I can sympathize with Joyce here. Well, not so much about the husband and the sauce.
I originally majored in education, before I realized just how long I’d be in debt at that level of pay, and how little respect teachers get. Luckily I took an intro programming course just for giggles, thought it was fun, and decided to switch majors.
To be a teacher is hard – even before the school system gets in your way.
There is a 3 minute Slam Poetry Rant called “What does a teacher make?” It lists the abilities of a great teacher, and says exactly how to respond to Raidah and her ilk.
Koms already posted the transcript of this way down the chat, but I thought everyone should see this.
I’m an elementary teacher. I make a good amount of money. Teachers aren’t usually poor; that’s an outdated stereotype. You just have to not be dumb with budgets. I go on vacations (Florida! Jamaica! Europe!) and eat dinner out often and have a 2012 SUV. I also don’t max out credit cards, drink, buy lots of clothes, or live outside my means.
In fairness, Joyce’s stated intention has been essentially to get her MRS. degree – she doesn’t aspire to more than that, which there’s nothing wrong with, though it’ll be interesting to see if Becky cajoles her into something else.
Infinite cash, as obtained from the economy of Becky!
… Arby’s Sauce Packets don’t have an actual resale value or something, do they? Though there’s probably some kind of application for infinite sauce packets.
Yup. Not a good move on her part. Makes herself look bad.
And makes Joyce look even better by inadvertently bringing out one of Joyce’s most appealing traits, her sense of humor about her own wacky neuroses.
Joyce might be better at this game than one would think.
Or is he picking up on the difference between the level of Joyce’s aspirations and his own?
Joyce has been groomed to be the stay at home mom with her life revolving around her husband and kids. The education degree isn’t even to be a teacher, but to be better at teaching her own kids.
Is that what Jacob wants?
No, because at this point, from what we’ve seen, he isn’t really contemplating life with Joyce in the first place, so he wouldn’t have any reason to care about the difference in their aspirations.
Furthermore, Jacob, by all appearances, understands that different people want different things–but the BEST read of Raidah’s words would be that she doesn’t, and that she’s only capable of interpreting others’ lives through her own preferences. Even assuming the belittling words aren’t deliberate (and at this point, we, at least, know that they are), she’s displaying an appalling lack of actual empathy.
After converting the currency I’m with Joyce here, unless she plans on being the sole earner for a large family (or unless the US is way more expensive to live in than its reputation suggests)
in my country, if i work full time, i would make half that (or less, after taxes…) . No wonder why so many professionists leave their careers for a chance to flip burgers half time in some other countries… 🙂
The only reason 50K is ‘low’ is because of the level of student debt that usually comes with getting an education degree–if Joyce’s father does well enough to pay for her education, beyond scholarships/grants (if any), then 50K is actually a fairly solid income (especially if she’s part of a two-income family).
Dorothy: “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, this will get ugly before it gets better… it might not GET better. This might be the beginning of a bitter conflict spanning the rest of our school years. Oh dear, Joyce does not know what she’s getting into… or she DOES know. I don’t know what scares me most.”
Next strip: Joyce and Raidah are having a full on catfight, clawing and screaming, clothing is getting torn, people are placing bets, Joe has materialized to start a cheering section, and Jacob is calmly looking at his menu wondering if his workout regimen will allow for extra cheese.
A beautiful analogy – will you be my friend?
Actually, I wonder if either Joyce or Raidah have the drive of either Montoya (vengeance for his father’s death) or the Dread Pirate Roberts (true love). Both of them are driven, have amazing self-discipline, and an amazing skill set in combat (Montoya isn’t a swords master – he’s a swords WIZARD, and Roberts is better than him).
Except for Joyce, here, apparently…but then, if it’s a lot to Joyce, or an amount she views as more than enough, than you know what? Back to what I said before: fuck you, Raidah.
Joyce has literally no concept of what is or is not a lot of money, because it’s not something she was ever taught to worry about. She knows that people can be poor, but she’s never actually thought about what that means until very recently. She doesn’t seem to have ever realized that Becky’s family seemed to be far worse off financially than hers (from what little we’ve seen), for instance.
Her inherent assumption is that you secure a good husband and a good husband just makes enough money to live off of. If memory serves, the whole reason for her major isn’t to ever actually work as a teacher, it’s simply to make her a more effective mother for raising children, which is her sole duty as a living being on this Earth, as ordained by God.
She’s coming from La Porte. Median HOUSEHOLD income there is 48K. Houses are cheap (We bought our first one for under 60K). 50K is enough to single handedly support a whole FAMILY, and with summers off, so you save $$ on daycare. Plus decent insurance? It IS a decent living in much of Indiana.
Not fabulously wealthy, but house, 2 reasonable cars, and vacations, if you don’t have more than 3 or 4 kids.
And in Toronto they start at around 49K but housing in-the-city is around $772K which is an annual $40k mortgage … and that is why most rent at $22K though dual incomes do offset this issue.
And every time she tests the water, she’ll make herself look worse in Jacob’s eyes.
Tearing down Joyce won’t work because Joyce can roll with a lot of punches and laugh at herself. The only area that you can seriously rattle her is her religion, and surely Raidah knows that that would be fatal with Jacob.
Add to that that Joyce is a genuinely nice person who won’t tear others down, so she won’t respond in kind by attacking Raidah. Every attempt by Raidah to make J look bad in Jacob’s eyes will make Joyce look that much better in comparison.
She can make Joyce look wacky and unrealistic. Thing is, due to Sarah. Jacob already knows in detail and has made up his own mind. So yeah, these hijinks could work out for Joyce. I wouldn’t put money on it though.
It’s both–she’s demeaning Joyce’s ambitions in an effort to create a contrast for Jacob–but she’s just displaying her lack of comprehension of how Jacob’s mind works. (As someone raised as an Episcopalian, they drill the “tolerance of differences” angle into you as a kid, HARD, in part because there’s a fairly wide spectrum of practice in the church itself. Jacob’s pretty ‘High’ Church, judging by the segment we saw, but being dismissive of ‘Low Church’ practices is a big no-no.)
Hmmmmm…. I THINK you are wrong. I think Raidah is treating Jacob as a possession to be fought OVER rather than a person with agency of his own to be manipulated. I.e. Jacob’s own choice is not a threat to their relationship – Joyce sniffing around is.
(If my reading is right, that is most likely what will cause Raidah’s little alpha bongo card house come crashing down in the end)
But I might very well be wrong. I look forward to see how it unfolds.
Spot on. Raidah is approaching it as a fight with Joyce over Jacob while Joyce is hoping Jacob will like her more and choose her.
Remember how one of the things Jacob likes about Raidah is that she’s not the jealous type? I think he was mistaken.
That’s one of the primary reasons people want money: it makes it very easy to consistently secure those two things in every situation and aspect of your life.
(You can also do great damages to others by using the money to control a situation, but ever so often there will be situations where it does not work.)
I don’t think Jacob’s falling for it.
.
Plus, Joyce’s parry is excellent, she’s not about money and “glamour,” which reflects back on Raidah that *she* is. That’s not a look that will appeal to him either.
But she thinks it does, going by the conversation she had with her friends when they brought up Joyce as competition.
So she’s either misjudged Jacob or he has a shallow side that she’s seen and we haven’t.
Agreed. I’m betting that Raidah has misjudged Jacob.
It’s easy for Raidah to not act jealous when she believes she has no competition. Imagine her surprise when she realized that Jacob actually likes Joyce. She expected him to see J as a foolish ignorant child to be tolerated, whereas he sees J as a person with a kind heart, which i expect is very appealing to him.
Well, without knowing the specifics, at some point there is a cost benefit analysis. Paying a lot of money for a degree that isn’t likely to begin to cover those costs has serious drawbacks.
Seriously, I’m in education (not yet full-time employed), and I know it’s not like a super high-paying career and is definitely undervalued…but $50k a year is around what my parents each make in their non-teaching jobs? A lot of people I’ve known seem to view a good salary as higher than that, but for me that’s always seemed like a good amount to aim for. Lots of people in important careers don’t make that much.
50k is more than enough for one person where I live, provided they don’t do anything stupid and get into debt.
And if both halves of the pair are working, there should be no issues at all, at least until kids become a major expense.
Depends a lot on where you live. In the small Midwestern town where I live, it’s a reasonably comfortable income for a single person, and enough for a frugal couple. In a big city with a higher cost of living, it’s barely scraping by.
Good points, everyone! It definitely does depend on where you are too. It just sounds like a lot because right now, both members of my newly established household combined make, like… half that. But hey, raises are a thing at least~
Keep in mind, the majority of students these days graduate with fairly hefty debt-loads. That’s the real killer–teaching doesn’t pay what a lot of jobs with comparable levels of pre-req education do. So you end up way in the back.
Now, Joyce is very bright, and her dad is traditional in a lot of the good ways (and there’s actually a few Biblical verses that explicitly call out the practice of usury). It’s quite possible that he’s insisting on making sure they pay her way, after any scholarships or grants she might be getting. That would make her starting salary of $35K essentially pure income–and then add in her living expectations of being a small-town gal, where home prices are a lot lower, and where equity is still possible.
Raidah’s probably from a more urban, upscale background–she’s used to the idea that you DON’T buy a home until you’re in your mid-thirties, because you first have to pay off your MBA or law school debt.
OTOH, if Raidah’s dad owns a law firm, they likely have a good deal more money than the Browns do (who have had up to 4 kids to put through college), which makes it more likely they could easily pay her way.
OTGH, Joyce isn’t really supposed to work as a teacher. She’s supposed to get married to a good provider and home-school their kids. So her salary as a elementary school teacher is mostly irrelevant.
God, Raidah and Joyce are both being sucky here. Is it too early for Jacob to say ‘a plague on both your houses’ and get a new relationship (not with either of them).
Yeah, but she doesn’t think she has the time for a relationship because Yale and Academics. And whoever she dates next needs to be able to get her to take breaks and put some value in self-care and relaxing, because that’s clearly a weak point for her. They need solid self-esteem as well, and to be able to have an open talk about boundaries and how she sometimes changes them without consulting her partner first, but people who don’t have the same trajectories or attitudes can have successful, solid relationships.
I find it mildly insulting that you say that neither Danny nor Walky were Dorothy’s equal. Both have proven themselves to be quite intelligent (Computer Science is hard, Calculus is the one course with which Walky has had explicit trouble), and Dorothy is shooting for the highest office in the entire country, and one of the most important positions in the entire civilized world. Jacob hasn’t stated any higher aspirations than law school, does that make him Dotty’s inferior, too?
I’m in culinary school right now, and to brag I’m pretty fucking good at it. Does the fact that I’m not shaking hands with Bill Gates and writing $10M checks on the regular make me a lesser person in your eyes despite my skill?
Yeah, honestly, there is no such thing as an easy major. It depends on the individual student’s aptitudes, energy levels, motivation, the types of course work, etc.
Danny, when first appeared, seemed to have no aspirations for himself other than follow Dorothy around. She had, and still does, have goals and is working to achieve them and Danny did not.
Dorothy appeared to be the one who made the decisions, all the decisions so yeah Danny, at the time, Danny was inferior to her.
The same arguments can be leveled at Walky, he doesn’t really know what hes doing or wants to do and is quite passive when it comes to accepting what Dorothy says (apart from the break up)
While we haven’t seen as much of Jacob we know he has goals he wants to achieve so I don’t think Jacob will be as easy to mess around with in my opinion
@chris73 I get the feeling that you equate personal ambition to worth as a human being, and I have nothing more productive to add to this conversation than I disagree.
There’s a difference between “no personal ambition” and “no self-direction.” If Danny had genuinely wanted and planned, for himself, a life that would satisfy him, then that life might not have been “ambitious” but could still have shown h had a sense of who himself was and was acting in support of himself.
Instead, he was just following Dorothy, almost by default, and without much questioning or self-awareness.
Whole lot of eighteen-year-olds don’t have themselves figured out yet. That’s part of what college is for. In fact, of the whole cast I’m pretty sure most aren’t there yet. (Even Dorothy, I think, will end up tweaking her path to her goal at least and possibly her goal as a whole as she figures out how best to change society.) And in Danny and Walky’s specific cases, they both have a very specific reason why they don’t have a clear goal – their parents. Danny’s put him down constantly and told him the only way to success was Dorothy’s coattails. Walky’s mother, minimum, put him on the pedestal as the golden child future Lawyer/Doctor regardless of his desires or aptitude, with their treatment of Sal always there to remind him what happens to Disappointments. And I don’t have a lot of hope for Charles to be better in that regard. Both sets of parents put them in boxes the way Joyce was at the start of the comic, and told them they could only ever be This Thing. Not a good environment for self-discovery, exploration, or self-esteem.
Also, like. Not all people are made to go through higher education at the same rate, or even at all. It’s not the only path to success, it’s not the only way to find a fulfilling career or a rigorous training program, and people don’t have to only date in their same post-secondary area. Hell, my mother has a master’s and all-but-dissertation, my father didn’t finish a bachelor’s degree, and they’ve been married twenty six years and both have successful careers.
They’re both trying to brag about how awesome they are and how they’re better for Jacob. Raidah’s doing it by insulting Joyce and making herself look better by contrast and Joyce is being inept, but she’s still showing her ass here. (Metaphorically.)
Nah, I suspect this conversation wouldn’t be all that different if Raidah had someone else she needed to impress for a different reason and Joyce was the most convenient target. I don’t get the impression her worldview leaves a lot of room for live and let live.
I’d hazard a guess Joyce is still in the ‘well of course I want this job because it’s what Good Christian Wives do!’ stage for the most part, but yeah there was never a real choice. (Actually looking forward to having that realization she had with Dorothy in Gender Studies for real, even if we won’t get there until 2036 at earliest.)
There’s this idea in the back of my mind sometimes, that I need to be doing things a “correct” way- making lots of money, doing high-profile important things that change the world, and that since I’m not my life has been a waste.
With me that’s just anxiety talking, but for Raidah it seems to legitimately be her world view. Yikes.
Ohhhh, Raidah. One of those people who goes into law because there’s money there. Don’t know why that surprises me, but it does.
Don’t get me wrong I highly doubt Joyce has thought through her major at all beyond it being something she’s ‘allowed’ as a woman, and there’s no shame in picking a job that pays well, but something about Raidah’s attitude here just feels snooty.
(Also teachers deserve way better than they actually get paid and the devaluing of occupations traditionally held by women is a fucking travesty, but like that goes without saying here.)
Joyce is getting her degree in order to be able to homeschool her children, which definitely makes it a reflection of the culture she was brought up in, and she probably could put more thought into if it’s what she wants.
Still, not liking Raidah here. I’m not thrilled with Joyce either, but Raidah is currently annoying me more.
I don’t care what she sticks with (though that one’s solid,) I just want her to actually realize she has a choice and think critically about it since she never had the option before now.
