Can we be sure this wasn’t some sort of intentional trap? I can see Galasso recruiting people through abduction.
Conquest isn’t even his daughter in this continuity, she’s a wealthy heiress he kidnapped. But her parents have refused to pay the ransom, and she needs to earn her keep.
Shortchanged! A Minimum-Wage Webcomic By David M Willis follows the wacky adventures of Becky, Sayid, Jason, Conquest, Pamela, and Galasso as they struggle to find meaning, pizza, and WORLD DOMINATION in a small pizza parlor in Bloomington, Indiana.
His job as a TA has been terminated, and he can’t legally work in the U.S., but he’s still matriculated at IU, right?
So if I’m understanding correctly, until his current visa expires, he can still attend IU, as long as his savings and income sources are sufficient to keep him out of vagrancy and/or starvation.
Which, given his hollow leg and the cost of booze, is probably not a realistic scenario.
It doesn’t exactly seem like Jason is on good terms with his family.
U.S. universities have a REALLY bad history of “pawning off” teaching jobs on graduate students and paying those students a fraction of what a full-time faculty member would make. While I think Jason did a lousy job as a TA, I also know how hard it is be be barely scraping by on a TA/adjunct salary at the same time that you’re also trying hard to do well in your grad classes and start trying to establish yourself in your field.
Given his family is stinking rich (they live in Knightsbridge) and Jason’s comment about having to go back, I think he’s financially on his own as long as he stays in the US.
Well, he DID do it and, if fraternizing with a student is against the rules at that school, he has no defense.
I guess he could make a case for “mitigating circumstances”…I’m aware I’m probably over-sympathetic to Jason because I was once an over-worked, under-paid, struggling graduate student. (But I NEVER had a thing with any of my students!)
Well, he’s got the defense of “Prove it. Penny was lying. She just wanted to smear me, since she was being kicked out herself.” Lots of people would give that a go and quite likely succeed.
OTOH, he did do it. And he seems to feel guilty enough about it not to want to fight it, which is something at least.
Well, he is a blond dude. And, we got lots of redhead rogues (I think that’s the right spelling) chicks. Dina as the elf. Joe as the dwarf? Eh, why not. “Jakes” is clearly Greenhilt.
Elan, OOTS’ profoundly stupid bard, was told that removing his armor would decrease his encumbrance penalty to Sneak. He extrapolated this to mean that removing all of his clothes would make his Sneak roll so good, he would effectively be invisible. Hijinks ensued.
Others of course comically overreacted in the other direction – closing their eyes to avoid seeing a glimpse of the horror of male nudity.
Which kind of means it sort of worked after all.
Been there, done that. I am very sorry to say that more than once I’ve drunk enough to know that feeling when you don’t actually *think* you’re drunk – until you move too quickly or turn your head too fast. And then…fall down go boom. 😕
But given the situation he’s facing, I definitely can’t blame Jason for getting so drunk. Not only is he looking at the end of his job, and maybe his career depending on who finds out about what he did, he’s also not from the U.S. and doesn’t really have a home to which he can go back.
(As a side-note: different schools have different policies about TAs and even professors dating students. It was actually perfectly “okay” for professors to date students at my school until administration changed that policy about 5 years ago. (I have NEVER dated a student, BTW.) But what Jason did isn’t automatically considered “wrong” everywhere.)
To be clear, my school doesn’t have dorms and has a large number of “non-traditional” students, many of which are older people (as in, not teenagers or twenty-somethings) returning to school. I have had many students who are older than I am. So the situation at my school isn’t exactly the same as what’s going on in the comic.
And, when you talk about college students, you’re talking about *adults* who can legally consent to sex and/or a relationship.
I…can kind of see how a professor might make friends with and even be attracted to someone in their classes. However, I won’t deny that there is an imbalance of power there – the *very few* fellow faculty members I’ve known who got involved with students didn’t do so until the class was over.
