WCDT - August 29 to Sept 02, 2022 (strips #4861 to #4865)

[badbum61]

Don't explode, Claire.

[shanejayell]

RUN AWAY, CLAIRE.

RUN AWAY RIGHT NOW.

[Stoon]

I'm enjoying this story-line so much.

[dreed]

If proper compensation exist you absolutely should not run away.

The reason is simple

One year of this, even if it fails, will teach her and make her stand out above her colleagues,  above Marten who has way more experience than her and would normally be hired over her any day.

If she wants a cushy safe boring job in the future this position as it is described will guarantee that in the future.   She has no kids no mortgages.  Zero risk right now to not take it.

And marten can join as well as head librarian.

[St.Clair]

bets on the Director being another iteration/body of Yay?

[DaiJB]

"INTERVIEW MS AUGUSTUS. SHE SHOWS PROMISE.'
My mental image of the Director is now a mysterious figure, face in shadow, fingers steepled...


(I've plainly been watching too many spy thrillers, with too many stereotypical criminal masterminds)

[Perfectly Reasonable]

I believe the Director resides in those cabinets with the blinken lights.
So far we've seen Moray, the flying cambot, and the neutrino obsessed janitor.
Does Cubetown -have- any other personnel?

[Torlek]

You're not running, Claire. WHY AREN'T YOU RUNNING? This is some either some starry-eyed startup with no comprehension of reality run by some kind of gestalt AI or a flat out AI cult. Neither of these have a good ending for your sanity or your relationship.

[Otl1973]

I've never been a big fan of Claire, and particularly not of Claire and Marten as a couple - they just seem too bland, especially compared to effectively all the other characters. But this arc appears to be offering a chance for them to break out of that, so I definitely think this is a good move.

[de_la_Nae]

but what kind of chow is in that bag in the background?

[Onionvolcano]

I suspect Yay's fondness for Claire's mother is involved here

[traroth]

The offer becomes more difficult to decline by the second.

[BenRG]

"INTERVIEW MS AUGUSTUS. SHE SHOWS PROMISE.'
My mental image of the Director is now a mysterious figure, face in shadow, fingers steepled...

The last time we had a character like that introduced (right down to the supervillain quotes) it was Dale. We all know what a incompetent goofball he turned out to be in terms of supervillainy.

[Ravenswing]

You're not running, Claire. WHY AREN'T YOU RUNNING? This is some either some starry-eyed startup with no comprehension of reality run by some kind of gestalt AI or a flat out AI cult. Neither of these have a good ending for your sanity or your relationship.

Eh, well, in the real world, sure.  This is some starry-eyed startup burning through some venture capital fund's stash like they were rolling cigars in $100 CDN bills; elapsed time to crash, 9 months.

But this is a serialized story, after all, and putting characters In Situations is what is done, and certainly a better sign-off than most long-term characters get in such things.

[pwhodges]

My mental image of the Director is now a mysterious figure, face in shadow, fingers steepled...

[MattStriker]

This whole operation is raising more red flags than a soviet military parade.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

but what kind of chow is in that bag in the background?

Buccaneer Chow?

[DreDotJs]

See, this could either go terribly or awesomely depending on who you are and what the priorities are of the organization, at least IME.

Claire now has the opportunity to create a new department, a vital department, in her own image. She could, if the priorities of this terribly run organization are to just throw resources at whatever shows the most promise of either solving their problem or someone else's problems (i.e., their actual service/product) and then leave them to their own devices, actually create something great beyond her or their wildest dreams. She is certainly the type.

However, if the company is such that they are unsupportive, refuse to throw extra hands her way, and will refuse to give her the tools and train her in the skills required to do their job correctly and not enforce any of her new procedures, then she's going to have a bad time. Especially with that goddamn spreadsheet.

Tl;dr, this is either a dream-come-true with an incredibly aggravating entrance, or hell on earth. And there's no in between.

Time to git gud at stress relief, Claire

[ihaveavoice]

I checked a fan wiki because I was pretty sure Dale wasn't introduced with the gamer feud Bond villain posing, and it turns out his first appearance was as an unusually well-liked COD customer, just chillin' as Marten suddenly doubts the strength of his closest relationships.