Who was home every night to make mac & cheese for her family. Let’s not forget the conditions.
TBH, I doubt Joyce had ever even thought about it before.
Yeah, I remember that part, I’m just saying Joyce hasn’t really hit the point where she truly realizes she outgrew that box a long time ago and it was probably never going to fit her quite right. (Joyce would run into the same issues as a parent that make me feel it’s not for me – you can’t expect rationality with young kids, they can be loud and contrary and irritating, and it’s not their fault because they’re ENTIRELY dependent on you because they’re small and don’t know things and haven’t grown their brains completely. Maybe Joyce’ll rise to the occasion of course, but I’m not certain it would be her ideal if she actually thought for a while what it entails. Consider how she reacts to Walky.)
I’m thinking that how she reacts to Walky, someone her own age whom she met only a few weeks ago, and how she might react to either her own kids or kids she might be teaching in the future, are two different things. I don’t really see anything in Joyce as she is now that would make her seem either suited or not suited to teaching or having kids, to be honest.
I mean, I agree with you that she needs to do a lot more thinking about what she really wants to do with her life, and to realize she has choices, and that she doesn’t have to go into teaching or even to get married and have kids if she doesn’t want to, and that her parents and church are wrong to try to force women into these boxes just because they’re women.
I’m just saying that being annoyed with an immature 18-year-old like Walky doesn’t mean that someone might not feel differently about actual children.
Remember this is all sort of beside the point. Joyce’s plan isn’t actually to go into teaching. Well, it’s not really her plan at all, but the one that’s been laid out for her. She’s supposed to find a good husband who will support her, have a bunch of kids and use that basic training in education to home school them.
I suspect this plan isn’t going to actually happen and that at some point she’ll realize that and start thinking about what she wants.
I foresee her either being the personal retainer for wealthy scumbags or a corporate lawyer who insists that whatever blatant violation caused a suit wasn’t foreseeable, and an object of internet hatred on par with Martin Shkreli either way. (In fairness, I can also see personal injury lawyer and I know some perfectly reasonable ones of those. Especially since I recall she has family in the legal profession already.)
Well, she is a black female Muslim. That lack of privilege generally handicaps one’s career as a mob lawyer or personal fixer.
The nasty side of Corporate law’s probably doable.
*the TV is playing an old Benny Hill Show clip*
HUSBAND (who thinks he’s being cheated on): The SAUCE!
(Benny [as a waiter who knows little English] sets a bottle of Worcestershire on the table in front of the husband.)
HUSBAND: The BLOODY SAUCE!
(Benny sets out a bottle of BBQ sauce.)
If Raidah weren’t going for “Human Dumpster Fire” she’d actually talk to Joyce. Disparaging her educational choices because of the theoretical salary is bullshit.
Certainly not (not that Joyce HAS hit on Jacob since Raidah arrived), but in no universe does “Girl is crushing on my boyfriend and acting on that crush” warrant such a personal and direct attack.
You can tell someone to back off your SO without throwing an entire career under the bus on the grounds it doesn’t pay well, after all. That one’s all Raidah and her personal brand of Mean Girl bullshit.
Like ‘Jacob hears Raidah denigrate a job that’s necessary for society to function because it’s underpaid’ is that much better?
Cause she is really not coming off well here, and Jacob seems to notice. Again, Raidah could just as easily gone for something slightly backhanded but deniable like ‘You don’t strike me as the type!’, maybe gone into how demanding teaching is or how difficult working with young children must be and is Joyce sure that’s the path she wants and it would barely register as catty without tone. She did not. She went for the low, classist blow, because Raidah has a marked shitty streak there. (We see it with Sarah, we see it with ‘Jacob wants success like me and I can take him places and this freshman child will not bring him that’, we see it with her telling Char not to use the r word but not batting an eye to use special in the same exact sense to Dina’s face. Raidah’s all about the appearance of respectability but cares very little about actually being respectful.)
“respectability” and “respectful” have very little in common with other, besides a handful of letters. Never do.
It’s definitely her classist streak. She thinks Jacob wants the same thing she does and she’s pointing out that Joyce doesn’t share that ambition. Which Joyce reinforces with the focus on husband/romance.
someone “hitting on” your SO is a problem only if your SO responds in kind. If your SO decides they’d rather be with someone else, you have an SO problem, not a “girl hitting on my bf” problem.
“Fighting over” someone overlooks that a person has their own agency and are not a prize for the victor. If Raidah wants Jacob to continue being with her she should work on being the kind of person Jacob wants to be with. Hostility towards Joyce is not something Jacob will find appealing.
In the one piece of fairness I will give Raidah, the one who used the slur was her friend. (Can’t remember if it was Chan or Char, not interested in triggering myself to look it up.) And when said friend said it, Raidah was one of the ones who went ‘too far, don’t use that word.’
She immediately squandered that goodwill by calling Dina ‘special’,* which euphemism treadmilled itself to mean the same exact thing but is currently socially acceptable. Generally speaking, those of us who it targets feel exactly as condescended to and insulted but without the raw hurt the slur creates.
* If you don’t get it, the ‘special’ refers to special education, which in the US is reserved for people with intellectual/learning/developmental disabilities and definitely has a stigma attached. Isn’t ableism fun?
Same and same. Actually dropped a class after a teacher used it (in very clearly That Sense) to describe other classmates. This after said teacher used the r slur to refer to them and I sent her an email saying ‘hey that word’s a slur against my community and I find it really hurtful’ and she apologized. Euphemism treadmill and not treating the attitude underlying the slur at work. (One of those reasons why I’m like ‘let’s not focus on eliminating crazy or stupid from the lexicon entirely guys, they’ll just get more words to use instead and they’ll be worse.’)
If we eliminate crazy from the lexicon, there go half my self-deprecating jokes about my mental health issues. I’d hate to be in a “that’s Our word” situation. Not that I’d fight it if it were clear that I was in a definite minority of the chronically mentally ill.
Also true. (It’s also one of those things I struggle with because like I get being hurt by a word that was used on you before, but at the same time some of them have lost most of the sting and I doubt we can dump them all entirely. Hell, some of the words that used to be clinical are so outdated in that sense people don’t know the original context. And like then you get into things like how 97% of the LGBT community’s lexicon started as slurs, perjoratives or pathologizations and successful widespread reclamation clearly is possible… Don’t call people with the name of a disorder unless they actually have it, and don’t use it as an insult. Don’t use the r word, it’s been too loaded for too long. But crazy? I’m not gonna fight the neurotypicals for crazy. I am especially not gonna fight them for crazy if it keeps them from using clinical terms as insults even more than people do already.)
The other piece if fairness is that Dina, especially that early on, did come across as young, both from her looks and her words and actions. Her first thought was that Dina was in middle school, which isn’t completely unreasonable. Others have done so and Dina was doing her usual completely out of context babble about dinosaurs thing.
When told she was their age, she switched to “mentally challenged” (I don’t think she used “special”. Not in that scene at least.)
Yeah, that term’s not any better, and Dina is clearly sensitive to infantilization – she doesn’t mind an honest mistake too much, but if you continue treating her like that once you know, she isn’t happy.
If Radiah needs to get that defensive about Joyce hitting on Jacob, maybe Jacob and Radiah aren’t meant to be. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Joyce flirting with Jacob, it’s not like he’s married. If someone flirted with my fiance and they fell for each other, then obviously it wasn’t meant to be.
Looks like Raidah is so overconfident she never asked herself what other people consider as decent social behavior.
Starting a conversation with someone under the pretense of wanting to get to know them and trashing the first thing they say?
Belittling someone because the aim for a job that is not severely high-paying?
It really looks like the idea that this could be considered seriously shitty behavior never crossed her mind. The friends she keeps would do the same from what we saw, so she doesn’t know she should be more subtle for this to not be obviously just as shitty as it is.
Which makes her an arrogant asshole but not a very competent one. If Sarah had been a more outgoing, more social person, Raidah hate-campaign probably would have fallen flat. But Sarah, who dislikes and distrusts people anyway, was an easy target to go after.
Which reminds me, Joyce asking why Raidah dislikes Sarah so much she makes a public spectacle of if would be the most aggressive and Raidah-damaging thing Joyce could do without looking like a cat.
I think Raidah acts shitty to people she dislikes or is angry at when she thinks she can get away with it. She knew Sarah had no friends to back her up, so she thought she could get away with being an asshole to her because, she thinks, others would agree with her. She thinks that Joyce is just a Little homeschooled powerless nobody. I mean, others such as Billie and Joe put her down regularly, and Raidah probably thinks that there will be no repercussions if she’s mean to her.
Really, what does she say that’s so bad? She even says it’s a “noble profession.” Isn’t she just admiring the sacrifices Joyce is willing to make?
Snark aside, that’s not an unreasonable interpretation, if we didn’t already know Raidah and what she’s up to. It’s still unclear how Jacob’s reacting. He’s likely predisposed to put a good spin on his girlfriend’s words.
Yknow raidah and Jacob probably wouldn’t last tbh. He doesn’t know her that well (it’s only been two weeks I think), he hasn’t seen how shitty her personality is. Either way I feel like she’d end up making backhanded shitty remarks about his friends, like Joyce whether or not she was persuing him, assuming he’d agree and he’d leave her because of how negative she is
Okay, Raidah not liking Joyce for some of her prior actions whenever they’ve shared a scene? Understandable.
Mocking someone going into education with the vein of ‘lolyurpoor’ earns an immediate ‘screw you’ response from me. My mom’s a teacher. They deserve so much more. There’s room to talk to Joyce about reconsidering her major given her prior history, but mockery because of salary? You’re going to live an emotionally damage life, Raidah. (And that’s something I’ve seen already–sibling went into medicine because of the paycheck. Sibling mental health is really, really bad)
I’m wondering what Jacob’s family background is, because I could totally see him having a mom that’s a teacher and talking to Raidah later about her comments.
Radish is definitely a shitty person, but I think she’s smart enough not to disparage a member of Jacob’s family that she’d be aware of.
And she implied to be aware of his family because she said he needs her to live up o his family’s standards, hence why Joyce isn’t a threat.
Jacob’s brother is definitely a success by Raidah’s standards: “Your brother didn’t get to where he is by fooling around, did he?”
Also there’s “I know what Jacob wants and it’s to live up to the standards of his family. To make them proud.” Which is not clear about about his parents’ professions but is clear about their aspirations.
Shes sitting across from a girl trying to take her boyfriend right in front of her, yeah shes shown to be not pleasant in the past but i can’t hold it against her for not being all sunny and light
It’s the implication that anyone in education is beneath her that prompted the knee-jerk reaction. The implication that anyone that does not go for a job with a ridiculous salary is a moron or unworthy. That is what makes her toxic.
Like I said, there are plenty of reasons for her to not like Joyce. This is not one of them.
I’m glad I’m not the only person who immediately thought of that poem. Raidah’s showing her true colors here, and I hope Jacob is paying attention. I hope he’s better than that.
Oh yeah. If Raidah were commenting on anything else – you don’t strike me as the type!, even, with a backhanded vibe, or bringing up the mall incident – I would say she has something resembling a point.
This, though? Classist as shit, which is a problem we know Raidah had already, and devaluing a profession that deserves better at that. (And while I have nothing against lawyers, my bet is she’s planning on going into one of the more lucrative but soul-selling fields.)
Like, a lawyer that defends or prosecute whistleblowers? The entire concept of whistleblowing still thrashes the corners of my mind. It’s a human decency thing, and I always get a little shocked when I see how deep the hole is.
My first bet is personal injury, since someone in her family has a firm and I’m certain she intends to use that.
But I could see a lot of options here. Hell, she could surprise me tomorrow and say she’s going for civil rights and Constitutional Law. (Not a lot of money there since there aren’t a lot of job openings, but it has glamor and Raidah has to realize she has a personal stake in matters, she can’t be that blinded by class privilege.)
I would actually be amused if she ended up the kind of trademark lawyer who are currently trying to trademark common words in book titles, or something equally inane.
(I recommend ‘romance novel Cockygate’ if you want context, or an interesting read.)
Regalli, I have kind of an off-topic question—what about the mall incident would lead someone to believe that teaching might not be the best profession for Joyce? I don’t remember anything she did wrong there. Sarah was the one who slapped Raidah. Joyce sort of blamed herself after the fact, but she was way off base to do so, I thought. Even Billie said that it wasn’t Joyce’s fault, and she is usually very quick to criticize Joyce.
No problem, I was unclear. I don’t think the mall incident reflects anything on Joyce and teaching, but Raidah could have used it to try and paint Joyce and the people she hangs out with in a worse light – she probably hasn’t because explaining the source of the feud with Sarah would follow, and there’s a chance Jacob could end up asking questions there, particularly since Joyce knows Sarah’s side of the story, but it’s still an option.
Seriously. I almost went into Social Work, which is likewise poorly paid for the amount of work and education required, but, it still pays whole lot better than what I was doing before (circus performer). From there, everything is ‘up’. It’s always so weird that somebody would make fun of anyone’s steady paycheque.
Sure. I was mainly a stilt-dancer. Event entertainment, and occasional shows. It was as rad as it was stressful.
The recession and mental illnesses killed our outfit eventually, but, it was really fun and exciting while it lasted.
Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do crazy stuff.
Sigh. I’m not about to blame Raidah for defending her relationship, but that nasty streak she has is not doing her any favors. You can see the “…WTF?” going through Jacob’s head in panel 3.
I don’t often have this reaction, but: Raidah can go fuck herself. Nothing to do with any competition between her and Joyce. She has just revealed herself to be a shit person, plain and simple.
Raidah thinks she’s twisting in the knife and is reveling in that act. Little does she know she hasn’t even penetrated the armor.
Heh. Raidah’s Vegeta thinking he has Freeza on the ropes and Joyce is wondering what she should get the Ginyus next of kin in their “I’m sorry for your loss” baskets.
Raidah, I was going to put aside your transgressions against Sarah, but mocking future teachers and poor people makes you deserve to lose Jacob. Not to Joyce, but to someone that is a better person.
It does depend wildly on where you’re living – I’d have to look up what it costs to live in Indiana, but in some places teaching is a legitimately poverty-line career. Still, it’s far from the worst paying job and it usually comes with benefits, those are both huge.
I live in Oklahoma and I have a friend who is a teacher with a Master’s degree who is basically constantly teetering on the edge because Oklahoma pays public school teachers so poorly. Some day we’ll get it right.
I also live in Oklahoma and can concur. In fact, it is a well known issue that Oklahoma’s teachers are paid so poorly that many of our teachers are leaving the state to pursue better paying jobs elsewhere, leaving a shortage of teachers in-state in many areas.
My aunt’s a high school athletics director in central Florida and has a similar story, plus she can’t afford necessary medical stuff. This country has issues.