While I often have students with whom I would like to be friends, I’ve learned that it’s really important to maintain boundaries. A number of years ago I accidentally landed up hanging out with one of my former students during a show at a club. A (non-student) friend of mine invited me to the show and she also was apparently friends with my student and invited them as well (my friend didn’t know this person was my student). We all hung out and moshed and had a couple of drinks together. After that, this student *really* tried to take advantage by repeatedly asking for special treatment in our class and even asked me to deliver a recommendation letter to their home.
If I was ever in that situation again, I wouldn’t “hang out” with any student – I’d find a way to politely excuse myself and leave. Ethically, what Jason did with Sal wasn’t okay, but IMHO it IS kind of understandable, especially because he’s going to school very far away from his home and seems lonely (he wouldn’t be drinking with Walky if he had a good support system and/or friends at his own academic level).
It is complicated. But so’s life. With the age difference out of the picture (like with older non-traditional students or possibly with new grad students and older undergrads) it’s essentially like any workplace romance. Which generally comes with strict (if not always observed) rules about no sex with people under your authority. It’s the same with teachers and students. The power differential gives a lot of opportunity for abuse. Don’t do it.
I also feel like there’s a larger issue here, which Willis is kind of referencing – being a teacher or a professor in the U.S. is kind of a thankless, under-paid, under-valued job right now. One of my colleagues just forwarded an article from “The Atlantic” about how little college professors make compared to professionals with equivalent degrees in business or STEM fields.
I am about $100,000 in debt because of student loans – and I DID get scholarships and grants for college. I’m not comfortable saying how much I make per year, but it is LESS than $100,000. I could have bought a HOUSE for that much.
Also, many college professors (myself included) basically have no “life” outside work. (My mom and my sister also teach at the college level, so I am speaking with some authority here.) I work, if I really break it down, close to 80 hours/week. This includes NOT ONLY teaching hours, but hours I have to spend in my office for office hours, advisement hours, ALL the meetings I’m supposed to attend, and all the class prep work I do and all the paper correcting I do. PLUS “professional development,” which includes writing ane submitting articles, attending conferences, and applying for grants. (I have over 100 students per semester and I mostly teach intro and developmental classes. It takes me about 15-45 minutes to read and mark each student paper. Do the math.) And my situation is NOT unique – in fact, I am much “luckier” than a lot of other professors teaching elsewhere, as I heard from a professor from Colorado that attended the same conference as me last weekend.
I barely have time to eat, sleep, and take a shower sometimes. I have NO TIME to make friends or have a social life. A lot of my colleagues at my school are in relationships with/married to each other. I understand that. It…gets overwhelming. And maybe it feels “easier” to be with someone who works with you or even, in the case of Jason, to be with a student. Because it is SO MUCH WORK to try to have a social life outside work, especially because you’re exhausted ALL THE TIME.
And yes, commenting here is kind of my “social life!” I’m currently avoiding work that I *desperately* need to do, including marking student papers. POOT.
No real argument with much of that, from what I know from the outside. Though I’ll mention the increasing use of non-tenure track faculty who generally get treated even worse and paid less.
Still, I’ll emphasize again that Jason didn’t “date” or have a social relationship with Sal. This wasn’t a matter of falling for one of the few people he had social contact with or anything. They fucked. The first time because she thought she could get a better grade out of it – though she didn’t make that clear.
NO disagreement about the sad state of non-tenure-track faculty. I help run the Adjunct Committee at my school and know how much adjuncts struggle (I was one once). The Graduate Center branch of my union just voted to strike unless they get more money per course (which they DEFINITELY deserve). This *might* translate into a university-wide strike. And, as a school with a strong union, we are all VERY worried about the results of the Janus Supreme Court case. 😢
I guess I’m seeing Jason and Sal as having a “relationship” because I am personally not really emotionally capable of having s3x with someone about whom I don’t care. I don’t do “one night stands” and I feel *terrible* about the VERY FEW times I’ve “hooked up” with someone when I didn’t plan to be in a long-term relationship with them. 😢
That’s the thing about getting intoxicated: You think that you’re the smoothest, most intelligent and most skilled person on Earth… when, in fact, you can barely walk without snapping both ankles.
