Oh there is something else I wanted to add! Everyone noticed from the first time Thistle got a bike and how obese she was? Now that she added cycling to her life and working at the Kickstand it did kind of change her character quite a bit for the good IMO. Would hate to see her go because she is like the “brains” to the Kickstand!
It looks like Joe and Yehuda are starting to realize how important Thistle is to the Kickstand’s success and how much they need her. When they find out she’s leaving, I’ll bet they offer to pay her whatever it takes to keep her there.
The black-and-white tension between the scene at the party and Thistle’s own dilemma is fascinating, heart-wrenching, terrific and terrible all at once.
Maybe hubby’s not too bad a guy? He said to go back, there’s some humility there. Who knows, maybe he’d goto the shop while she’s at the firm to keep things rolling? Heck, I know a couple of people in the Shaker community might even offer food/help to help their family in a time of need.
When I follow the link to lulu I get redirected to the german branch of lulu. And there’s only a notification that “Yehuda Moon” is not found (
I’d really like to buy the first two books.
How come that Thistle never got a paycheck? After all Y&J do pay, with profit, the Shakers and all their other suppliers; how could they profit from her work and expertize for almost two years, even part time, and not give her back more than a couple of bikes, the cargo and a Coventry, plus maybe a trike for Fizz? This seem totally implausible.
If they really did that, then starting all of a sudden to pay her doesn’t cut it. Nothing short of a full partnership could make up for their abuse of her good will and friendship.
She offered to work for free for a certain amount of time in exchange for being allowed free reign with her ideas for the shop. She said something like, “If profits are up significantly at the end of that period, then we can discuss how much I’m worth.”
A quick offer of pay to This wouldn’t make the most of this plot twist imo … better to have her join an engineering firm (while keeping some minimal presence at KS weekends, etc.) … then over some time the value her contributions becomes clear to Y&J // then, while Y&J can’t offer an engineer’s salary, they can offer her a paying gig once her husband finds a new job … maybe out of town (where he would commute weekly, raising new challenges)
Rick is messing with us. It’s Labor Day weekend… oooh the irony. Although it is an odd holiday – being secular and all – one that workers take time off from their labors. Invented by politicians to patronize a voter block who has been notoriously associated with doing as little labor as their contracts permit.
Ah yes, the old anti-labor screed. Boring. Instead of the cant, why not give us all the full story on how you are superior to workers who have organized? From the management side of the equation I’ve found that good work offered in a positive environment results in a corps of good workers with union or nonunion making little difference.
While you are at it, you might also give us an essay on how holidays should rightly have a religious context. That would be interesting reading.
=v= Labor Day is this weekend specifically so it won’t be May Day, which is when the rest of the world celebrates it. Our leaders keep us away from labor history, so that, 115 years later, someone can write an anti-labor screed with the confidence of the uninformed.
@Unabiker is correct that the workers that Labor Day was intended to appease did as little work as possible. Yep, after they were murdered by U.S. soldiers and marshalls at the Pullman strike, they were extremely unproductive. Slackers.
Jym, The Pullman strike occurred after the first Labor Day.
Key phrase in my original post is “notoriously associated”. Unions have gone from a much needed and certainly worthy device to protect basic human rights to a something that is essentially an entitlement program. Even that statement is too broad and far sweeping since unions vary individually as does the working relationship between each business and local chapter. I doubt that Eugene Debs would recognize or agree with the American unions of the 1970′s. Gladly that era is mostly if not entirely gone (at least in the UAW).
George, “holiday” comes from Holy Day. Don’t worry though, to a vast number of people “holidays” are just “day off” now.
For several hundred years now holiday has been used for any special time of rest or relaxation, as opposed to normal days off work or school. That days off are normal is one of the accomplishments of organized labor.
While you are welcome to your opinion, I choose to honor both those who work and those who organize.
Just because we don’t see her getting a check on the strip doesn’t imply she’s not getting paid. Her husband’s comment could refer to get a “real” job that pays more than minimum wage. Also, if she did go back to work with her old firm she wouldn’t have to cut her ties with Joe and Yehuda. Who knows, maybe she’ll figure out the flow in the Aurborinum and figure out a stable manufacturing process.
well, in the previous strip, the last thing her husband says is “doesn’t pay you.” So yes, they KS doesn’t pay Thistle when they should be, but if Thistle likes it that much, it shows she’s not doing it for the money. Which is a good thing.