Feature not bug. Bad pay means teachers with options leave. Then they will hire people without qualifications because of the teacher shortage. Then they will move everything to private schools for the wealthy and cheap online classes for the rest of the students. This is the future that’s being prepared for us.
Canada pays about the same for a starting teacher – 35 to 45K until they finish their probationary period (at least a year). After that the average goes from 40 to 85K, so a little higher at the higher end of average. Depending where you live, that’s not bad money.
Cost of living in canada is also lower tho. In my town I can get a decent house or apartment for anywhere from 5-1k that being like 2 bedrooms and shit.
Wow, Raidah, that’s…really rude, to critique your new friend’s future earning potential. Like, that started well, but that…wow. And apparently Jacob noticed.
I should’ve put quotation marks. Obviously she’s trying to make nice with her “”””new friend”””” in front of Jake, so the blatantly disrespectful comments are an odd choice. She’s either misjudged his level of materialism or his tolerance for bullshit.
So long story short, I was kinda torn on the entire situation, because I love Joyce and she and Jacob DO go well together, but I didn’t like that Joyce was being underhanded about it. She should have been honest about her crush from the start. Guess we can thank Sarah for that.
But fuck Raidah for talking shit about Joyce’s aspirations because the salary isn’t up to Raidah’s “standards,” and fuck her for doing it implicitly as a way to smear her in front of Jacob.
For example, average rent where I live is around 1500 dollars a month. Food is another 300-750 dollars a month. The electricity bill and water bill are each about 100 dollars a month. Gas for getting to and from employement is anywhere from 150 to 300 dollars a month. Total living expenses minimum for a single person is about 2100 dollars a month. Inflation is ridiculous.
You also have to keep in mind that most of the places where 4100 a month is enough to pay for an apartment, basic bills, and food, much less children, you won’t actually be paid that much without something like ten years’ experience and the unemployment rate is likely extremely high so the chances of getting hired and keeping your job ten years (rather than being fired for someone cheaper) will be very low.
Many teachers in the US effectively get minimum wage or less and have to work second jobs.
Unfortunately in the US, everything is also very expensive. Food, electricity, water, rent, possibly loan payments, medicine, etc. The actually poverty line in the US is however closer to around 15k a year. However, certain areas have much higher costs of living, so below 30k a year is considered lower class. But if you want children in the US, you better pray you and your partner are netting 50k or more a year or it will not be affordable. It actually costs (on average) 35k just to give birth in the US because of how the hospital and medical systems work. The result is that upper class US citizens, which Raidah appears to come from, view anything below 70k a year as living in squalor. It is isn’t true, but it is a preconception of Raidah’s economic demographic.
I’d just like to reiterate that COL differs widely from country to country. Like, a LOT. Also, besides not taking into consideration COL, you’re also not taking taxes into consideration. Perhaps take really obvious aspects into consideration before jumping to being offended, but I understand you wanted to make a generalization that made you feel good.
$50,000 isn’t poverty, I make 1/2 that, but the cost for things here in the U.S. is often quite a bit higher than other countries. Plus the rent in the big cities Portland, New York, San Francisco can run 3000+ a month, Most other cities run about 700 – 1000 a month. (these are the avg. not high end)
So basically after you take out rent, food, transportation, taxes and any basic necessities that $50,000 doesn’t look so hot. And in some places it would be a hard scrape.
That’s actually the exact subtext of this strip, that Raidah is being extremely insulting by calling that “practically poverty”. But it’s in a way that goes totally over Joyce’s head, because the two of them have different lifestyle standards.
Well, also because Joyce has no idea what anything costs and has had the expectation hammered into her that she’ll find a husband who will provide for her, so she just needs to learn to home school her kids.
I feel like you are looking at an amount of money as absolute when the truth is that a number value for income is meaningless without knowing cost of living and cost of luxuries (to determine the ‘spending power’ of that money). Also Raidah said “You start way lower” so she is likely referring to around 30k maybe? in a some places in america that’s not enough to live, and in expensive places like New York city that’s not even enough to rent a 1 bedroom apartment (which would cost $35472 on average before even looking at electricity, food, and other costs).
Frankly fuck you for saying fuck you to people who are struggling to make ends meet just because the numerical amount of money they earn would be “lot for [your] country.” It’s not here (Well, it depends on which state and which Reagan of a given state).
~$33K looks like average starting salary for public school elementary teachers in Indiana.
Relatively better than in NYC of course, but not exactly comfortable. Assuming you can get a full time job straight up, rather than substitute teaching. Also assuming you don’t start in some private school – mostly much lower wages, except for maybe the really exclusive ones.
Everyone else is right on and has covered a lot of what’s wrong with that line of thinking, so I’ll just say oppression olympics help no one. 50k is still a low salary for the level of bullshit teachers go through, even if some other jobs make less.
“Americans” aren’t complaining that 50K a year is poverty, at least not most of them. Raidah, who is rapidly establishing herself as a super-snob, is describing it as such.
Very place dependent. In San Francisco, $250,000 gets you an apartment. In Madison Wisconsin (state capital, major university), it gets you a small, older house. Where I live my son looked for houses in that range and one of them had an in ground swimming pool. They chose a 4 bedroom, three car garage, granite countertop kitchen place in a nice subdivision just outside town with wildlife in the backyard. Two teacher can get a nice place here, but struggle mightily in larger cities or in places that are trying to strangle public schools.
Something about drawing a cock with eyebrows on it. And the cock is cocking a gun. Also the cock has a dick, despite chickentypes having more of a cloaca situation.
Up to this point I’d pegged Raidah as just being on the bad end of a miscommunication/misunderstanding (over the Suicidal Roomate thing), but this is moving into Catty bongo territory. -5 reputation with Strawberry.
Or when she told Sarah to die in her first appearance. Or when she spent a year scaring off anyone from ever befriending Sarah. Or when she pulled this same classist elitist bullshit *before* when talking about how Joyce was not a threat. Seriously, raidahs always been horrible
I can forgive her “bongo”-ness towards Sarah personally, because if I remember the backstory right Sarah’s old roommate never told the rest of the group the reality of the situation. From Raidah’s perspective Sarah got her friend kicked out of school just to get a room to herself. It’s wrong as hell, but I don’t fault Raidah for her reactions when she doesn’t have crucial information on the subject.
Everything else is just straight up bongo, though.
Her dislike of Sarah could be overlooked if most of their interactions didn’t start with her specifically going up to Sarah to start shit. The lunchroom twice and then once at the mall all had Sarah just trying to live and then Raidah approached her to be awful
Wow she is a catty bongo. At first I thought “Maybe she is nice but not tact” but then reading it a second time I am like… “Nope, not with that word choice”.
I agree with everyone above that whether or not $50,000/year is a little or a lot of money depends on many factors, such as (1) where you live (2) how much student loan debt you have to pay off (3) personal circumstances like whether or not you’re supporting a family or have to live alone (i.e., without roomates) for various reasons, etc.
Depending on where Joyce wants to teach elementary school, she may also have to get a Master’s degree if she wants to teach public school. It varies from state to state; NY state, where I live, requires all public K-12 teachers to have a Master’s and take the certification exam. (However, this doesn’t necessarily apply to private and charter school.) So she *might* run up debt that would make $50,000/year or less seem like “not a lot.”
IMHO, Joyce and Raidah are both garbage people at the moment. Joyce is openly going after a guy she *knows* is in a relationship (and doing so in front of his girlfriend!) and has already telegraphed her intentions to Raidah through that exchange of facial expressions a few strips ago. Raidah is being plain rude and snarky. If she *honestly* wanted to start a conversation about how badly teachers are paid, she would have said something like, “I hear teachers have it really rough. What made you choose that career?”
I am giving Jacob the benefit of the doubt – that he’s actually clueless about everything going on at the table. However, if my partner said anything close to that rude to a friend of mine, I would right away tell him to step off.
It seems to me like Dorothy is the only really redeeming person in this situation – although I suppose you could say that she should have excused herself to keep from participating in this whole mess, or pulled Joyce aside (“Joyce, come to the bathroom with me!”) and suggested that Joyce should cool it. However, that is easy to say from the outside when Joyce is her friend and Dorothy is visibly getting more and more uncomfortable with everything going on.
(It’s also easy for me to say as someone who hasn’t been a teenager for quite a while. Today, I’d just get up and leave instead a situation like this instead of continuing to witness/maybe get drawn into the drama. I probably wouldn’t have when I was 18.)
I mean, 50 grand might not be high-paying lawyer money like Raidah’s expecting to make, but it’s still a pretty respectable income. Most people make a lot less than that per year. Looking it up, if you earn more than $30,000 that puts you in the top 50% of income. I mean, the larger point is that you shouldn’t be derisive towards people’s incomes in the first place, but $50,000 is considered a lot by most people.
That’s $50K average. As Raidah says, starting is much lower. $50K also likely requires a Master’s degree.
Being barely in the top 50% with an advanced degree isn’t actually that great. It’s a lot of work to get there.
$30K puts you in the top 50%, $50K is actually top 30%. My point was 50k (the specific amount mentioned) is well above what half of people make on average in America, and therefore most people would consider it a lot, because it’s more than what they make and is generally pretty well above the official poverty line. The greater issue in all of that is the great wealth disparity, with a select few making ridiculous amounts of money and everyone else making much lower than they probably should for the work they do.
We run LEGO programs here, as do many libraries. Yes, they are messy to pick up, but a good start on STEAM. Libraries can be as bad as schools. Small one don’t require degrees, but most requite an MA for entry level.
Wow, my prediction from a couple of strips ago is already happening. Radiah beginning to cut down joyce, totally unprovoked (from jacob’s perspective), and he’s in shock/surprised at how rude she’s being.
super clever that she’s rounding him up in her statements saying “Jacob and I”. I wonder if jacob will address at the table, or later on.
as an aside, I didn’t expect radiah to trash on what she’s going to college for.
Yep, Raidah’s a snob. Still, everyone has their own standards of what constitutes happy. If being rich and powerful is hers then so be it. That aside, Jacob at last seems to be getting a hint of the nuances here, based on his expression in panel 4!
Oh, and Joyce? I’m drawing a red line here: I don’t want to know what you want to do with all that Arby’s sauce!
Or is Jacob reacting to Joyce’s apparent lack of ambition? Raidah at least thinks he shares some of her ambitions. She could be wrong, but he hasn’t reacted badly to her talk of success before.
It isn’t Raidah’s talk of success that might be bothering him, it’s Raidah using it to imply that Joyce is her inferior. He strikes me as the sort of person who would feel uncomfortable with such categorisation based on those criteria.
Perhaps. Though she does throw in the “noble profession” bit.
Remember that we’re reacting based on our knowledge of what Raidah’s up to. Jacob doesn’t know that and is likely to interpret Raidah’s words in the best light.
I honestly don’t see Jacob as looking surprised at Raidah here. He’s not even looking at her at all and he still has his arm around her. I think he’s looking more surprised at Joyce proudly saying 50K is a lot of money.
I mean, 50K isn’t a bad salary, depending on where you live, but I think most people tend to consider 70K+ ‘a lot’. 50K is nicely in the middle (which, again, not a bad thing).
Yeah, here median is 21 k$. And housing is much much pricer. Si the rest comes all from the cost of private health and insurance or is it pure consumerism? Wait I get some of it, in fact the median income is around 28k but in it are included universal medical and health care, universal social and health insurance, free education with small fees in universities, and so on…
My yearly salary after taxes and housing benefits is about $12000 American. That’s not living in poverty, Raidah. Heck, with Joyce’s starting salary I could have all the clothes, healthy food and videogames I’d want and still put away enough to buy a house with cash within ten years. A nice one, with solar panels and a potato patch.
Yeah, but you’re not living in America. You couldn’t “have all the clothes, healthy food and videogames I’d want and still put away enough to buy a house with cash within ten years” on that salary in the US.
Money is relative.
Would that be after you’d paid off the debt from your Master’s Degree? And you wouldn’t be starting at $50K – closer to $35.
I’m not sure if the Master’s is required in Indiana (Some states require it to teach, others require you to get it within a certain number of years, others, I think do not require it at all.) It generally links to a salary boost though.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Raidah manages to quite effectively persuade Jacob that she’s toxic and that he doesn’t want anything to do with her. Sarah will probably reflect on the irony was that all she needed to do was invite Raidah to be herself in front of Jacob to ruin their relationship.
The fact that Raidah would have effectively self-destructed the relationship won’t stop her from persecuting Joyce. I also suspect that Joyce’s friendship with Dorothy will be strained to say the least because I don’t think Dorothy would approve of such a conniving plot on her part.
Yeah Dorothy hasn’t looked particularly comfortable over all this and probably won’t appreciate being lumped in the middle of it, when all she wanted to do was study
As was said earlier on in this storyline this is looking more and more like a bad rom com in that Joyce is the good one that everyone roots for because shes just so gosh darned nice and she has such great chemistry with the male lead (sorry Jacob) who somehow fails to see, at first, how great Joyce is and how mean and nasty his current girlfriend is
The current girlfriend of course has to be mean and nasty so we’ll support Joyce taking Jacob because Raidah doesn’t deserve him and eventually Jacob will come to see he and Joyce are a perfect match and, after a silly misunderstanding, will go rushing after Joyce, they’ll kiss and they’ll both live happily ever after and Raidah will never be mentioned again
So yeah I think this is also the authors take Jotce being overly influenced by Disney and bad rom com
That’s such a patronising way to talk about teachers. It’s a fundamental societal failing that they aren’t paid well. Not cute or pathetic to become a teacher. We can’t all be glamorous, jfc Raidah.
Joyce is being a bit immoral chasing a man in a monogamous relationship but Raidah has made me really dislike her in this.
God, Raidah is such an asshole that I definitely want Jacob to dump her and find someone better. She IS a classist patronizing bully, you’re totally right. I hope she goes through some character development.
She’s saying it’s noble but the implication of the rest is that it’s pathetic. The implication i get is that she doesn’t value nobility and thus thinks becoming a teacher is a naive/cute/quaint decision when you could’ve chosen ‘glamour’
I think that Joyce is aware of her OCD-like response to complex foods and food textures. In her odd way, her future fantasy involves her somehow confronting and overcoming this.
I know it isn’t a life of fame and glory but teachers make solid professional salaries and receive above average benefits. The benefits side is changing for teachers but they are still far superior to benefits at an average private company job.
Even from the perspective of a cynical realist, I think the point goes to Joyce on this one. (Unless I am way off about Raidah and she is majoring in engineering or computer science or nursing or accounting.)
Yeah, but she’s going into law. Which you don’t really do with an elementary education major. Sure, her immediate major might not actually do better, but her plan definitely does.
Joyce’s doesn’t. It doesn’t really lead anywhere.