I did this once at a movie theater. Nobody was behind the counter, so I walked back there and scooped up some popcorn. They came out midway and got on me to get out from behind the counter. One of my friends pointed out they probably had to throw that whole batch away for sanitation reasons and I felt a bit bad but… still got popcorn.
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how Jason fell into a bartending job
he already has the looks
He already dresses for a job at that fancy pub from QC.
…you know, the more I think about it the more I’m convinced that’s exactly what’ll happen
Agreed. That was also my take on this.
Really? At this point I feel like this night is going to end up with them both in jail getting bailed out by Sal.
It’s Galasso’s. Galasso will appreciate his spirit. This strange-speaking fellow will make an excellent minion, once he is molded.
Can we be sure this wasn’t some sort of intentional trap? I can see Galasso recruiting people through abduction.
Conquest isn’t even his daughter in this continuity, she’s a wealthy heiress he kidnapped. But her parents have refused to pay the ransom, and she needs to earn her keep.
Shortchanged! A Minimum-Wage Webcomic By David M Willis follows the wacky adventures of Becky, Sayid, Jason, Conquest, Pamela, and Galasso as they struggle to find meaning, pizza, and WORLD DOMINATION in a small pizza parlor in Bloomington, Indiana.
like, realistically I know from working in immigration that his student visa will get revoked and he’ll have to be deported
–but since he’s white ¯\_(ツ)_/¯🍷
His job as a TA has been terminated, and he can’t legally work in the U.S., but he’s still matriculated at IU, right?
So if I’m understanding correctly, until his current visa expires, he can still attend IU, as long as his savings and income sources are sufficient to keep him out of vagrancy and/or starvation.
Which, given his hollow leg and the cost of booze, is probably not a realistic scenario.
That is my understanding as well. But, like you said, without his TA income he’s unlikely to be able to afford rent and food for much longer.
Unless his family is rich and he just had the TA job for spending money and/or because he liked doing it?
It doesn’t exactly seem like Jason is on good terms with his family.
U.S. universities have a REALLY bad history of “pawning off” teaching jobs on graduate students and paying those students a fraction of what a full-time faculty member would make. While I think Jason did a lousy job as a TA, I also know how hard it is be be barely scraping by on a TA/adjunct salary at the same time that you’re also trying hard to do well in your grad classes and start trying to establish yourself in your field.
Not that I’m *bitter,* or anything… 😉
Tru dat.
**fist in the air**
Given his family is stinking rich (they live in Knightsbridge) and Jason’s comment about having to go back, I think he’s financially on his own as long as he stays in the US.
Yeah, that was my impression too.
But has his job been terminated yet? All the board has so far is hearsay from Penny that he was banging students.
Yes he actually did, but does the board know that? They probably just started investigating.
He doesn’t seem to plan to fight the accusation.
Well, he DID do it and, if fraternizing with a student is against the rules at that school, he has no defense.
I guess he could make a case for “mitigating circumstances”…I’m aware I’m probably over-sympathetic to Jason because I was once an over-worked, under-paid, struggling graduate student. (But I NEVER had a thing with any of my students!)
Well, he’s got the defense of “Prove it. Penny was lying. She just wanted to smear me, since she was being kicked out herself.” Lots of people would give that a go and quite likely succeed.
OTOH, he did do it. And he seems to feel guilty enough about it not to want to fight it, which is something at least.
Ah, but before that, first the Dumbiverse must go through years of It’s Joyce! and that can also spin-off into Joyce & Jacob or whatever.
He is Beauty,
He is Grace,
He fell on his
Stupid Face! :PPP
Rita Heyworth
Gave good FAAAAACE
Ladies with an attitude
Fellas who were drunk on booze
Don’t just stand there, let’s get to it
Strike a pose! Jason, you blew it
VOGUE
Jason, invisible? Pfft, everyone knows you’re only invisible if you strip all your clothes off.
