the bus.
On the union rights/knowledge of said rights, depending on the union & how involved in it an individual is it’s quite possible to go a few years without using much more than the insurance & other minor benefits without pulling out the representation & other things one wouldn’t need save for extreme cases. He could have just had a very calm time at the school up until then, and never needed to go to the union for assistance, and with Ashton’s reaction, didn’t frel he had the time to check (angry small-boss is angry)
Plus, meeting the dad of the student who got their shirt jacked on your watch is pretty off-putting, so he’d want to be as respectful as possible all things considered.
As Amy said, in some places everyone automatically pays a service fee without necessarily being a member. Unions are supposed to defend those people, too.
I’m a rep for my union and every year we survey members and non-members about their rights (it’s also a good way to keep people informed). Even the members often don’t know the details of the contract, and the administration often misrepresents things to workers– for instance, workers are not personally responsible for finding a replacement during sick days, but they’re always told they have to find someone…
I see an angry mob forming! Will we see the hobbit crowd surfing?
Will we see Principal Hobbit hoisted up the flag pole by the elastic of his shorts? His petard is looking too flimsy for that, right now.
Oh boy, oh boy! The plot thickens! I love this comic. I love this comic so much. Action, adventure, suspense, snark, complex stories, multifaceted characters…*excited wiggle* I’m excited to see what’ll happen next! Thank you for getting this up, despite the holiday rush. 🙂
Go get him Todd, Chris, Mina and…!
Is this why my Tommy is bullying these kids!?
My answer to the last panel: “No, this probably isn’t why your daughter is failing math. Your daughter is probably failing math because you assume that her teacher can do everything without help, and that therefore you don’t need to see if she needs your help. Or that this is not a good curriculum for her. Different children learn different ways, and maybe you need to look into one that will explain it a way that she can understand it.”
(Before you all jump on me, I know, I know. Some parents simply do not have time to go over homework, however much they want to, and teachers are paid to, well, teach. But they can’t be everywhere at once, and with thirty kids, there is simply no time to make sure that every child understands every concept before moving on. The parents, if at all possible, do need to be involved and helping the child when they need it.)
Also, what on earth, why are they FAILING a THIRD GRADER?!? It’s one thing to say “you don’t understand this, you need to keep working on it,” but FAILING them? They’re third grade performance is not what’s going to get them into college. Save failing people for high school and beyond, don’t make third graders feel worthless because they don’t understand long division yet.
Rant aside, I am enjoying Principal Hobbit’s comeuppance.
“Actually, Lucretia is failing math because she’s undergoing a hideous transformation due to being infected by a Calamity From The Skies as the result of ill-advised mad science experiments. She’ll be fine as long as we get her into the containment facility and prevent her son and his clones from finding out what happened.”
It might not be that the school/teacher is doing an actual “failing” of the kid, it could just be hyperbole from the parent who just learned about this other stuff, and is currently outraged (over what could be any grade, maybe they consider a C to be inadequate, and thus “failing” despite the child doing what they can)
People will also go & bring “failing” out for a single bad test. Kid normally gets good marks, doesn’t fully understand a new concept, has a bad test, parent freaked out because the kid is “failing”
I do agree that getting the help to learn the stuff is infinitely more important than failing/giving up on a child, but I’m just interpreting the circumstances as I am (I could be completely wrong, or its a situation between my take & yours [heck, it’s quite possible the line was just to fill out the general outrage of a PTA meeting, and show how quickly some folks will jump on anything to pass the buck when their child/parenting is concerned])
Also, rants are fun, so long as they don’t get too crazy (and you’re in the clear, methinks)
Agreed. Fail-ING suggests the girl hasn’t failed YET, but the father there is aware she is not passing her tests. That is not to say the school has decided to hold the girl back a year (even if they weren’t all running on that ruinous “no child left behind” philosophy, I don’t think they force students to repeat an entire year of classes due to failing just one class.)
“Failing” could also be interpreted merely as “not succeeding”, as opposed to that her marks are specifically below a certain threshold.
AH!, this brings to mind a saying we had in the Navy:
We, the unwilling led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. we have done so much for so long, with so little. we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
kinda like what teachers have to put up with, huh?!
Small thing, but it bugs me. Too many ‘…’ breaks, makes the flow feel artificial.
This is ridiculously unrealistic. There’s absolutely no possible way that he was unaware that teacher’s unions are a thing that exists.
He literally would not have been able to get a job without joining one.
Sorry, but suspension of disbelief is broken here.
It’s fully possible to join a union without knowing the full extent of all services they offer. Just because you can get that representation doesn’t mean the union is necessarily going to go out of their way to make you ask for it. If he didn’t know he hada right, he didn’t know to ask for it & pursue legal action. There’s a lot of paperwork involved, and I’d bet a PE teacher (regardless of how intelligent they may be) probably isn’t one for lots of paperwork.
A perfect example of not knowing everything one is signing onto (like witha Union contract) would be most software EULAs. Most people don’t even look at those things, and just check the box & click accept.
He didn’t say that he was unaware of the existence of the union. he said that he was not aware of his rights as protected by the union
A *Union person* in an above comment thread just said that even full members aren’t always fully aware of their rights.
Oh gawd Mina XD DAT SLY GRIN
You should go ahead and finish it instead of leaving it up half-finished
You’d think that if he was in a union he’d know to at least MENTION this to the union. I mean, what did he think the union was for?