I think people may be taking that statement from her husband too literally. “Doesn’t pay you” could mean the Kickstand does not pay a grown up wage, as in not paying her even remotely in the neighborhood of engineering work. I remember in an earlier strip when Yehuda said that Thistle needed to paid more, and Joe said “we pay her?” This indicates to me that Rick has never really directly addressed whether or not she is paid.
With that said, who volunteers at a for-profit business? You volunteer at bike libraries or co-ops or schools or at public libraries – places that recieve a non-profit tax designation.
she joined volunteer and nothing has ever been said of giving her a wage. She wasn’t paid at the start, why assume that she is now when Rick never showed that happening? There would have had to be some kind of strip about it, it’s too big a thing not to show.
She was volunteering when she first arrived. I’d just assumed she was put on staff since she was still around, but maybe not. Because, as SDMSS said, who the hell volunteers at someone else’s for-profit business?
I just nosed out the archives for the Thistle hire storyline, between 20080808 and 20080819, and there is absolutely no indication there that she is a volunteer. Joe and Yehuda put up a shingle for a part time employee, Joe had second thoughts and took down the sign, but not before Thistle saw the sign and answered the ad, Yehuda wanted to hire her, Joe balked, Fred’s ghost appeared and told them to hire her and that the money would work itself out, Yehuda and Joe HIRED her. You do not hire a volunteer.
I do remember later on Yehuda saying they should give her a raise and Joe expressing shock that they were paying her, but I took that as a joke. Unless someone can point to a comic that indicates otherwise I’m going to presume Thistle husband meant she was not paid a grown up wage and that she is actually a very poorly paid employee.
Actually, the strip you’re remembering wasn’t about giving her a raise. Just about a year ago, Thistle made changes in the shop, like starting the build-a-bike program and reorganizing the stock, and Joe and Yehuda had been complaining about the changes. Thistle got mad and said that her changes would improve the shop, and that she believed in her plans enough that she’d be willing to work through the winter without pay. That’s when Yehuda looked at Joe in surprise and said, “We pay her?” So clearly she had been paid up until that point, and Yehuda was either making a joke or being clueless. I don’t remember any later strip saying that she had started drawing a paycheck again, but I assumed that she did once the winter was over.
That’s what it was. Thanks for digging that up. So they took her seriously?! That offer doesn’t even make any sense without a caveat like “if the resultant efficiency from my changes don’t increase profits I’ll go without pay through the winter.” I know this shop is in Cartoonland, but would ‘volunteering’ even be legal without some sort of non-profit designation?
So he acknowledges her importance – ‘they need you at the open house’
Then he expects her to leave to earn more money.
As an engineer, Thistle may not find work as easy to find as a mechanic would.
A ‘wrench’ is always needed, a designer isn’t?
I see lots of ads for engineers. I know people in HR who say that they need engineers and can’t find them. (Or, at least, not the KIND of engineers they need. After all, if you need a chemical engineer a mechanical engineer isn’t going to do you much good!)
Mind you, in mongo’s reality the president is a Muslim and has a fake birth certificate. I prefer my fiction to be fantasy while my real world to be rooted in reality. Different strokes, I guess.
1-Barack Hussein Obama’s father was Muslim. Under Sharia law he is con sidered one as well.
2-No birth certificate has ever been produced. Your undocumented worker in chief made light of it just the other day, reading a quip off his teleprompter about “not going around with his birth certificate stuck to his forehead” or some such lame-assed joke. Ogf course all he would have to do would be to nproduce the document, then he can stick it any damned place he likes.
Really? I’ve seen his Hawai’i birth certificate on several sites. That document was good enough to get him a US passport.
And, true, his father was a Muslim, but he was baptized in a United Church of Christ congregation. Last time I checked, Congregationalists were still considered Christian.