Order of the Stick references are always appreciated.
Well, he is a blond dude. And, we got lots of redhead rogues (I think that’s the right spelling) chicks. Dina as the elf. Joe as the dwarf? Eh, why not. “Jakes” is clearly Greenhilt.
That leaves Belkar. Who could we possibly find that’s a violent sociopath who’s angry all the it’s Mike isn’t it.
*applauds*
IIRC, Jason also has 18 charisma “under the hood” according to Sal.
I thought it was “you’re only invisible if nobody’s looking”…
More useful than you think in these days of automated surveillance.
Elan, OOTS’ profoundly stupid bard, was told that removing his armor would decrease his encumbrance penalty to Sneak. He extrapolated this to mean that removing all of his clothes would make his Sneak roll so good, he would effectively be invisible. Hijinks ensued.
He’s not STUPID, he’s just INTELLECTUALLY CHALLENGED in COMEDIC FASHION.
It didn’t hurt that, while INT is Elan’s dump stat, he has a very high CHA. Certain members of the party did not mind him traipsing around naked.
Others of course comically overreacted in the other direction – closing their eyes to avoid seeing a glimpse of the horror of male nudity.
Which kind of means it sort of worked after all.
No, you’re only invisible if you’re bisexual, asexual, aromantic, nonbinary, or transgender.
🤣
(I am bisexual and I laugh because this is true.)
*slow clap*
😊
To pile on what others said, +1 for OOTS. Where is the like button?
nailed it
and by ‘it’ i mean ‘the bar’
and by ‘nailed’ i mean ‘dry-humped’
Yes, this seems like a good restaurant to mess with.
same
Why do I feel like someone is dangerously close to a downward spiral.
“Close to”? Walky is now his best friend. By Jason’s standards, that’s rock bottom.
That just means it’s time to break out the sledgehammer.
*plays The Beatles’ “Hippy Hippy Shake” on the hacked Muzak*
*looks at alt-text*
He’s Miss United States?
I think he’s Miss United Kingdom!
“–he has fallen on his face”
Miss Knightbridge
I was hoping someone had already commented this so I didn’t have to.
silent as the wind
Bartender: What the fuck are you do-
Walky: I DON’T KNOW HER *flees*
he is beauty, he is grace
he just fell flat on his face
Dang, beat me to it
FAAAAAAAACE
He is beauty
He is grace
He is completely
Off his face
(the proper aussie version contained cusses so here, cleaner)
aww, I want the ‘proper’ version. 🙂
sugar honey iced tea faced
though i’m just realising with the beat of it ‘off his face’ works better
Alternative title: Jason’s Bartending Adventure: Bottle Tendencies.
Your next line is “I’ll have a rum and coke, light ice!”
Yes plz
IS THAT A JOJO REFERENCE?
(Man this used to be a lot more fun when Jojo was relatively unknown)
it’s easier if you use JoJo, and yes
(JaSo’s Biz-Bar Adventure: Bottle Tendencies lolololol)
This, ah, seems like a good way to get in trouble.
Absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan, and I unreservedly endorse it.
Your avatar (at least, until it changes) is perfect for your comment.
I…love these two. I love this arc.
He’s Miss United Kingdom
I love how happy Walky is that there is shenanigans at last. He knows how to handle shenanigans.
If Mike is fueled by the sadness of others, Walky is fueled by juvenile chicanery.
Jason why are you trying to impress this Walkerton with reckless abandon?
Why question the inebriated Englishman?
Unresolved sexual tension, obviously.
Boy that hair really does wonders for him, doesn’t it.
“So far so good”
That is going to be one steep check by meal’s end.
Cheque, damnit.
Bill.
Ted.
Monetary invoice
Tab.
(“How can I give ya a tab if ya haven’t ordered anything?”)
Waiter, Check Please!
Guys, guys, stop arguing.
It’s time to turn the other check, and just let it go.