In my scant experience with prelaw students, they don’t see themselves as humanities majors. It’s a disgrace they tolerate until they become lawyers and then eat babies or whatever it is lawyers actually do
The original reason for having lawyers was to resolve disputes without people killing each other. I sometimes wonder if our forebears made the right call.
Does IU offer a specific pre-law major? If it does, that’s probably not considered humanities, arts, or social science. MAYBE it’ll be social science. If not, who knows?
Law schools do not care what your major is. They only care about GPA and LSAT score, it’s easily the most numbers-conscious profession, much more so than even doctors.
Law is also a really oversaturated field at the moment so unless Raidah scores high enough to get into a Top 14 school she might end up making less than Joyce. The legal profession in general is absolutely obsessed with academic pedigree and it’s very hard to get your foot in the door if you didn’t graduate from a high tier school.
I note that Raidah and Billie share a lot of characteristics. Money as a solution. Leader of a group of mean girls in HS that they plan to carry over to college. Their contrasts are what make it interesting. Billie has no real plans for the future, while Raidah is going for the money. Billie has enough money to not care about it, while Raidah is ambitious. Billie is starting to care about someone besides herself, while Raidah is all about herself and accessories (like Jacob and her posse).
Joyce is certainly not without blemish here, but there are about a billion better ways to deal with someone else hitting on your partner* than mocking someone’s career ambitions because the job isn’t prestigious or high-paying enough for your liking. I’m sure nothing will make you look better to your boyfriend than looking down at Joyce for studying a thankless profession that’s necessary for society to function, Raidah.
*First of which I’d think would be to either pull your partner aside and talk to them or behave politely through the meal and bring up your concerns after, because your partner is in fact a human being with sentience and not a piece of meat for you to fight over.
Raidah, what exactly is the move, here? If you perceive Joyce as a romantic rival,pointing out that she’s noble and you’re a materialistic snob doesn’t seem like the inroad to Jacob’s giant heart.
Like a lot of arrogant people, Raidah has difficulty imagining that other people don’t basically want the same things as she wants and, indeed, want to literally be her.
I wonder if Raidah knows she’s being a dick. I remember Dina saying about her “She was not kind to me, though I imagine she thought she was.” but I feel like you have to be trying to get to this level of dickishness right? No one could have their head this stuck up their ass by accident?
With Dina, she thought she was trying to be nice by telling her friends not to be mean and trying to warn her off Sarah – though, because she thought Dina was cognitively disabled, she was THE MOST condescending person possible.
There was an earlier comic where Raidah’s friends told her that Joyce was acting like she was interested in Jacob. So I’m sure it’s entirely intentional.
And she may be right, to an extent.
It’s not likely to make Jacob think less of Joyce, but it might make him more resistant to thinking of her as a potential romantic partner – which he isn’t even consciously doing yet.
Yes Raidah. Degrade Joyce’s ambitions, insult your boyfriend’s friend and one of the most important and under appreciated careers out there. Insult the poor, pull more of your classist bullshit. Show Jacob your true colours, let him see what an arrogant, classist, elitist bongo you are.
$50k isn’t much? Where in Indiana is that not much?! Hell, here in Idaho, the only place where I would expect $50k to be a meager wage would be Sun Valley.
We all know Joyce overreacted at that time, even she knows.
You think it’s a good idea for her to take Raidah as a role model and overreact more?
There is a hard to translate German saying
“Eifersucht ist eine Leidenschaft, die mit Eifer sucht, was Leiden schafft”
More or less “jelousy is a fervor which favourosly searches for that which creates agony”. It sounds better in German because of the double play on words, but the inability to translate that doesn’t make it less fitting.
Teaching is a noble vocation, and if it will fulfill Joyce then I think she should go for it.
Here’s the issue I have with this though… I think Joyce is smarter than she gives herself credit for, and were she to have a slightly loftier ambition she would succeed.
She’s not going into teaching as a profession, she’s been pushed to education so she can fulfill her god decreed role as a mother and homeschool her children to keep them safe from the evils of secular childhood education.
I personally think she’d make a great math teacher.
The combination of telling Joyce she’ll essentially start with living in poverty, and “we can’t /ALL/ live glamorous lives”, makes me really think Raidah is the type of person that think that poverty is a natural thing in society and not really worth trying to fight.
She’s the kind that tells fastfood workers that if they want better pay they get a better job, instead of thinking that all jobs should provide a decent pay for the time spent working.
I love pre-major students who talk a bunch of junk because they think they are amazing. Like you haven’t even started the bulk of what you are going to learn yet? I know a number of premeds who were so arrogant only to not make it to med school, or be ridiculously miserable during med school because it’s not what they expected.
And plus, law isn’t even that lucrative. There’s a glut of lawyers. I went to a pretty decent school and a lot of the people I went with make $50-$60k and have a crap ton of debt and work horrendous hours. People think it’s a license to print money but it’s not
$50k/year sounds like a blissful dream to me. I’ve made under $15k/year for my entire working life. And that has included teaching positions. Screw Raidah. People who look down on those who dedicate their lives to professions that mean more than how much money they earn really make my skin crawl.
Ooooh, Raidah’s passive-aggression really grinds my gears here. But then again, dirty lens. (I’m a teacher, but not elementary. And honestly? They should get paid more than us HS teachers. Their job is more important and impactful, since the kids are younger.)
Also, yeah, teachers are way underpaid to “eh, middle class?” in the US depending on which state you live in.
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I can sympathize with Joyce here. Well, not so much about the husband and the sauce.
I originally majored in education, before I realized just how long I’d be in debt at that level of pay, and how little respect teachers get. Luckily I took an intro programming course just for giggles, thought it was fun, and decided to switch majors.
To be a teacher is hard – even before the school system gets in your way.
There is a 3 minute Slam Poetry Rant called “What does a teacher make?” It lists the abilities of a great teacher, and says exactly how to respond to Raidah and her ilk.
Koms already posted the transcript of this way down the chat, but I thought everyone should see this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xuFnP5N2uA
So what is Raidah’s major? I think I recall she wants to be a lawyer like Jacob, but I’m not sure. If so, the rant is even more fitting.
Raidah’s got the same major as Sarah, pre-law.
I think that is actually pronounced “Arts”.
I’m an elementary teacher. I make a good amount of money. Teachers aren’t usually poor; that’s an outdated stereotype. You just have to not be dumb with budgets. I go on vacations (Florida! Jamaica! Europe!) and eat dinner out often and have a 2012 SUV. I also don’t max out credit cards, drink, buy lots of clothes, or live outside my means.
That completely depends on where you live. Teachers in CA make a very decent wage, whereas teachers in AZ make less than a starting lab technician
Joyce isn’t in education because she wants to be an educator, though. Raidah is right
In fairness, Joyce’s stated intention has been essentially to get her MRS. degree – she doesn’t aspire to more than that, which there’s nothing wrong with, though it’ll be interesting to see if Becky cajoles her into something else.
I suspect she will aspire to more, given a bit more time and growth. With or without Becky’s cajoling.
“Then I’d be practically rich!“
Infinite cash, as obtained from the economy of Becky!
… Arby’s Sauce Packets don’t have an actual resale value or something, do they? Though there’s probably some kind of application for infinite sauce packets.
If you have an infinite number of anything, there’s definitely some way to make it profitable if you put your mind to it.
I guess you could start generating fusion power if the pile gets big enough.
I really thought that panel was gonna be Joyce daydreaming about Jacob. Turns out there’s another man in the picture.
(It’s the dude who does Arby’s voice overs)
Ving Rhames? Isn’t that just an old man version of Jacob?
Ving Rhames, no shit?
*Google!*
I’ll be damned. Well, older Jacob probably would set off every one of Joyce’s bells and whistles, so maybe this Arby’s thing is meant to be.
And Jacob DOES have ‘The Meats’.
Future Jacob confirmed!
Dammit, Willis, I don’t need to know Joyce’s kinks.
I do!
Real subtle with the salt and pepper there.
What? Those are just her fidget thing substitutes.
I know she’ll probably have to put them down when food arrives, but honestly I’ll be a little disappointed if she doesn’t walk off with them.
Joyce is into older men?
She’s THE MOST normal and it is adorable :3
…it doesn’t look like Raidah is doing herself any favors with Jacob
Yeah, I noticed that too. He definitely doesn’t look so pleasant anymore.
He’s no longer thinking of pizza.
Nooo! Our OTP!!
Yup. Not a good move on her part. Makes herself look bad.
And makes Joyce look even better by inadvertently bringing out one of Joyce’s most appealing traits, her sense of humor about her own wacky neuroses.
Joyce might be better at this game than one would think.
I’m grateful for this exchange. I was feeling badly about disliking Raidah for no good reason. Now I have a great reason! XD
Go through her tag, plenty of good reason to hate her. She told Sarah to choke in her first appearance
Or is he picking up on the difference between the level of Joyce’s aspirations and his own?
Joyce has been groomed to be the stay at home mom with her life revolving around her husband and kids. The education degree isn’t even to be a teacher, but to be better at teaching her own kids.
Is that what Jacob wants?
No, because at this point, from what we’ve seen, he isn’t really contemplating life with Joyce in the first place, so he wouldn’t have any reason to care about the difference in their aspirations.
Furthermore, Jacob, by all appearances, understands that different people want different things–but the BEST read of Raidah’s words would be that she doesn’t, and that she’s only capable of interpreting others’ lives through her own preferences. Even assuming the belittling words aren’t deliberate (and at this point, we, at least, know that they are), she’s displaying an appalling lack of actual empathy.
Well he isn’t really contemplating it, and highlighting those differences might keep him that way. Which is the point.
Except raidah is totally correct here.
Joyce doesn’t even want to be an educator. She has entirely naive, shallow reasons to be pursuing this degree.
I slive in the midwest, like the characters in this comic. I wish I made 50k.
After converting the currency I’m with Joyce here, unless she plans on being the sole earner for a large family (or unless the US is way more expensive to live in than its reputation suggests)
Cost of living in the US varies radically depending on the part of the country.
in my country, if i work full time, i would make half that (or less, after taxes…) . No wonder why so many professionists leave their careers for a chance to flip burgers half time in some other countries… 🙂
Do you have a master’s degree? Have you been working in the field for a decade or so?
I have a bachelor’s degree, and make 40k. Ive been with my company for 6 years.
I’m doing ok, just wish I was doing a little better.
The only reason 50K is ‘low’ is because of the level of student debt that usually comes with getting an education degree–if Joyce’s father does well enough to pay for her education, beyond scholarships/grants (if any), then 50K is actually a fairly solid income (especially if she’s part of a two-income family).
It’s low if you live somewhere where a 1br apartment costs 4,000/ mo.
Joyce doesn’t, though, and likely won’t.
Dorothy: “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, this will get ugly before it gets better… it might not GET better. This might be the beginning of a bitter conflict spanning the rest of our school years. Oh dear, Joyce does not know what she’s getting into… or she DOES know. I don’t know what scares me most.”
Jacob: “Pizza is good.”
Next strip: Joyce and Raidah are having a full on catfight, clawing and screaming, clothing is getting torn, people are placing bets, Joe has materialized to start a cheering section, and Jacob is calmly looking at his menu wondering if his workout regimen will allow for extra cheese.
We are watching Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts square off, and you’re expecting a catfight?
Thibault, Capo Ferro, Agrippa — the verbal equivalents of these are what you should be anticipating.
Raidah is nowhere near cool enough to be either Inigo or Westley.
This is more like Westley vs. Vizzini. She think she’s so much smarter than her opponent, and isn’t.
A beautiful analogy – will you be my friend?
Actually, I wonder if either Joyce or Raidah have the drive of either Montoya (vengeance for his father’s death) or the Dread Pirate Roberts (true love). Both of them are driven, have amazing self-discipline, and an amazing skill set in combat (Montoya isn’t a swords master – he’s a swords WIZARD, and Roberts is better than him).
Geez Raidah, not everything is about money. …I mean, it’s nice and all, but that really shouldn’t be the first thing she says about Joyce’s major.
Unfortunately that’s usually what people say to education majors first thing. They really should not, though! (Trust me… they already know.)
Except for Joyce, here, apparently…but then, if it’s a lot to Joyce, or an amount she views as more than enough, than you know what? Back to what I said before: fuck you, Raidah.
Joyce has literally no concept of what is or is not a lot of money, because it’s not something she was ever taught to worry about. She knows that people can be poor, but she’s never actually thought about what that means until very recently. She doesn’t seem to have ever realized that Becky’s family seemed to be far worse off financially than hers (from what little we’ve seen), for instance.
Her inherent assumption is that you secure a good husband and a good husband just makes enough money to live off of. If memory serves, the whole reason for her major isn’t to ever actually work as a teacher, it’s simply to make her a more effective mother for raising children, which is her sole duty as a living being on this Earth, as ordained by God.
She’s coming from La Porte. Median HOUSEHOLD income there is 48K. Houses are cheap (We bought our first one for under 60K). 50K is enough to single handedly support a whole FAMILY, and with summers off, so you save $$ on daycare. Plus decent insurance? It IS a decent living in much of Indiana.
Not fabulously wealthy, but house, 2 reasonable cars, and vacations, if you don’t have more than 3 or 4 kids.
Yeah, I am a teacher and I make like… 20 grands a year…
and houses are, like around 200K…
wait…
And in Toronto they start at around 49K but housing in-the-city is around $772K which is an annual $40k mortgage … and that is why most rent at $22K though dual incomes do offset this issue.
And that is why I am glad I have a portable degree and can go work where the cost of living is lower.
I mean, she can’t be SURE that money is an insult that works on Joyce, so she tests the water until she finds something that works.
It’s not about the money – it’s about the conflict with Joyce.
And every time she tests the water, she’ll make herself look worse in Jacob’s eyes.
Tearing down Joyce won’t work because Joyce can roll with a lot of punches and laugh at herself. The only area that you can seriously rattle her is her religion, and surely Raidah knows that that would be fatal with Jacob.
Add to that that Joyce is a genuinely nice person who won’t tear others down, so she won’t respond in kind by attacking Raidah. Every attempt by Raidah to make J look bad in Jacob’s eyes will make Joyce look that much better in comparison.
She can make Joyce look wacky and unrealistic. Thing is, due to Sarah. Jacob already knows in detail and has made up his own mind. So yeah, these hijinks could work out for Joyce. I wouldn’t put money on it though.
Re religion: Raidah might be able to bait Joyce into saying something ignorant about Islam.
It’s not an insult to Joyce. It’s not aimed at Joyce. It’s aimed at Jacob. Who she knows (or thinks she knows) is ambitious.
It’s both–she’s demeaning Joyce’s ambitions in an effort to create a contrast for Jacob–but she’s just displaying her lack of comprehension of how Jacob’s mind works. (As someone raised as an Episcopalian, they drill the “tolerance of differences” angle into you as a kid, HARD, in part because there’s a fairly wide spectrum of practice in the church itself. Jacob’s pretty ‘High’ Church, judging by the segment we saw, but being dismissive of ‘Low Church’ practices is a big no-no.)
