I don’t think I heavily edited the fourth panel there. I kind of just did a stream of consciousness thing and ended up with this as the end product. Getting job interviews during a stagnant economy really sucks because you tend to react this way for all of the job interviews, not realizing that you might not get anything at all. I’d say that’s especially true when you’re trying to work in a kind of general field where it’s harder to pigeonhole what you can do. When I was job searching I was looking for any assistant type work that was in some way related to film production or post-production. Or just multimedia and computers.
Posts Tagged ‘job’
This is the only real story arc that exists in the comic right now. I don’t anticipate ever having more extensive stories for the comic, but at the time I thought that I needed to get him a job so that it would add a little reality to his situation. Then once we knew what he did and how he paid his bills then I could get back onto the daily little things.
Related Comics ¬
| Dec 11, 03 | Job Interview Aftermath |
| Feb 21, 06 | Yourself 3 Years From Now |
| Dec 9, 03 | Job Interview Tour |
| Dec 19, 03 | Job Offer Followup |
| Nov 3, 03 | Blockbuster Attempt #2 |
Those movie titles are based off of actual flubs that I’ve heard customers make.When I worked at my parent’s video store it was astounding the number of ways people could butcher a movie title. Though what I find even more astounding is the capacity to not bust out laughing when caught off guard with one of these requests.
Two of the best came from this one customer. One time he asked for “Mommy” and the other time he asked for “60 Minutes.” The first one I tried to think it out, first I guessed “The Mummy” but then ended up finding out it was “Big Momma’s House.” For the second I guessed “The Insider” because that had come out recently and it has the whole 60 minutes thing in it, but then I guessed “Gone in 60 Seconds.” The real kicker here is that both of those films were in theaters when they asked for them.
Related Comics ¬
| Jul 30, 10 | First Things First |
| Apr 20, 03 | Blockbuster Sucks |
| Mar 26, 03 | NYU Career Jump Starter |
| Jan 1, 04 | Still Unemployed…Oh Wait |
| Jun 14, 03 | Demanding Job Qualifications |
Related Comics ¬
| Apr 20, 03 | Blockbuster Sucks |
| Dec 10, 03 | Job Interview Closing |
| Dec 14, 09 | Blockbuster Busted |
| Dec 5, 03 | Job Call |
| Jan 1, 04 | Still Unemployed…Oh Wait |
I don’t quite remember which of my friends brought this one up, because I have two friends who majored in Computer Science. But they found a job qualification that was something like this, but it was only off by one year.
Again, in this strip I’m still trying to do weird perspective, so at this point I still haven’t gone completely flat with most of my little sets.
Related Comics ¬
| Jul 29, 10 | Bagel Man Farewell |
| Dec 5, 03 | Job Call |
| Feb 21, 06 | Yourself 3 Years From Now |
| Sep 18, 03 | Last Song for a Film School Graduate |
| Jan 1, 04 | Still Unemployed…Oh Wait |
This strip doesn’t work for continuity since he’s unemployed later on. I yanked this strip from my website temporarily because I had told my boss at this particular job about my website and I didn’t want to offend them. This was the Video Fashion company I worked at which didn’t pay me on time. The boss man interviewed me for HOURS. I think he just likes to hear himself talk, but he was talking about getting a feel for people and his good instincts and blah blah blah. This seemed silly and insulting since he was only going to be paying me hourly under the table for a stupid part time tech job. When I finally got my money and they asked if there was a place to be contacted, I smiled and said no.
The thing the character says in the second panel is just me riffing on how all requirements for office jobs tend to have the exact same buzzwords like “detail oriented.” Okay that was a phrase, but you get the point. I don’t remember if he asked me one of those stereotypical job interview questions, but it’s possible since the interview was so long.
I chose not to try to make an attempt at drawing them sitting in chairs. I hadn’t decided yet how that would look. I also used to have the blue caption boxes on the top to give some sort of context or commentary on the comic. I decided later on that the strip should stand on its own without needing to be explained. I don’t like it when comics rely on their news box to get the joke across, which is why I try to use my news box only as extra information like whether or not it’s based off of a true story and what happened to inspire it.
Related Comics ¬
| Jul 1, 10 | There’s Always a Line |
| Nov 3, 03 | Blockbuster Attempt #2 |
| Feb 18, 10 | No Order is Special Enough |
| Sep 23, 09 | Subway Smooching |
| Feb 21, 06 | Yourself 3 Years From Now |
Job bulletins and websites like monster.com are not conducive to finding the jobs film students want to get. Best I could find was mandy.com and online forums for some video production websites. Problem being that most of them are job by job based. 19 times out of 20, job listings for permanent positions aren’t entry-level jobs. Basically this means that every entry-level film job gets flooded with resumés from all the recent graduates. All the official job websites are almost completely useless for this type of field coming out of college.
Something you see in these early comics is that the character had a lot more hair. That’s because I still had delusions of eventually improving my artwork to the degree that they’d resemble real people. I used to sketch people on the subway so that I could better draw arm and leg positions. Though that was short lived because the characters have no knees or elbows.
What I ended up realizing was that the drawing style of the comic grows naturally from either laziness or the occasional attention I feel is required for a certain strip. After a few dozen strips if people are still reading that means they’ve accepted the drawing style and any improvement isn’t necessary unless I deem it so.
Related Comics ¬
| Jan 1, 04 | Still Unemployed…Oh Wait |
| Jul 25, 07 | Harry Potter Precautions |
| Dec 28, 05 | Voicemail Won’t Delete |
| Dec 11, 03 | Job Interview Aftermath |
| Jan 4, 05 | Film Student Reunion |
I graduated from NYU early 2003 when the economy really sucked. Plus I was a film student so it was doubly crappy. NYU Film school doesn’t encourage internships as much as they should which is probably why I didn’t have one until my senior year. I also loathed the events they have when alumni of NYU come and talk about how they got started.
The reason being that when they tell their stories they always have a section where they say “I did odd jobs for a few months.” The problem is that those few months they gloss over is the section most immediately relevant to people graduating. I hate it when they tell you to be an unpaid production assistant for a while in order to network and meet the right people. The inevitable question after that becomes what do you do for rent if you can’t mooch off your parents?
I had T-shirt ideas for my comic early on and a lot of them were related to not having a job, but those ideas were only relevant to that period of time, so I’m glad I never had the time to completely develop them.
Related Comics ¬
| Dec 22, 03 | Job Offered |
| Sep 18, 03 | Last Song for a Film School Graduate |
| Dec 5, 03 | Job Call |
| May 12, 03 | NYU Graduation Fountain Tradition |
| Apr 21, 03 | Job Interview of Doom |

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