..hopefully towards buying me some drinks.
Jason’s as graceful as a bull in a china shop.
[Jason yells like Arthur does at the end of the theme song]
He puts the DIS into graceful.
HORRORS!
Jason would say “We’re still paying the cheque“, not “We’re still paying the check”.
This will burn in my brain forever.
“Paying the bill”. A cheque is the thing in your chequebook that you fill out and sign and use to pay the bill.
Or used to, before EFTPOS.
I guess he’s picked up some Americanisms.
Fair enough, too, especially as he is speaking to an American.
“Bill.” Do you mean that slip of paper the server hands me that says “Guest Check” across the top?
— Check, please.
Been there, done that. I am very sorry to say that more than once I’ve drunk enough to know that feeling when you don’t actually *think* you’re drunk – until you move too quickly or turn your head too fast. And then…fall down go boom. 😕
But given the situation he’s facing, I definitely can’t blame Jason for getting so drunk. Not only is he looking at the end of his job, and maybe his career depending on who finds out about what he did, he’s also not from the U.S. and doesn’t really have a home to which he can go back.
(As a side-note: different schools have different policies about TAs and even professors dating students. It was actually perfectly “okay” for professors to date students at my school until administration changed that policy about 5 years ago. (I have NEVER dated a student, BTW.) But what Jason did isn’t automatically considered “wrong” everywhere.)
I wouldn’t have called Jason’s and Sal’s interaction “dating” exactly.
What he did is pretty much wrong everywhere, but some places it isn’t against the rules yet.
Apparently it’s not considered wrong everywhere though.
Not surprising, I suppose, but damn.
Yeah… I’m rewatching Cardcaptor Sakura, and it turns out Sakura’s mother got married, at 16, to her highschool teacher. Eew.
In Fruits Basket, Tohru’s mom married her middle school teacher at 15 or 16. I think he was a student teacher though. So, uh, less squick I guess
To be clear, my school doesn’t have dorms and has a large number of “non-traditional” students, many of which are older people (as in, not teenagers or twenty-somethings) returning to school. I have had many students who are older than I am. So the situation at my school isn’t exactly the same as what’s going on in the comic.
And, when you talk about college students, you’re talking about *adults* who can legally consent to sex and/or a relationship.
I…can kind of see how a professor might make friends with and even be attracted to someone in their classes. However, I won’t deny that there is an imbalance of power there – the *very few* fellow faculty members I’ve known who got involved with students didn’t do so until the class was over.
While I often have students with whom I would like to be friends, I’ve learned that it’s really important to maintain boundaries. A number of years ago I accidentally landed up hanging out with one of my former students during a show at a club. A (non-student) friend of mine invited me to the show and she also was apparently friends with my student and invited them as well (my friend didn’t know this person was my student). We all hung out and moshed and had a couple of drinks together. After that, this student *really* tried to take advantage by repeatedly asking for special treatment in our class and even asked me to deliver a recommendation letter to their home.
If I was ever in that situation again, I wouldn’t “hang out” with any student – I’d find a way to politely excuse myself and leave. Ethically, what Jason did with Sal wasn’t okay, but IMHO it IS kind of understandable, especially because he’s going to school very far away from his home and seems lonely (he wouldn’t be drinking with Walky if he had a good support system and/or friends at his own academic level).
This stuff gets complicated… 😕
It is complicated. But so’s life. With the age difference out of the picture (like with older non-traditional students or possibly with new grad students and older undergrads) it’s essentially like any workplace romance. Which generally comes with strict (if not always observed) rules about no sex with people under your authority. It’s the same with teachers and students. The power differential gives a lot of opportunity for abuse. Don’t do it.
I agree.
I also feel like there’s a larger issue here, which Willis is kind of referencing – being a teacher or a professor in the U.S. is kind of a thankless, under-paid, under-valued job right now. One of my colleagues just forwarded an article from “The Atlantic” about how little college professors make compared to professionals with equivalent degrees in business or STEM fields.