Oh! I didn’t think of that reading.
Hmmmmm…. I THINK you are wrong. I think Raidah is treating Jacob as a possession to be fought OVER rather than a person with agency of his own to be manipulated. I.e. Jacob’s own choice is not a threat to their relationship – Joyce sniffing around is.
(If my reading is right, that is most likely what will cause Raidah’s little alpha bongo card house come crashing down in the end)
But I might very well be wrong. I look forward to see how it unfolds.
Spot on. Raidah is approaching it as a fight with Joyce over Jacob while Joyce is hoping Jacob will like her more and choose her.
Remember how one of the things Jacob likes about Raidah is that she’s not the jealous type? I think he was mistaken.
Joyce was literally trying to win Jacob for Sarah. She both sees him as a possession, and is the jealous type.
If I know Raidah, she clearly doesn’t think everything is about money.
Control and Being Right All the Time, well, *that’s* a different story….
That’s one of the primary reasons people want money: it makes it very easy to consistently secure those two things in every situation and aspect of your life.
It makes it very easy to have the illusion you can secure those things.
(You can also do great damages to others by using the money to control a situation, but ever so often there will be situations where it does not work.)
Money plus power plus control equal live. Raidah has been listening to Randy Newman’s Faust. Doesn’t end well for Faust either.
Damn autocorrect. Equals love.
Call it ‘prestige’, then–money is part of getting your proper position in society.
Joyce is having none of Raidah’s judgemental bullshit, and I love it!
She really took Sal’s advice to heart and owns her dorkiness.
Yes! I love that about Joyce. She’s one of the few who can truly laught at herself.
Oh, fuck you, Raidah.
Smug + condescending + judgemental = Raidah.
Welp now I hate Raidah way more. Fuck anyone that devalues someone else’s career path based on what it pays.
And no I clearly do not think her last speech bubble is sincere
I don’t think anyone does. Except possibly Jacob.
I don’t think Jacob’s falling for it.
.
Plus, Joyce’s parry is excellent, she’s not about money and “glamour,” which reflects back on Raidah that *she* is. That’s not a look that will appeal to him either.
But she thinks it does, going by the conversation she had with her friends when they brought up Joyce as competition.
So she’s either misjudged Jacob or he has a shallow side that she’s seen and we haven’t.
Agreed. I’m betting that Raidah has misjudged Jacob.
It’s easy for Raidah to not act jealous when she believes she has no competition. Imagine her surprise when she realized that Jacob actually likes Joyce. She expected him to see J as a foolish ignorant child to be tolerated, whereas he sees J as a person with a kind heart, which i expect is very appealing to him.
I thought it was fairly obviously unkind, but I was also wanting to be prepared for people trying to argue otherwise.
It’s the same sort of backhand she used calling Dina ‘special’. Like, that ‘we can’t all be glamorous,’ augh.
I agree. My parents actually refused to let me go to the college of my choice just because my major “didn’t make enough money.”
Somehow it was a huge surprise when I dropped out after 2 semesters of doing something I didn’t want to do.
Well, without knowing the specifics, at some point there is a cost benefit analysis. Paying a lot of money for a degree that isn’t likely to begin to cover those costs has serious drawbacks.
…Joyce herself devalued the major. She’s literally there to get her Mrs degree.
Tbh that sounds like a lot of money to me…. :’)
I’d like to have a job where I’d be making even close to that amount of money.
Seriously, I’m in education (not yet full-time employed), and I know it’s not like a super high-paying career and is definitely undervalued…but $50k a year is around what my parents each make in their non-teaching jobs? A lot of people I’ve known seem to view a good salary as higher than that, but for me that’s always seemed like a good amount to aim for. Lots of people in important careers don’t make that much.
50k is more than enough for one person where I live, provided they don’t do anything stupid and get into debt.
And if both halves of the pair are working, there should be no issues at all, at least until kids become a major expense.
Depends a lot on where you live. In the small Midwestern town where I live, it’s a reasonably comfortable income for a single person, and enough for a frugal couple. In a big city with a higher cost of living, it’s barely scraping by.
Good points, everyone! It definitely does depend on where you are too. It just sounds like a lot because right now, both members of my newly established household combined make, like… half that. But hey, raises are a thing at least~
Looks like $50K is the average, as she says. Starting is ~$35.
You probably reach $50 after ~10 years and probably earning a Masters.
Keep in mind, the majority of students these days graduate with fairly hefty debt-loads. That’s the real killer–teaching doesn’t pay what a lot of jobs with comparable levels of pre-req education do. So you end up way in the back.
Now, Joyce is very bright, and her dad is traditional in a lot of the good ways (and there’s actually a few Biblical verses that explicitly call out the practice of usury). It’s quite possible that he’s insisting on making sure they pay her way, after any scholarships or grants she might be getting. That would make her starting salary of $35K essentially pure income–and then add in her living expectations of being a small-town gal, where home prices are a lot lower, and where equity is still possible.
Raidah’s probably from a more urban, upscale background–she’s used to the idea that you DON’T buy a home until you’re in your mid-thirties, because you first have to pay off your MBA or law school debt.
OTOH, if Raidah’s dad owns a law firm, they likely have a good deal more money than the Browns do (who have had up to 4 kids to put through college), which makes it more likely they could easily pay her way.
OTGH, Joyce isn’t really supposed to work as a teacher. She’s supposed to get married to a good provider and home-school their kids. So her salary as a elementary school teacher is mostly irrelevant.
Raidah it’s super tacky to talk about how much money someone makes even if they’re not making it yet
Where I’m from it’s considered rude to even ask.
God, Raidah and Joyce are both being sucky here. Is it too early for Jacob to say ‘a plague on both your houses’ and get a new relationship (not with either of them).
Given his apparent obliviousness, probably.
Jacob and Dorothy would be a a much better fit for both of them
Given her previous boyfriends, I see no indication that Dorothy want to date someone like herself.
Exactly, Dorothy should try a relationship with a man with a backbone not an aimless boy
She’s 19 and a Freshman in college.
Her last two relationships were Danny and Walky, maybe its time she looked at an equal for a change
Yeah, but she doesn’t think she has the time for a relationship because Yale and Academics. And whoever she dates next needs to be able to get her to take breaks and put some value in self-care and relaxing, because that’s clearly a weak point for her. They need solid self-esteem as well, and to be able to have an open talk about boundaries and how she sometimes changes them without consulting her partner first, but people who don’t have the same trajectories or attitudes can have successful, solid relationships.
“Needs to be able to get her to take breaks and put some value in self-care and relaxing”? You mean like Walky did?
But somehow magically do so without ever cutting into her study time or her extracurriculars.
I find it mildly insulting that you say that neither Danny nor Walky were Dorothy’s equal. Both have proven themselves to be quite intelligent (Computer Science is hard, Calculus is the one course with which Walky has had explicit trouble), and Dorothy is shooting for the highest office in the entire country, and one of the most important positions in the entire civilized world. Jacob hasn’t stated any higher aspirations than law school, does that make him Dotty’s inferior, too?
I’m in culinary school right now, and to brag I’m pretty fucking good at it. Does the fact that I’m not shaking hands with Bill Gates and writing $10M checks on the regular make me a lesser person in your eyes despite my skill?
Yeah, honestly, there is no such thing as an easy major. It depends on the individual student’s aptitudes, energy levels, motivation, the types of course work, etc.
Danny, when first appeared, seemed to have no aspirations for himself other than follow Dorothy around. She had, and still does, have goals and is working to achieve them and Danny did not.
Dorothy appeared to be the one who made the decisions, all the decisions so yeah Danny, at the time, Danny was inferior to her.
The same arguments can be leveled at Walky, he doesn’t really know what hes doing or wants to do and is quite passive when it comes to accepting what Dorothy says (apart from the break up)
While we haven’t seen as much of Jacob we know he has goals he wants to achieve so I don’t think Jacob will be as easy to mess around with in my opinion
@chris73 I get the feeling that you equate personal ambition to worth as a human being, and I have nothing more productive to add to this conversation than I disagree.
I do place a greater value on personal ambition (whatever that ambition maybe) over being passive and letting others decide for you
There’s a difference between “no personal ambition” and “no self-direction.” If Danny had genuinely wanted and planned, for himself, a life that would satisfy him, then that life might not have been “ambitious” but could still have shown h had a sense of who himself was and was acting in support of himself.
Instead, he was just following Dorothy, almost by default, and without much questioning or self-awareness.
Whole lot of eighteen-year-olds don’t have themselves figured out yet. That’s part of what college is for. In fact, of the whole cast I’m pretty sure most aren’t there yet. (Even Dorothy, I think, will end up tweaking her path to her goal at least and possibly her goal as a whole as she figures out how best to change society.) And in Danny and Walky’s specific cases, they both have a very specific reason why they don’t have a clear goal – their parents. Danny’s put him down constantly and told him the only way to success was Dorothy’s coattails. Walky’s mother, minimum, put him on the pedestal as the golden child future Lawyer/Doctor regardless of his desires or aptitude, with their treatment of Sal always there to remind him what happens to Disappointments. And I don’t have a lot of hope for Charles to be better in that regard. Both sets of parents put them in boxes the way Joyce was at the start of the comic, and told them they could only ever be This Thing. Not a good environment for self-discovery, exploration, or self-esteem.
Also, like. Not all people are made to go through higher education at the same rate, or even at all. It’s not the only path to success, it’s not the only way to find a fulfilling career or a rigorous training program, and people don’t have to only date in their same post-secondary area. Hell, my mother has a master’s and all-but-dissertation, my father didn’t finish a bachelor’s degree, and they’ve been married twenty six years and both have successful careers.
I see no indication that she wants that at this time.
‘Tis a shame, imagine the drama that’d cause
I’m honestly not understanding how you get to the “Joyce is sucky here” part.
Raidah just grossly insulted her and her intended profession. What is the non-sucky way to respond to that?
Hitting on Raidahs boyfriend in front of her is a pretty good way of being defined as sucky
They’re both trying to brag about how awesome they are and how they’re better for Jacob. Raidah’s doing it by insulting Joyce and making herself look better by contrast and Joyce is being inept, but she’s still showing her ass here. (Metaphorically.)
The issue is that Joyce is instigating this whole situation by hitting on someones elses boyfriend
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Nah, I suspect this conversation wouldn’t be all that different if Raidah had someone else she needed to impress for a different reason and Joyce was the most convenient target. I don’t get the impression her worldview leaves a lot of room for live and let live.
Have you considered that might be Joyce’s endgame?
Panel three is me and half my college experience so far. ;-;
Huh. . . Do we know if Joyce picked her Major herself or if her parents pressured her to take it? I honestly cannot remember.
Sad to say that Raidah ain’t wrong about how poorly paid teachers are, my Aunt and Uncle barely make enough to support their family and they’re AP’s.
She and Becky both had to take Elementary Education so they could homeschool their kids.
I’d hazard a guess Joyce is still in the ‘well of course I want this job because it’s what Good Christian Wives do!’ stage for the most part, but yeah there was never a real choice. (Actually looking forward to having that realization she had with Dorothy in Gender Studies for real, even if we won’t get there until 2036 at earliest.)
If she never met Dina, and continued crushing on Joyce, I bet Becky would have gone into science just to figure out a way to make said kids a reality.
At night, Becky sometimes opens an incognito tab and Googles “how to lesbians pregnancy”. Then she immediately closes the tab before it loads.
Fuck, I wish I were making $50k a year. I’m making like… A third of that.
I’m making even less, if that helps.
$50k is kind of, like, dream income for me right now.
My brother is a petroleum engineer making six figures and I’m going “It’d be cool to not stress about rent every month.”
Hopefully my earning potential will go up after I graduate, because goddamn I am over being poor.
It should! A lot of employers would rather not have to work around a class schedule unless they’re hiring interns.
It’s so fun when someone dismisses something you aim for as beneath them. 🙂
Raidah comes off classist here, for sure.
There’s this idea in the back of my mind sometimes, that I need to be doing things a “correct” way- making lots of money, doing high-profile important things that change the world, and that since I’m not my life has been a waste.
With me that’s just anxiety talking, but for Raidah it seems to legitimately be her world view. Yikes.
Well yeah. Raidah’s classist. Duh.
(flashes back to recent arguments about how Walky’s no good for Dorothy because of his lack of ambition.)
Ohhhh, Raidah. One of those people who goes into law because there’s money there. Don’t know why that surprises me, but it does.
Don’t get me wrong I highly doubt Joyce has thought through her major at all beyond it being something she’s ‘allowed’ as a woman, and there’s no shame in picking a job that pays well, but something about Raidah’s attitude here just feels snooty.
(Also teachers deserve way better than they actually get paid and the devaluing of occupations traditionally held by women is a fucking travesty, but like that goes without saying here.)
Joyce wants to homeschool her children. I believe that’s why she picked that major IIRC.
Joyce is getting her degree in order to be able to homeschool her children, which definitely makes it a reflection of the culture she was brought up in, and she probably could put more thought into if it’s what she wants.
Still, not liking Raidah here. I’m not thrilled with Joyce either, but Raidah is currently annoying me more.
When Dorothy asked her what she would be if there were no limitations, to fantasize completely freely, she said fighter jet pilot.
I was going to say she might need to find a balance, but you know what? She should do it.
I don’t care what she sticks with (though that one’s solid,) I just want her to actually realize she has a choice and think critically about it since she never had the option before now.
Who was home every night to make mac & cheese for her family. Let’s not forget the conditions.
TBH, I doubt Joyce had ever even thought about it before.
No doubt, her face when she started talking about it screamed “I hadn’t really thought about it before.”
Yeah, I remember that part, I’m just saying Joyce hasn’t really hit the point where she truly realizes she outgrew that box a long time ago and it was probably never going to fit her quite right. (Joyce would run into the same issues as a parent that make me feel it’s not for me – you can’t expect rationality with young kids, they can be loud and contrary and irritating, and it’s not their fault because they’re ENTIRELY dependent on you because they’re small and don’t know things and haven’t grown their brains completely. Maybe Joyce’ll rise to the occasion of course, but I’m not certain it would be her ideal if she actually thought for a while what it entails. Consider how she reacts to Walky.)
I’m thinking that how she reacts to Walky, someone her own age whom she met only a few weeks ago, and how she might react to either her own kids or kids she might be teaching in the future, are two different things. I don’t really see anything in Joyce as she is now that would make her seem either suited or not suited to teaching or having kids, to be honest.
I mean, I agree with you that she needs to do a lot more thinking about what she really wants to do with her life, and to realize she has choices, and that she doesn’t have to go into teaching or even to get married and have kids if she doesn’t want to, and that her parents and church are wrong to try to force women into these boxes just because they’re women.