Something funny about Thistle’s seatpost, it doesn’t enter the seat tube properly. Must be one of those tri bikes with a funky seat mast? And the downtube appears to be on the far side of both her legs! Not the most comfortable or safe way to ride or stand…
Also, one of my favourite eateries is a lovely place in Germany. Like the Kickstand, it used to be a station but is now a Resteraunt. The track outside is part of an ongoing project among a group of steam enthusiasts who plan to reconnect it to the main system and do enthusiast steam-train trips on it. There is a beautiful church on a hill overlooking it.
I have felt this pain, before. “What am I going to do…” but “without cycling?” It is a source of great personal benefit and happiness, but there are times when things of greater value require my attention. It’s tough.
If they can’t do that alone…
…then pay her a wage you morons!
Ahh now this I like!!!! Cudos
Oh there is something else I wanted to add! Everyone noticed from the first time Thistle got a bike and how obese she was? Now that she added cycling to her life and working at the Kickstand it did kind of change her character quite a bit for the good IMO. Would hate to see her go because she is like the “brains” to the Kickstand!
It looks like Joe and Yehuda are starting to realize how important Thistle is to the Kickstand’s success and how much they need her. When they find out she’s leaving, I’ll bet they offer to pay her whatever it takes to keep her there.
You show me a bicycle shop that can afford to pay engineer’s wages.
Lucky to get McDonald’s wages around here. But Zydeco’s right. If she’s that indespensable, they need to quit freeloading and man up.
=v= Isn’t it great how a storyline about how valuable a woman is prompts the phrase, “man up?” Ahh, progress, there’s jut no stopping it.
depends on the type. round here highway engineers, building engineers are all working in bike shops because there is no work.
Yehuda is referring to Fizz. He needs her to translate.
Maybe starting to earn something would be a good idea. And also, what about the engineering firm to have some kind of connection with the kickstand?
The black-and-white tension between the scene at the party and Thistle’s own dilemma is fascinating, heart-wrenching, terrific and terrible all at once.
Maybe hubby’s not too bad a guy? He said to go back, there’s some humility there. Who knows, maybe he’d goto the shop while she’s at the firm to keep things rolling? Heck, I know a couple of people in the Shaker community might even offer food/help to help their family in a time of need.
Maybe he ought to start pounding the pavement and also checking the online boards? http://cleveland.craigslist.org/jjj/
According to the strip, he’s been off work less than twelve hours. Nobody finds a replacement job that quick, unless he’s had one arranged beforehand.
“Maybe he ought to start pounding the pavement and also checking the online boards?”
Maybe he is online currently as you criticize?
I’m just stating the obvious, didn’t mean to hurt feelings there.
More of Thistle’s husband is revealed. This time we get a silhouette. What will be next?
Hey Rick, when will you make available more comic volumes? I want it all on paper!
When I follow the link to lulu I get redirected to the german branch of lulu. And there’s only a notification that “Yehuda Moon” is not found
(
I’d really like to buy the first two books.
How come that Thistle never got a paycheck? After all Y&J do pay, with profit, the Shakers and all their other suppliers; how could they profit from her work and expertize for almost two years, even part time, and not give her back more than a couple of bikes, the cargo and a Coventry, plus maybe a trike for Fizz? This seem totally implausible.
If they really did that, then starting all of a sudden to pay her doesn’t cut it. Nothing short of a full partnership could make up for their abuse of her good will and friendship.
She offered to work for free for a certain amount of time in exchange for being allowed free reign with her ideas for the shop. She said something like, “If profits are up significantly at the end of that period, then we can discuss how much I’m worth.”
Business will be turning around methinks, enough to afford to pay Thistle?
Give Fizz a job. Not ‘Free Fizz’, instead, “Pay Fizz”. (OK, I know, child labour laws and all that.)
I was laid off along with 75 others from a large engineering firm back in ’91. I know what her husband is feeling. Poor guy.
A quick offer of pay to This wouldn’t make the most of this plot twist imo … better to have her join an engineering firm (while keeping some minimal presence at KS weekends, etc.) … then over some time the value her contributions becomes clear to Y&J // then, while Y&J can’t offer an engineer’s salary, they can offer her a paying gig once her husband finds a new job … maybe out of town (where he would commute weekly, raising new challenges)
Rick is messing with us. It’s Labor Day weekend… oooh the irony. Although it is an odd holiday – being secular and all – one that workers take time off from their labors. Invented by politicians to patronize a voter block who has been notoriously associated with doing as little labor as their contracts permit.