I am about $100,000 in debt because of student loans – and I DID get scholarships and grants for college. I’m not comfortable saying how much I make per year, but it is LESS than $100,000. I could have bought a HOUSE for that much.
Also, many college professors (myself included) basically have no “life” outside work. (My mom and my sister also teach at the college level, so I am speaking with some authority here.) I work, if I really break it down, close to 80 hours/week. This includes NOT ONLY teaching hours, but hours I have to spend in my office for office hours, advisement hours, ALL the meetings I’m supposed to attend, and all the class prep work I do and all the paper correcting I do. PLUS “professional development,” which includes writing ane submitting articles, attending conferences, and applying for grants. (I have over 100 students per semester and I mostly teach intro and developmental classes. It takes me about 15-45 minutes to read and mark each student paper. Do the math.) And my situation is NOT unique – in fact, I am much “luckier” than a lot of other professors teaching elsewhere, as I heard from a professor from Colorado that attended the same conference as me last weekend.
I barely have time to eat, sleep, and take a shower sometimes. I have NO TIME to make friends or have a social life. A lot of my colleagues at my school are in relationships with/married to each other. I understand that. It…gets overwhelming. And maybe it feels “easier” to be with someone who works with you or even, in the case of Jason, to be with a student. Because it is SO MUCH WORK to try to have a social life outside work, especially because you’re exhausted ALL THE TIME.
And yes, commenting here is kind of my “social life!” I’m currently avoiding work that I *desperately* need to do, including marking student papers. POOT.
No real argument with much of that, from what I know from the outside. Though I’ll mention the increasing use of non-tenure track faculty who generally get treated even worse and paid less.
Still, I’ll emphasize again that Jason didn’t “date” or have a social relationship with Sal. This wasn’t a matter of falling for one of the few people he had social contact with or anything. They fucked. The first time because she thought she could get a better grade out of it – though she didn’t make that clear.
NO disagreement about the sad state of non-tenure-track faculty. I help run the Adjunct Committee at my school and know how much adjuncts struggle (I was one once). The Graduate Center branch of my union just voted to strike unless they get more money per course (which they DEFINITELY deserve). This *might* translate into a university-wide strike. And, as a school with a strong union, we are all VERY worried about the results of the Janus Supreme Court case. 😢
I guess I’m seeing Jason and Sal as having a “relationship” because I am personally not really emotionally capable of having s3x with someone about whom I don’t care. I don’t do “one night stands” and I feel *terrible* about the VERY FEW times I’ve “hooked up” with someone when I didn’t plan to be in a long-term relationship with them. 😢
I don’t want to get off Jason and Walky’s wild ride
He just gets cuter and cuter.
Jason is going to be the new bartender at Galasso’s?
Nah, the janitor. Or the caretaker according to the UK English dictionary.
That’s the thing about getting intoxicated: You think that you’re the smoothest, most intelligent and most skilled person on Earth… when, in fact, you can barely walk without snapping both ankles.
He is beauty
He is grace
He will steal your drinks in font of your face
(Subtlety not included)
These two drunks are very entertaining. I’m enjoying these last strips a lot. XD
The avatar adds a slightly different tone to your comment 😀
It gives me this “Oh those sexy sexy drunks” feel
Panel 3 Smug Jason is now my favorite Jason face.
ah, the stages of drunk as they were once explained to me:
1. I’m smart
2. I’m good looking
3. I’m bulletproof
4. I’m invisible
(alternate version)
“One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.”
“My name is Tequila Montaya.
You killed my bottle.
Prepare to die.”
I learned them as
1. jocose
2. bellicose
3. lachrymose
4. comatose.
I did this once at a movie theater. Nobody was behind the counter, so I walked back there and scooped up some popcorn. They came out midway and got on me to get out from behind the counter. One of my friends pointed out they probably had to throw that whole batch away for sanitation reasons and I felt a bit bad but… still got popcorn.
This is amazing
… This page seems broken …? No forward button …
great. NOW it works …