I’m just saying that being annoyed with an immature 18-year-old like Walky doesn’t mean that someone might not feel differently about actual children.
Not necessarily, no, and she is okay with Becky. But if those behaviors annoy her at all on their own, she would probably have to get used to them.
Remember this is all sort of beside the point. Joyce’s plan isn’t actually to go into teaching. Well, it’s not really her plan at all, but the one that’s been laid out for her. She’s supposed to find a good husband who will support her, have a bunch of kids and use that basic training in education to home school them.
I suspect this plan isn’t going to actually happen and that at some point she’ll realize that and start thinking about what she wants.
I think Raidah is what the internet calls a Fake Person. Why actually mature when you can simply learn to hide your shit more artfully than before?
How poorly hidden it all still is notwithstanding….
I foresee her either being the personal retainer for wealthy scumbags or a corporate lawyer who insists that whatever blatant violation caused a suit wasn’t foreseeable, and an object of internet hatred on par with Martin Shkreli either way. (In fairness, I can also see personal injury lawyer and I know some perfectly reasonable ones of those. Especially since I recall she has family in the legal profession already.)
Well, she is a black female Muslim. That lack of privilege generally handicaps one’s career as a mob lawyer or personal fixer.
The nasty side of Corporate law’s probably doable.
I foresee her as forever looking up precedents for the partners but never making partner herself.
Mercenary passive aggression isn’t a good look, Raidah.
But also, having an apparently sexual reaction to Arby’s sauce is not normal, Joyce.
If that’s not normal, then normal can go blow a zebra.
So *that’s* where Arby Sauce comes from…
Zebra. Arbez. Arby’s. It’s all so clear to me, now.
We have the m e a t s.
*the TV is playing an old Benny Hill Show clip*
HUSBAND (who thinks he’s being cheated on): The SAUCE!
(Benny [as a waiter who knows little English] sets a bottle of Worcestershire on the table in front of the husband.)
HUSBAND: The BLOODY SAUCE!
(Benny sets out a bottle of BBQ sauce.)
Just in case anyone had forgotten what a piece of garbage Raidah is, she opened her mouth to remind us! How… sweet?
In her defence shes sitting at a table with some girl that wants to move in on her boyfriend
If Raidah weren’t going for “Human Dumpster Fire” she’d actually talk to Joyce. Disparaging her educational choices because of the theoretical salary is bullshit.
Yeah but hitting on the boyfriend right in front of the girlfriend isn’t exactly person of the year either
Certainly not (not that Joyce HAS hit on Jacob since Raidah arrived), but in no universe does “Girl is crushing on my boyfriend and acting on that crush” warrant such a personal and direct attack.
You can tell someone to back off your SO without throwing an entire career under the bus on the grounds it doesn’t pay well, after all. That one’s all Raidah and her personal brand of Mean Girl bullshit.
So Raidah calls Joyce out, Joyce denies it and Jacob starts to think Raidah is clingy and paranoid, would be nice for Joyce
Like ‘Jacob hears Raidah denigrate a job that’s necessary for society to function because it’s underpaid’ is that much better?
Cause she is really not coming off well here, and Jacob seems to notice. Again, Raidah could just as easily gone for something slightly backhanded but deniable like ‘You don’t strike me as the type!’, maybe gone into how demanding teaching is or how difficult working with young children must be and is Joyce sure that’s the path she wants and it would barely register as catty without tone. She did not. She went for the low, classist blow, because Raidah has a marked shitty streak there. (We see it with Sarah, we see it with ‘Jacob wants success like me and I can take him places and this freshman child will not bring him that’, we see it with her telling Char not to use the r word but not batting an eye to use special in the same exact sense to Dina’s face. Raidah’s all about the appearance of respectability but cares very little about actually being respectful.)
“respectability” and “respectful” have very little in common with other, besides a handful of letters. Never do.
It’s definitely her classist streak. She thinks Jacob wants the same thing she does and she’s pointing out that Joyce doesn’t share that ambition. Which Joyce reinforces with the focus on husband/romance.
someone “hitting on” your SO is a problem only if your SO responds in kind. If your SO decides they’d rather be with someone else, you have an SO problem, not a “girl hitting on my bf” problem.
“Fighting over” someone overlooks that a person has their own agency and are not a prize for the victor. If Raidah wants Jacob to continue being with her she should work on being the kind of person Jacob wants to be with. Hostility towards Joyce is not something Jacob will find appealing.
She once called Dina mentally challenged though she may have used a more vile term I can’t remember… point is she is a butt.
Raidah didn’t say anything explicitly, but she was tremendously condescending. Char dropped the hard R.
In the one piece of fairness I will give Raidah, the one who used the slur was her friend. (Can’t remember if it was Chan or Char, not interested in triggering myself to look it up.) And when said friend said it, Raidah was one of the ones who went ‘too far, don’t use that word.’
She immediately squandered that goodwill by calling Dina ‘special’,* which euphemism treadmilled itself to mean the same exact thing but is currently socially acceptable. Generally speaking, those of us who it targets feel exactly as condescended to and insulted but without the raw hurt the slur creates.
* If you don’t get it, the ‘special’ refers to special education, which in the US is reserved for people with intellectual/learning/developmental disabilities and definitely has a stigma attached. Isn’t ableism fun?
As someone on the spectrum, I hate that adjective (“special”) with a passion when it’s applied to people.
Same and same. Actually dropped a class after a teacher used it (in very clearly That Sense) to describe other classmates. This after said teacher used the r slur to refer to them and I sent her an email saying ‘hey that word’s a slur against my community and I find it really hurtful’ and she apologized. Euphemism treadmill and not treating the attitude underlying the slur at work. (One of those reasons why I’m like ‘let’s not focus on eliminating crazy or stupid from the lexicon entirely guys, they’ll just get more words to use instead and they’ll be worse.’)
If we eliminate crazy from the lexicon, there go half my self-deprecating jokes about my mental health issues. I’d hate to be in a “that’s Our word” situation. Not that I’d fight it if it were clear that I was in a definite minority of the chronically mentally ill.
Also true. (It’s also one of those things I struggle with because like I get being hurt by a word that was used on you before, but at the same time some of them have lost most of the sting and I doubt we can dump them all entirely. Hell, some of the words that used to be clinical are so outdated in that sense people don’t know the original context. And like then you get into things like how 97% of the LGBT community’s lexicon started as slurs, perjoratives or pathologizations and successful widespread reclamation clearly is possible… Don’t call people with the name of a disorder unless they actually have it, and don’t use it as an insult. Don’t use the r word, it’s been too loaded for too long. But crazy? I’m not gonna fight the neurotypicals for crazy. I am especially not gonna fight them for crazy if it keeps them from using clinical terms as insults even more than people do already.)
The other piece if fairness is that Dina, especially that early on, did come across as young, both from her looks and her words and actions. Her first thought was that Dina was in middle school, which isn’t completely unreasonable. Others have done so and Dina was doing her usual completely out of context babble about dinosaurs thing.
When told she was their age, she switched to “mentally challenged” (I don’t think she used “special”. Not in that scene at least.)
Yeah, that term’s not any better, and Dina is clearly sensitive to infantilization – she doesn’t mind an honest mistake too much, but if you continue treating her like that once you know, she isn’t happy.
True, but Raidah’s interaction was like 2 minutes.
Other more prominent characters have continued to infantilize for years of real time.
And Dina’s vulnerable to it herself – remember her interaction with Riley, who is 12.
If Radiah needs to get that defensive about Joyce hitting on Jacob, maybe Jacob and Radiah aren’t meant to be. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Joyce flirting with Jacob, it’s not like he’s married. If someone flirted with my fiance and they fell for each other, then obviously it wasn’t meant to be.
Looks like Raidah is so overconfident she never asked herself what other people consider as decent social behavior.
Starting a conversation with someone under the pretense of wanting to get to know them and trashing the first thing they say?
Belittling someone because the aim for a job that is not severely high-paying?
It really looks like the idea that this could be considered seriously shitty behavior never crossed her mind. The friends she keeps would do the same from what we saw, so she doesn’t know she should be more subtle for this to not be obviously just as shitty as it is.
Which makes her an arrogant asshole but not a very competent one. If Sarah had been a more outgoing, more social person, Raidah hate-campaign probably would have fallen flat. But Sarah, who dislikes and distrusts people anyway, was an easy target to go after.
Which reminds me, Joyce asking why Raidah dislikes Sarah so much she makes a public spectacle of if would be the most aggressive and Raidah-damaging thing Joyce could do without looking like a cat.
I think Raidah acts shitty to people she dislikes or is angry at when she thinks she can get away with it. She knew Sarah had no friends to back her up, so she thought she could get away with being an asshole to her because, she thinks, others would agree with her. She thinks that Joyce is just a Little homeschooled powerless nobody. I mean, others such as Billie and Joe put her down regularly, and Raidah probably thinks that there will be no repercussions if she’s mean to her.
Your saying Raidah is a bully, don’t you?
Yes, I think she is.
Really, what does she say that’s so bad? She even says it’s a “noble profession.” Isn’t she just admiring the sacrifices Joyce is willing to make?
Snark aside, that’s not an unreasonable interpretation, if we didn’t already know Raidah and what she’s up to. It’s still unclear how Jacob’s reacting. He’s likely predisposed to put a good spin on his girlfriend’s words.
But yeah, Raidah’s definitely a bully.
With those sort of remarks, Jacob will probably find out soon just how shitty of a person Raidah actually is.
Also: With those sort of remarks, Jacob will probably find out soon just how shitty of a person Joyce actually is.
You know the whole tryimg to split up Jacob and Raidah for revenge on Sarahs behalf followed by trying to split them up for Joyces benefit
Sure Joyce is trying to split them up but no comments she’s said so far hint at her being shitty for Jacob to pick up on.
Well, Joe knows what she’s doing and disapproves, he could tell Jacob at any time.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
Yknow raidah and Jacob probably wouldn’t last tbh. He doesn’t know her that well (it’s only been two weeks I think), he hasn’t seen how shitty her personality is. Either way I feel like she’d end up making backhanded shitty remarks about his friends, like Joyce whether or not she was persuing him, assuming he’d agree and he’d leave her because of how negative she is
But we better tell Joyce to not pursue Jacob, because what an awful thing that would be
It’s to late and I kind of want to see how this plays out…..yeah I think I’ve become what I was fighting against.
Oh, UGH, Raidah is being an asshole. She has every right to be suspicious of Joyce, but this is uncalled for.
Ho boy…
Okay, Raidah not liking Joyce for some of her prior actions whenever they’ve shared a scene? Understandable.
Mocking someone going into education with the vein of ‘lolyurpoor’ earns an immediate ‘screw you’ response from me. My mom’s a teacher. They deserve so much more. There’s room to talk to Joyce about reconsidering her major given her prior history, but mockery because of salary? You’re going to live an emotionally damage life, Raidah. (And that’s something I’ve seen already–sibling went into medicine because of the paycheck. Sibling mental health is really, really bad)
I’m wondering what Jacob’s family background is, because I could totally see him having a mom that’s a teacher and talking to Raidah later about her comments.
Radish is definitely a shitty person, but I think she’s smart enough not to disparage a member of Jacob’s family that she’d be aware of.
And she implied to be aware of his family because she said he needs her to live up o his family’s standards, hence why Joyce isn’t a threat.
That makes sense. Maybe a grandparent who was a teacher then. Or not, but it strikes me as one pretty direct way for this to backfire.
Jacob’s brother is definitely a success by Raidah’s standards: “Your brother didn’t get to where he is by fooling around, did he?”
Also there’s “I know what Jacob wants and it’s to live up to the standards of his family. To make them proud.” Which is not clear about about his parents’ professions but is clear about their aspirations.
Shes sitting across from a girl trying to take her boyfriend right in front of her, yeah shes shown to be not pleasant in the past but i can’t hold it against her for not being all sunny and light
It’s the implication that anyone in education is beneath her that prompted the knee-jerk reaction. The implication that anyone that does not go for a job with a ridiculous salary is a moron or unworthy. That is what makes her toxic.
Like I said, there are plenty of reasons for her to not like Joyce. This is not one of them.
https://taylormali.com/poems/what-teachers-make/ Raidah is really mean 🙁
I’m glad I’m not the only person who immediately thought of that poem. Raidah’s showing her true colors here, and I hope Jacob is paying attention. I hope he’s better than that.
Oh yeah. If Raidah were commenting on anything else – you don’t strike me as the type!, even, with a backhanded vibe, or bringing up the mall incident – I would say she has something resembling a point.
This, though? Classist as shit, which is a problem we know Raidah had already, and devaluing a profession that deserves better at that. (And while I have nothing against lawyers, my bet is she’s planning on going into one of the more lucrative but soul-selling fields.)
Any chance she might be looking at being a whistleblower protections lawyer?
Like, a lawyer that defends or prosecute whistleblowers? The entire concept of whistleblowing still thrashes the corners of my mind. It’s a human decency thing, and I always get a little shocked when I see how deep the hole is.
A whistleblower protections lawyer is one that defends whistleblowers.
My first bet is personal injury, since someone in her family has a firm and I’m certain she intends to use that.
But I could see a lot of options here. Hell, she could surprise me tomorrow and say she’s going for civil rights and Constitutional Law. (Not a lot of money there since there aren’t a lot of job openings, but it has glamor and Raidah has to realize she has a personal stake in matters, she can’t be that blinded by class privilege.)
There’s a wide variety of law specialities, though I suspect you’re right and ‘whatever dad’s firm focuses on’ will be paramount.
Who knows? Maybe she’ll go into Juvenile Law, Education Law, Immigration Law, Health Law, etc.
I would actually be amused if she ended up the kind of trademark lawyer who are currently trying to trademark common words in book titles, or something equally inane.
(I recommend ‘romance novel Cockygate’ if you want context, or an interesting read.)
If she were looking at taking that route, she wouldn’t be making fun of a $50k salary.
Regalli, I have kind of an off-topic question—what about the mall incident would lead someone to believe that teaching might not be the best profession for Joyce? I don’t remember anything she did wrong there. Sarah was the one who slapped Raidah. Joyce sort of blamed herself after the fact, but she was way off base to do so, I thought. Even Billie said that it wasn’t Joyce’s fault, and she is usually very quick to criticize Joyce.
No problem, I was unclear. I don’t think the mall incident reflects anything on Joyce and teaching, but Raidah could have used it to try and paint Joyce and the people she hangs out with in a worse light – she probably hasn’t because explaining the source of the feud with Sarah would follow, and there’s a chance Jacob could end up asking questions there, particularly since Joyce knows Sarah’s side of the story, but it’s still an option.
I read every comment here before I was brave enough to say…. I thought Raidah was trying to get a threesome going
In that case, negging is a bullshit move.
But I’m preeeetty sure neither girl cares much about sharing at this point.
“You’re essentially living in poverty.”