Ah yes, the old anti-labor screed. Boring. Instead of the cant, why not give us all the full story on how you are superior to workers who have organized? From the management side of the equation I’ve found that good work offered in a positive environment results in a corps of good workers with union or nonunion making little difference.
While you are at it, you might also give us an essay on how holidays should rightly have a religious context. That would be interesting reading.
=v= Labor Day is this weekend specifically so it won’t be May Day, which is when the rest of the world celebrates it. Our leaders keep us away from labor history, so that, 115 years later, someone can write an anti-labor screed with the confidence of the uninformed.
@Unabiker is correct that the workers that Labor Day was intended to appease did as little work as possible. Yep, after they were murdered by U.S. soldiers and marshalls at the Pullman strike, they were extremely unproductive. Slackers.
Jym, The Pullman strike occurred after the first Labor Day.
Key phrase in my original post is “notoriously associated”. Unions have gone from a much needed and certainly worthy device to protect basic human rights to a something that is essentially an entitlement program. Even that statement is too broad and far sweeping since unions vary individually as does the working relationship between each business and local chapter. I doubt that Eugene Debs would recognize or agree with the American unions of the 1970′s. Gladly that era is mostly if not entirely gone (at least in the UAW).
George, “holiday” comes from Holy Day. Don’t worry though, to a vast number of people “holidays” are just “day off” now.
For several hundred years now holiday has been used for any special time of rest or relaxation, as opposed to normal days off work or school. That days off are normal is one of the accomplishments of organized labor.
While you are welcome to your opinion, I choose to honor both those who work and those who organize.
“Organized labor” tends to be an oxymoron. But to be fair, I blame management.
Just because we don’t see her getting a check on the strip doesn’t imply she’s not getting paid. Her husband’s comment could refer to get a “real” job that pays more than minimum wage. Also, if she did go back to work with her old firm she wouldn’t have to cut her ties with Joe and Yehuda. Who knows, maybe she’ll figure out the flow in the Aurborinum and figure out a stable manufacturing process.
well, in the previous strip, the last thing her husband says is “doesn’t pay you.” So yes, they KS doesn’t pay Thistle when they should be, but if Thistle likes it that much, it shows she’s not doing it for the money. Which is a good thing.
I think people may be taking that statement from her husband too literally. “Doesn’t pay you” could mean the Kickstand does not pay a grown up wage, as in not paying her even remotely in the neighborhood of engineering work. I remember in an earlier strip when Yehuda said that Thistle needed to paid more, and Joe said “we pay her?” This indicates to me that Rick has never really directly addressed whether or not she is paid.
With that said, who volunteers at a for-profit business? You volunteer at bike libraries or co-ops or schools or at public libraries – places that recieve a non-profit tax designation.
she joined volunteer and nothing has ever been said of giving her a wage. She wasn’t paid at the start, why assume that she is now when Rick never showed that happening? There would have had to be some kind of strip about it, it’s too big a thing not to show.
She was volunteering when she first arrived. I’d just assumed she was put on staff since she was still around, but maybe not. Because, as SDMSS said, who the hell volunteers at someone else’s for-profit business?
I just nosed out the archives for the Thistle hire storyline, between 20080808 and 20080819, and there is absolutely no indication there that she is a volunteer. Joe and Yehuda put up a shingle for a part time employee, Joe had second thoughts and took down the sign, but not before Thistle saw the sign and answered the ad, Yehuda wanted to hire her, Joe balked, Fred’s ghost appeared and told them to hire her and that the money would work itself out, Yehuda and Joe HIRED her. You do not hire a volunteer.
I do remember later on Yehuda saying they should give her a raise and Joe expressing shock that they were paying her, but I took that as a joke. Unless someone can point to a comic that indicates otherwise I’m going to presume Thistle husband meant she was not paid a grown up wage and that she is actually a very poorly paid employee.