…Well, excuse me miss class bias, but I do believe your “born into money” elitism is showing.
Seriously. I almost went into Social Work, which is likewise poorly paid for the amount of work and education required, but, it still pays whole lot better than what I was doing before (circus performer). From there, everything is ‘up’. It’s always so weird that somebody would make fun of anyone’s steady paycheque.
Circus performer?!
Is it ok to ask about that, because that sounds interesting?
Sure. I was mainly a stilt-dancer. Event entertainment, and occasional shows. It was as rad as it was stressful.
The recession and mental illnesses killed our outfit eventually, but, it was really fun and exciting while it lasted.
Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do crazy stuff.
Stilt DANCER? I didn’t even know that was thing. Walker, yes. Dancer? That’s new to me. I’ll have to see if I can find some videos of that in action.
Sigh. I’m not about to blame Raidah for defending her relationship, but that nasty streak she has is not doing her any favors. You can see the “…WTF?” going through Jacob’s head in panel 3.
….Panel 4.
You can see Jacob reacting. It’s not entirely clear what he’s reacting to.
I don’t often have this reaction, but: Raidah can go fuck herself. Nothing to do with any competition between her and Joyce. She has just revealed herself to be a shit person, plain and simple.
Raidah thinks she’s twisting in the knife and is reveling in that act. Little does she know she hasn’t even penetrated the armor.
Heh. Raidah’s Vegeta thinking he has Freeza on the ropes and Joyce is wondering what she should get the Ginyus next of kin in their “I’m sorry for your loss” baskets.
I empathize with Jacob’s single raised eyebrow.
Jacob’s thoughts: “did she said something offensive to poor people?”
Jacob’s thoughts: “Is that our pizza? No, it’s for the other table.”
Shockingly the girl who was condescending towards disabled people also has disdain for poor people
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGKm201n-U4
Taylor Mali — What Teachers Make
That said, we treat teachers like glorified babysitters and their pay and support ought to be criminal.
Raidah, I was going to put aside your transgressions against Sarah, but mocking future teachers and poor people makes you deserve to lose Jacob. Not to Joyce, but to someone that is a better person.
Also, Joyce is showing her anti Joyce powers.
Yes, actually a lot, Dorothy.
Not super fucking rich you can spend your money on anything, but still a lot.
It does depend wildly on where you’re living – I’d have to look up what it costs to live in Indiana, but in some places teaching is a legitimately poverty-line career. Still, it’s far from the worst paying job and it usually comes with benefits, those are both huge.
I live in Oklahoma and I have a friend who is a teacher with a Master’s degree who is basically constantly teetering on the edge because Oklahoma pays public school teachers so poorly. Some day we’ll get it right.
I also live in Oklahoma and can concur. In fact, it is a well known issue that Oklahoma’s teachers are paid so poorly that many of our teachers are leaving the state to pursue better paying jobs elsewhere, leaving a shortage of teachers in-state in many areas.
In a free market, that should cause teachers’ salaries to rise in Oklahoma, and fall elsewhere. Guess why that doesn’t happen.
(See hof1991 below).
It doesn’t happen because of unions. Teacher salaries aren’t negotiable, and it *isn’t* a free market.
My aunt’s a high school athletics director in central Florida and has a similar story, plus she can’t afford necessary medical stuff. This country has issues.
Feature not bug. Bad pay means teachers with options leave. Then they will hire people without qualifications because of the teacher shortage. Then they will move everything to private schools for the wealthy and cheap online classes for the rest of the students. This is the future that’s being prepared for us.
That’s horrifying and I’m moving to Canada.
Canada pays about the same for a starting teacher – 35 to 45K until they finish their probationary period (at least a year). After that the average goes from 40 to 85K, so a little higher at the higher end of average. Depending where you live, that’s not bad money.
Cost of living in canada is also lower tho. In my town I can get a decent house or apartment for anywhere from 5-1k that being like 2 bedrooms and shit.
Salary size is subjective, Raidah. Some of us prefer to live in decent sized apartments with one or two roommates.
Well that’s my dream anyway. 50k can cover rent, utilities, and basic needs I hope.
Wow, Raidah, that’s…really rude, to critique your new friend’s future earning potential. Like, that started well, but that…wow. And apparently Jacob noticed.
Why would Raidah consider Joyce as a potential new friend given that Joyce wants to split Jacob and Raidah up?
I should’ve put quotation marks. Obviously she’s trying to make nice with her “”””new friend”””” in front of Jake, so the blatantly disrespectful comments are an odd choice. She’s either misjudged his level of materialism or his tolerance for bullshit.
Ah yeah that makes more sense
“Glamorous”…how shallow can you get? What snipey, smarmy classist jerk this entirely fictitious person who’s getting me bent out of shape is.
So long story short, I was kinda torn on the entire situation, because I love Joyce and she and Jacob DO go well together, but I didn’t like that Joyce was being underhanded about it. She should have been honest about her crush from the start. Guess we can thank Sarah for that.
But fuck Raidah for talking shit about Joyce’s aspirations because the salary isn’t up to Raidah’s “standards,” and fuck her for doing it implicitly as a way to smear her in front of Jacob.
50k a year? That’s 4100 a month. Jesus Christ, that is a lot for my country. That’s almost 6 times minimum wage
Shit, it is about what my WHOLE family has earned in the last 4 months.
So, like, fuck you Americans for complaining that 50k is poverty.
It’s relative against the price of living, though. You hear horror stories about American property prices, even rentals.
For example, average rent where I live is around 1500 dollars a month. Food is another 300-750 dollars a month. The electricity bill and water bill are each about 100 dollars a month. Gas for getting to and from employement is anywhere from 150 to 300 dollars a month. Total living expenses minimum for a single person is about 2100 dollars a month. Inflation is ridiculous.
You also have to keep in mind that most of the places where 4100 a month is enough to pay for an apartment, basic bills, and food, much less children, you won’t actually be paid that much without something like ten years’ experience and the unemployment rate is likely extremely high so the chances of getting hired and keeping your job ten years (rather than being fired for someone cheaper) will be very low.
Many teachers in the US effectively get minimum wage or less and have to work second jobs.
And they generally need to get advanced education somewhere in there.
Unfortunately in the US, everything is also very expensive. Food, electricity, water, rent, possibly loan payments, medicine, etc. The actually poverty line in the US is however closer to around 15k a year. However, certain areas have much higher costs of living, so below 30k a year is considered lower class. But if you want children in the US, you better pray you and your partner are netting 50k or more a year or it will not be affordable. It actually costs (on average) 35k just to give birth in the US because of how the hospital and medical systems work. The result is that upper class US citizens, which Raidah appears to come from, view anything below 70k a year as living in squalor. It is isn’t true, but it is a preconception of Raidah’s economic demographic.
I’d just like to reiterate that COL differs widely from country to country. Like, a LOT. Also, besides not taking into consideration COL, you’re also not taking taxes into consideration. Perhaps take really obvious aspects into consideration before jumping to being offended, but I understand you wanted to make a generalization that made you feel good.
$50,000 isn’t poverty, I make 1/2 that, but the cost for things here in the U.S. is often quite a bit higher than other countries. Plus the rent in the big cities Portland, New York, San Francisco can run 3000+ a month, Most other cities run about 700 – 1000 a month. (these are the avg. not high end)
So basically after you take out rent, food, transportation, taxes and any basic necessities that $50,000 doesn’t look so hot. And in some places it would be a hard scrape.
Different countries different costs.
That’s actually the exact subtext of this strip, that Raidah is being extremely insulting by calling that “practically poverty”. But it’s in a way that goes totally over Joyce’s head, because the two of them have different lifestyle standards.
Well, also because Joyce has no idea what anything costs and has had the expectation hammered into her that she’ll find a husband who will provide for her, so she just needs to learn to home school her kids.
I feel like you are looking at an amount of money as absolute when the truth is that a number value for income is meaningless without knowing cost of living and cost of luxuries (to determine the ‘spending power’ of that money). Also Raidah said “You start way lower” so she is likely referring to around 30k maybe? in a some places in america that’s not enough to live, and in expensive places like New York city that’s not even enough to rent a 1 bedroom apartment (which would cost $35472 on average before even looking at electricity, food, and other costs).
Frankly fuck you for saying fuck you to people who are struggling to make ends meet just because the numerical amount of money they earn would be “lot for [your] country.” It’s not here (Well, it depends on which state and which Reagan of a given state).
sorry I meant *region I think it got auto-corrected
Also the $35472 was per year (I assume that’s obvious from my phrasing but I figure I should say it anyway.)
~$33K looks like average starting salary for public school elementary teachers in Indiana.
Relatively better than in NYC of course, but not exactly comfortable. Assuming you can get a full time job straight up, rather than substitute teaching. Also assuming you don’t start in some private school – mostly much lower wages, except for maybe the really exclusive ones.
Everyone else is right on and has covered a lot of what’s wrong with that line of thinking, so I’ll just say oppression olympics help no one. 50k is still a low salary for the level of bullshit teachers go through, even if some other jobs make less.
Minimum wage in the US is about $15k a year (more or less, depending on the state).
“Americans” aren’t complaining that 50K a year is poverty, at least not most of them. Raidah, who is rapidly establishing herself as a super-snob, is describing it as such.
Very place dependent. In San Francisco, $250,000 gets you an apartment. In Madison Wisconsin (state capital, major university), it gets you a small, older house. Where I live my son looked for houses in that range and one of them had an in ground swimming pool. They chose a 4 bedroom, three car garage, granite countertop kitchen place in a nice subdivision just outside town with wildlife in the backyard. Two teacher can get a nice place here, but struggle mightily in larger cities or in places that are trying to strangle public schools.
What do you think Jacob is thinking with that cocked eyebrow?
Something about drawing a cock with eyebrows on it. And the cock is cocking a gun. Also the cock has a dick, despite chickentypes having more of a cloaca situation.
He’s bored, alright?
Dorothy’s like “You dragged me out of my studies and made me have a sociable lunch for this shit !??”
Dorothy should be grateful; he number of essays she can get out of this interaction approaches infinity!
the arbys oven mitt is scary also the why fuck is she talking about arbys
The Arbys sauce is infinite.
You are not.
Eat at Arby’s
At last, a slogan I can get behind!
There is plenty more where that come from.
That said, all will be dust in the end
https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys?lang=en
Up to this point I’d pegged Raidah as just being on the bad end of a miscommunication/misunderstanding (over the Suicidal Roomate thing), but this is moving into Catty bongo territory. -5 reputation with Strawberry.
I think she crossed that line when she took one look at Dina and said she had to be mentally challenged.
Or when she told Sarah to die in her first appearance. Or when she spent a year scaring off anyone from ever befriending Sarah. Or when she pulled this same classist elitist bullshit *before* when talking about how Joyce was not a threat. Seriously, raidahs always been horrible
I can forgive her “bongo”-ness towards Sarah personally, because if I remember the backstory right Sarah’s old roommate never told the rest of the group the reality of the situation. From Raidah’s perspective Sarah got her friend kicked out of school just to get a room to herself. It’s wrong as hell, but I don’t fault Raidah for her reactions when she doesn’t have crucial information on the subject.
Everything else is just straight up bongo, though.
Her dislike of Sarah could be overlooked if most of their interactions didn’t start with her specifically going up to Sarah to start shit. The lunchroom twice and then once at the mall all had Sarah just trying to live and then Raidah approached her to be awful
Ya know, I had forgotten that interaction entirely. Upgrading the downgrade to -15.
Wow she is a catty bongo. At first I thought “Maybe she is nice but not tact” but then reading it a second time I am like… “Nope, not with that word choice”.
Exactly this, its a major dick move to talk about glamorous future husbands in front of the girl whose boyfriend you’re trying to take
You can’t “take” somebody’s boyfriend.
No you can’t but you can certainly try
You absolutely can, but that is called kidnapping and is frowned on in our society.
+5 comment. I L’d OL. 100% accurate too.
Seriously, go through her tag. She’s not nice at all
I agree with everyone above that whether or not $50,000/year is a little or a lot of money depends on many factors, such as (1) where you live (2) how much student loan debt you have to pay off (3) personal circumstances like whether or not you’re supporting a family or have to live alone (i.e., without roomates) for various reasons, etc.
Depending on where Joyce wants to teach elementary school, she may also have to get a Master’s degree if she wants to teach public school. It varies from state to state; NY state, where I live, requires all public K-12 teachers to have a Master’s and take the certification exam. (However, this doesn’t necessarily apply to private and charter school.) So she *might* run up debt that would make $50,000/year or less seem like “not a lot.”
IMHO, Joyce and Raidah are both garbage people at the moment. Joyce is openly going after a guy she *knows* is in a relationship (and doing so in front of his girlfriend!) and has already telegraphed her intentions to Raidah through that exchange of facial expressions a few strips ago. Raidah is being plain rude and snarky. If she *honestly* wanted to start a conversation about how badly teachers are paid, she would have said something like, “I hear teachers have it really rough. What made you choose that career?”
I am giving Jacob the benefit of the doubt – that he’s actually clueless about everything going on at the table. However, if my partner said anything close to that rude to a friend of mine, I would right away tell him to step off.
It seems to me like Dorothy is the only really redeeming person in this situation – although I suppose you could say that she should have excused herself to keep from participating in this whole mess, or pulled Joyce aside (“Joyce, come to the bathroom with me!”) and suggested that Joyce should cool it. However, that is easy to say from the outside when Joyce is her friend and Dorothy is visibly getting more and more uncomfortable with everything going on.
(It’s also easy for me to say as someone who hasn’t been a teenager for quite a while. Today, I’d just get up and leave instead a situation like this instead of continuing to witness/maybe get drawn into the drama. I probably wouldn’t have when I was 18.)
I mean, 50 grand might not be high-paying lawyer money like Raidah’s expecting to make, but it’s still a pretty respectable income. Most people make a lot less than that per year. Looking it up, if you earn more than $30,000 that puts you in the top 50% of income. I mean, the larger point is that you shouldn’t be derisive towards people’s incomes in the first place, but $50,000 is considered a lot by most people.
That’s $50K average. As Raidah says, starting is much lower. $50K also likely requires a Master’s degree.
Being barely in the top 50% with an advanced degree isn’t actually that great. It’s a lot of work to get there.
$30K puts you in the top 50%, $50K is actually top 30%. My point was 50k (the specific amount mentioned) is well above what half of people make on average in America, and therefore most people would consider it a lot, because it’s more than what they make and is generally pretty well above the official poverty line. The greater issue in all of that is the great wealth disparity, with a select few making ridiculous amounts of money and everyone else making much lower than they probably should for the work they do.
As someone from a family of teachers who currently works in a public library, Raidah can step on Legos.
Keep your LEGO blocks out of the classroom and library, please.
but how will I teach the contruction of the german sentece then?
We run LEGO programs here, as do many libraries. Yes, they are messy to pick up, but a good start on STEAM. Libraries can be as bad as schools. Small one don’t require degrees, but most requite an MA for entry level.
Never.
Wow, my prediction from a couple of strips ago is already happening. Radiah beginning to cut down joyce, totally unprovoked (from jacob’s perspective), and he’s in shock/surprised at how rude she’s being.
super clever that she’s rounding him up in her statements saying “Jacob and I”. I wonder if jacob will address at the table, or later on.
as an aside, I didn’t expect radiah to trash on what she’s going to college for.
Yep, Raidah’s a snob. Still, everyone has their own standards of what constitutes happy. If being rich and powerful is hers then so be it. That aside, Jacob at last seems to be getting a hint of the nuances here, based on his expression in panel 4!
Oh, and Joyce? I’m drawing a red line here: I don’t want to know what you want to do with all that Arby’s sauce!
$5 says it’s the relatively innocuous desire to put it on everything she eats, slowly introducing herself to more varied and layered foods.
I’d be so proud.
She wanna hankypank the s a u c e.
Or is Jacob reacting to Joyce’s apparent lack of ambition? Raidah at least thinks he shares some of her ambitions. She could be wrong, but he hasn’t reacted badly to her talk of success before.
It isn’t Raidah’s talk of success that might be bothering him, it’s Raidah using it to imply that Joyce is her inferior. He strikes me as the sort of person who would feel uncomfortable with such categorisation based on those criteria.
Perhaps. Though she does throw in the “noble profession” bit.
Remember that we’re reacting based on our knowledge of what Raidah’s up to. Jacob doesn’t know that and is likely to interpret Raidah’s words in the best light.
I honestly don’t see Jacob as looking surprised at Raidah here. He’s not even looking at her at all and he still has his arm around her. I think he’s looking more surprised at Joyce proudly saying 50K is a lot of money.
I mean, 50K isn’t a bad salary, depending on where you live, but I think most people tend to consider 70K+ ‘a lot’. 50K is nicely in the middle (which, again, not a bad thing).
I really
don’t like how Raidah phrases things.
Yeah, that was shitty and uncalled for.
I feel like the best ending for Jacob is to be single in this situation
50k is low pay? That’s about 40k GBP – median fulltime income here is closer to 28.
That’s it, I’m emigrating…
Yeah, here median is 21 k$. And housing is much much pricer. Si the rest comes all from the cost of private health and insurance or is it pure consumerism? Wait I get some of it, in fact the median income is around 28k but in it are included universal medical and health care, universal social and health insurance, free education with small fees in universities, and so on…
My yearly salary after taxes and housing benefits is about $12000 American. That’s not living in poverty, Raidah. Heck, with Joyce’s starting salary I could have all the clothes, healthy food and videogames I’d want and still put away enough to buy a house with cash within ten years. A nice one, with solar panels and a potato patch.
Yeah, but you’re not living in America. You couldn’t “have all the clothes, healthy food and videogames I’d want and still put away enough to buy a house with cash within ten years” on that salary in the US.
Money is relative.
I would be living very well and could buy a house in 10 years on $50k. There’s a lot of nice shit that isn’t LA and NYC in the US.
Would that be after you’d paid off the debt from your Master’s Degree? And you wouldn’t be starting at $50K – closer to $35.
I’m not sure if the Master’s is required in Indiana (Some states require it to teach, others require you to get it within a certain number of years, others, I think do not require it at all.) It generally links to a salary boost though.
35k is easy as hell to live off of if you aren’t spend crazy.
Depends on where you live.
And how much student loan debt you’re paying off.
Does anybody else think that attacking Joyce could backfire on Raidah?
Oh absolutely it very probably will, best chance Raidah has is to swing the conversation round to religion and take it from there
I wouldn’t be surprised if Raidah manages to quite effectively persuade Jacob that she’s toxic and that he doesn’t want anything to do with her. Sarah will probably reflect on the irony was that all she needed to do was invite Raidah to be herself in front of Jacob to ruin their relationship.
The fact that Raidah would have effectively self-destructed the relationship won’t stop her from persecuting Joyce. I also suspect that Joyce’s friendship with Dorothy will be strained to say the least because I don’t think Dorothy would approve of such a conniving plot on her part.
Yeah Dorothy hasn’t looked particularly comfortable over all this and probably won’t appreciate being lumped in the middle of it, when all she wanted to do was study
to be fair, Joyce just invited Dorothy because she wanted to see Dorothy – she didn’t know Raidah was going to be there
As was said earlier on in this storyline this is looking more and more like a bad rom com in that Joyce is the good one that everyone roots for because shes just so gosh darned nice and she has such great chemistry with the male lead (sorry Jacob) who somehow fails to see, at first, how great Joyce is and how mean and nasty his current girlfriend is
The current girlfriend of course has to be mean and nasty so we’ll support Joyce taking Jacob because Raidah doesn’t deserve him and eventually Jacob will come to see he and Joyce are a perfect match and, after a silly misunderstanding, will go rushing after Joyce, they’ll kiss and they’ll both live happily ever after and Raidah will never be mentioned again
So yeah I think this is also the authors take Jotce being overly influenced by Disney and bad rom com
Knowing Willis, he is probably going to try to subvert this trope but you never know!
I suspect he will as well and if he did I’d least be right for a change
He almost certainly will.
The bad rom com doesn’t usually include characters (like Joe) pointing out how crappy the nice girl is being.
That’s such a patronising way to talk about teachers. It’s a fundamental societal failing that they aren’t paid well. Not cute or pathetic to become a teacher. We can’t all be glamorous, jfc Raidah.
Joyce is being a bit immoral chasing a man in a monogamous relationship but Raidah has made me really dislike her in this.
She says it’s noble. The implication is that it’s a noble sacrifice.
Or it could be, if Raidah wasn’t a classist patronizing bully.
God, Raidah is such an asshole that I definitely want Jacob to dump her and find someone better. She IS a classist patronizing bully, you’re totally right. I hope she goes through some character development.
She’s saying it’s noble but the implication of the rest is that it’s pathetic. The implication i get is that she doesn’t value nobility and thus thinks becoming a teacher is a naive/cute/quaint decision when you could’ve chosen ‘glamour’
Dump everyone here and elope with the pizza, Jacob. It’s the only path to happiness.
I was going to call Joyce out because it’s Horsey Sauce but given how many people think she means something kinky already, Willis made the right call.
Arby’s sauce and Horsey sauce are two different things.
Yes, I go to Arby’s enough to know this. No, I’m not apologizing.
I bow to your expertise, I haven’t been in ages, they all shut down here
Anyone here wonder if the Arby’s sauce packets is somehow linked to Joyce’s fantasy about her whirlwind romance with a dashing husband? 😉
I think that Joyce is aware of her OCD-like response to complex foods and food textures. In her odd way, her future fantasy involves her somehow confronting and overcoming this.
BE YOUR WEIRDEST SELF JOYCE
SHE WILL NOT HAVE ANYTHING SHE CAN DO
Maybe Jacob doesn’t want to be involved in any of this drama and ends up fucking Mike instead
Do we know what Raidah is majoring in? She plans to go into law (http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/06-strange-beerfellows/relax/ http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/feigned/), which doesn’t require a specific undergrad major but often implies humanities or social science. A degree in basically any humanities or political science is going to pay worse than Elementary Ed. Way worse when accounting for the fact that non-education jobs work 12 months instead of 9.5.
I know it isn’t a life of fame and glory but teachers make solid professional salaries and receive above average benefits. The benefits side is changing for teachers but they are still far superior to benefits at an average private company job.
Even from the perspective of a cynical realist, I think the point goes to Joyce on this one. (Unless I am way off about Raidah and she is majoring in engineering or computer science or nursing or accounting.)
Yeah, but she’s going into law. Which you don’t really do with an elementary education major. Sure, her immediate major might not actually do better, but her plan definitely does.
Joyce’s doesn’t. It doesn’t really lead anywhere.
In my scant experience with prelaw students, they don’t see themselves as humanities majors. It’s a disgrace they tolerate until they become lawyers and then eat babies or whatever it is lawyers actually do
The original reason for having lawyers was to resolve disputes without people killing each other. I sometimes wonder if our forebears made the right call.
Does IU offer a specific pre-law major? If it does, that’s probably not considered humanities, arts, or social science. MAYBE it’ll be social science. If not, who knows?
Law schools do not care what your major is. They only care about GPA and LSAT score, it’s easily the most numbers-conscious profession, much more so than even doctors.
Law is also a really oversaturated field at the moment so unless Raidah scores high enough to get into a Top 14 school she might end up making less than Joyce. The legal profession in general is absolutely obsessed with academic pedigree and it’s very hard to get your foot in the door if you didn’t graduate from a high tier school.
Patent lawyers tend to have STEM backgrounds.
I note that Raidah and Billie share a lot of characteristics. Money as a solution. Leader of a group of mean girls in HS that they plan to carry over to college. Their contrasts are what make it interesting. Billie has no real plans for the future, while Raidah is going for the money. Billie has enough money to not care about it, while Raidah is ambitious. Billie is starting to care about someone besides herself, while Raidah is all about herself and accessories (like Jacob and her posse).
Raidah needs to go read this –
https://zenpencils.com/comic/124-taylor-mali-what-teachers-make/
Joyce is certainly not without blemish here, but there are about a billion better ways to deal with someone else hitting on your partner* than mocking someone’s career ambitions because the job isn’t prestigious or high-paying enough for your liking. I’m sure nothing will make you look better to your boyfriend than looking down at Joyce for studying a thankless profession that’s necessary for society to function, Raidah.
*First of which I’d think would be to either pull your partner aside and talk to them or behave politely through the meal and bring up your concerns after, because your partner is in fact a human being with sentience and not a piece of meat for you to fight over.
Raidah, what exactly is the move, here? If you perceive Joyce as a romantic rival,pointing out that she’s noble and you’re a materialistic snob doesn’t seem like the inroad to Jacob’s giant heart.
Like a lot of arrogant people, Raidah has difficulty imagining that other people don’t basically want the same things as she wants and, indeed, want to literally be her.
I wonder if Raidah knows she’s being a dick. I remember Dina saying about her “She was not kind to me, though I imagine she thought she was.” but I feel like you have to be trying to get to this level of dickishness right? No one could have their head this stuck up their ass by accident?
With Dina, she thought she was trying to be nice by telling her friends not to be mean and trying to warn her off Sarah – though, because she thought Dina was cognitively disabled, she was THE MOST condescending person possible.
Never under-estimate the power of the stupidity.
There was an earlier comic where Raidah’s friends told her that Joyce was acting like she was interested in Jacob. So I’m sure it’s entirely intentional.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/fool/
Also, the comic after that would probably shed some light on why she is specifically downplaying Joyce’s career.
And she may be right, to an extent.
It’s not likely to make Jacob think less of Joyce, but it might make him more resistant to thinking of her as a potential romantic partner – which he isn’t even consciously doing yet.
Yes Raidah. Degrade Joyce’s ambitions, insult your boyfriend’s friend and one of the most important and under appreciated careers out there. Insult the poor, pull more of your classist bullshit. Show Jacob your true colours, let him see what an arrogant, classist, elitist bongo you are.
<–teacher here. The debt is real. They say if I pay $250 a month, I can pay it off in 30 years. I'm 43. So… pretty much debt until death. Woo hoo!
$50k isn’t much? Where in Indiana is that not much?! Hell, here in Idaho, the only place where I would expect $50k to be a meager wage would be Sun Valley.
*coming from a civil engineering major who’ll likely expect $75k on average*
TBH I could comfortably live on 30-40k a year because of how I was brought up 50k would be a dream come true
Yes, Raidah. Joyce’s future of illuminating the minds of children is so much less valid than your future of chasing ambulances.
Getting the feeling the Joyce is forgetting what its like when the shoes on the other foot, not that Amber was interested in Ethan
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/freshstart/
Hopefully Joyce will learn some empathy from all this
We all know Joyce overreacted at that time, even she knows.
You think it’s a good idea for her to take Raidah as a role model and overreact more?
There is a hard to translate German saying
“Eifersucht ist eine Leidenschaft, die mit Eifer sucht, was Leiden schafft”
More or less “jelousy is a fervor which favourosly searches for that which creates agony”. It sounds better in German because of the double play on words, but the inability to translate that doesn’t make it less fitting.
I think Joyce should be a little more respectful of the idea that Jacob and Raidah are together
Teaching is a noble vocation, and if it will fulfill Joyce then I think she should go for it.
Here’s the issue I have with this though… I think Joyce is smarter than she gives herself credit for, and were she to have a slightly loftier ambition she would succeed.
What say you?
She’s not going into teaching as a profession, she’s been pushed to education so she can fulfill her god decreed role as a mother and homeschool her children to keep them safe from the evils of secular childhood education.
I personally think she’d make a great math teacher.
Maybe she can tutor Walky.
It’ll give her useful experience in teaching small children. 🙂
Boy I really hate Raidah. Stuck up. Snooty. Mean. What the heck does Jacob see in her?
What actually would be good brackets to aim for in a for profit business sense?
75K?
65‽
Something about the way Joyce bites her lip in the last panel makes me wonder if I should be eating more Arby’s sauce.
The combination of telling Joyce she’ll essentially start with living in poverty, and “we can’t /ALL/ live glamorous lives”, makes me really think Raidah is the type of person that think that poverty is a natural thing in society and not really worth trying to fight.
She’s the kind that tells fastfood workers that if they want better pay they get a better job, instead of thinking that all jobs should provide a decent pay for the time spent working.
I love pre-major students who talk a bunch of junk because they think they are amazing. Like you haven’t even started the bulk of what you are going to learn yet? I know a number of premeds who were so arrogant only to not make it to med school, or be ridiculously miserable during med school because it’s not what they expected.
And plus, law isn’t even that lucrative. There’s a glut of lawyers. I went to a pretty decent school and a lot of the people I went with make $50-$60k and have a crap ton of debt and work horrendous hours. People think it’s a license to print money but it’s not
Depends on the specialty too. Health lawyers make BANK. The average salary is 150K.
What…. what?? Who TALKS LIKE THAT? Nevermind I went to a predominantly pre-med undergrad, I know who talks like that. Jeezzz
$50k/year sounds like a blissful dream to me. I’ve made under $15k/year for my entire working life. And that has included teaching positions. Screw Raidah. People who look down on those who dedicate their lives to professions that mean more than how much money they earn really make my skin crawl.
Ooooh, Raidah’s passive-aggression really grinds my gears here. But then again, dirty lens. (I’m a teacher, but not elementary. And honestly? They should get paid more than us HS teachers. Their job is more important and impactful, since the kids are younger.)
Also, yeah, teachers are way underpaid to “eh, middle class?” in the US depending on which state you live in.
For those of us making minimum wage 50 grand would be a lot.