Actually, the strip you’re remembering wasn’t about giving her a raise. Just about a year ago, Thistle made changes in the shop, like starting the build-a-bike program and reorganizing the stock, and Joe and Yehuda had been complaining about the changes. Thistle got mad and said that her changes would improve the shop, and that she believed in her plans enough that she’d be willing to work through the winter without pay. That’s when Yehuda looked at Joe in surprise and said, “We pay her?” So clearly she had been paid up until that point, and Yehuda was either making a joke or being clueless. I don’t remember any later strip saying that she had started drawing a paycheck again, but I assumed that she did once the winter was over.
The strip in question is here:
http://www.yehudamoon.com/index.php?date=20090917
That’s what it was. Thanks for digging that up.
So they took her seriously?! That offer doesn’t even make any sense without a caveat like “if the resultant efficiency from my changes don’t increase profits I’ll go without pay through the winter.” I know this shop is in Cartoonland, but would ‘volunteering’ even be legal without some sort of non-profit designation?
OK – I amend my comment above to say that, after she leaves, Y&J realize they either need to pay her more or give her equity … or both ….
I’m sad now. She looks depressed. I don’t picture the idea of working a bike shop and then going back to the “firm” would be all to pleasant.
that idiot need to go to starbucks and get a job and stfu…
So he acknowledges her importance – ‘they need you at the open house’
Then he expects her to leave to earn more money.
As an engineer, Thistle may not find work as easy to find as a mechanic would.
A ‘wrench’ is always needed, a designer isn’t?
I see lots of ads for engineers. I know people in HR who say that they need engineers and can’t find them. (Or, at least, not the KIND of engineers they need. After all, if you need a chemical engineer a mechanical engineer isn’t going to do you much good!)
well played
PAY HER
It’s just a cartoon, people. Even if she does get paid it’s in Monopoly money.
Jeeze.
Hi Mongo, thanks for reminding us that our fun is all a cartoon.
It must be hell having to live with reality all the time…
Glad to be of service.
Mind you, in mongo’s reality the president is a Muslim and has a fake birth certificate. I prefer my fiction to be fantasy while my real world to be rooted in reality. Different strokes, I guess.
Prove me wrong.
prove your self right…
1-Barack Hussein Obama’s father was Muslim. Under Sharia law he is con sidered one as well.
2-No birth certificate has ever been produced. Your undocumented worker in chief made light of it just the other day, reading a quip off his teleprompter about “not going around with his birth certificate stuck to his forehead” or some such lame-assed joke. Ogf course all he would have to do would be to nproduce the document, then he can stick it any damned place he likes.
Really? I’ve seen his Hawai’i birth certificate on several sites. That document was good enough to get him a US passport.
And, true, his father was a Muslim, but he was baptized in a United Church of Christ congregation. Last time I checked, Congregationalists were still considered Christian.
Something funny about Thistle’s seatpost, it doesn’t enter the seat tube properly. Must be one of those tri bikes with a funky seat mast? And the downtube appears to be on the far side of both her legs! Not the most comfortable or safe way to ride or stand…
I do like the color addition of her red blinkie!
She’s been forced to ride a janky bike since she only get paid in Monopoly money.
Okay-THAT made me laugh.
Her front brake pad needs to be adjusted. Its not square with the rim
Gee Rick, no rest for you. Every detail of your cartoon bicycles in your bicycle strip…
Fixed!
Man, I still maintain that the ‘stand reminds me exactly of a train station I pass every day on my (driving, unfortunately) commute, in Knox, IN
http://www.monon.monon.org/kankakeebr/1211knox2004-3.jpg
wish I could find a better picture.
u should buy it somehow an turn it ito a bike shop
That’s a good idea – ‘Ex-Station Bikeshops’
Next we could turn the defunct auto factories into Bike Factories?
Also, one of my favourite eateries is a lovely place in Germany. Like the Kickstand, it used to be a station but is now a Resteraunt. The track outside is part of an ongoing project among a group of steam enthusiasts who plan to reconnect it to the main system and do enthusiast steam-train trips on it. There is a beautiful church on a hill overlooking it.
? Turned BACK into bicycle factories? Humber, Singer, Raleigh, BSA…
I have felt this pain, before. “What am I going to do…” but “without cycling?” It is a source of great personal benefit and happiness, but there are times when things of greater value require my attention. It’s tough.