I kinda can't help but feel alarmed by the idea of stepping into an isolated environment run by a bunch of cheerfully clueless AI who need a "don't explode" reminder on the wall, being a squishy easily-damaged meatbag and all. All the business-related red flags they're waving would also have sent me running out here in the real world, so it's interesting to see the perspectives of posters here saying that staying for a year and building something could be very helpful to Claire in the long run. I do project-based contract work, so the advice is not applicable to me, but it still feels like I've gained ~business secrets~.

[John Allenson]

What I see the two options for Claire at the moment.
1/  Run away screaming.
2/  Don't waste your breath on screaming.

[Pseudowolf]

Claire, you need to say "Thank you for taking the time to interview me, but I'm going to explore some other options."
Then destroy that phone.
You may need to change you name, too.

[notStanley]

One year of this, even if it fails, will teach her and make her stand out above her colleagues

Either as "OMG You worked with THEM!!! We could use that expertise" or "You poor soul.  I cannot let you anywhere near our IT/Library, but would youlike a nice quiet overpaid job in our cafe for 6 months while you decompress?"

[RioVenVelvet]

but what kind of chow is in that bag in the background?

Engineer Chow, I think.

[DreDotJs]

One year of this, even if it fails, will teach her and make her stand out above her colleagues

Either as "OMG You worked with THEM!!! We could use that expertise" or "You poor soul.  I cannot let you anywhere near our IT/Library, but would youlike a nice quiet overpaid job in our cafe for 6 months while you decompress?"

FAANG alumni in a nutshell

[Tova]

If I had an experience like this, I think I would just assume that someone was trolling me.

Wake me up when Jeph creates a strong female character instead of a ditz.

[shanejayell]

As a amusing twist, the Director is in fact another Spookybot.

[shanejayell]

And... new comic up.

Oh, Claire NOOOOOOO.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

Go Claire!!

I am sure that the 'information' she will have to deal with is a chaotic mass of factoids and snippets from reputable, speculative, and disreputable sources. How to organize and categorize this mess and make it accessible and useful? Dewey Decimal curls up and whimpers. I believe Claire will blaze new paths in Library Science. This is where she gains her advanced degree(s).

( halifax has already exploded once )

[SmilingCat]

So a long while back, when I was still a young man, my dad was working at an environmental lab run by a Native tribe a bit north of us.

They had heard from him that I was a bit of a computer nerd with a tendency for building computers out of other people's abandoned parts. Mind you, I'd gotten through a year of college before my bad habits made that a wash, I had no employment experience in the industry (unless you count working a few hours a week in the computer lab at the college as experience).

But I had gotten my hands on a pair of wireless network cards back when that was a fairly new concept, and I guess my dad was sick of manually carrying large amounts of data around the lab in floppy disks or flash drives (back when flash drives still came in 16 megabyte sizes). So he got approval to bring me down and install those network cards into two computers to demonstrate the advantage of those computers being networked.

The lab director acted like it was magic and the tribe told me to write up a quote to network up both the lab and the administrative building.

A college dropout, with no experience. Who had never done anything like that before. I didn't even know how to write a "quote" to start with, and the only thing I actually knew about wireless networking was what I learned from having those two cards, which were already in a completely obsolete format.

But they decided, hey, they've got grant money and I'm there. I'll do. Made a little money off of it and... it turns out I did okay. According to people who actually know what they're doing I may have created the first ever large ad hoc wireless network (no router) that actually worked.

They even gave me a little more work replacing the manager's computer, and the tribe talked about bringing me in to teach computer basics to tribe members (no, I don't have any training or experience or any sort of aptitude for teaching. Why would I need that?).

Eventually though, the tribe realized they could recruit an actual IT guy. So saner heads prevailed.

So all that said, I get why Claire would take the job.

But she's out of her friggin mind.

Godspeed Claire.

[Wombat]

I think this is a decent setup from a narrative perspective for a couple reasons... one, Claire would have more ability to bring others from the cast along for the ride, if that's what JJ wants to do. More characters there would make for more possibilities of plot lines to happen there without an entirely new cast. But also, if it turns into more of a "put on a bus" situation for Claire and Marten, and Jeph ends up deciding he doesn't like that... things are well set up to crash and burn, leaving room for them to come back to town.

Anyway, good for Claire; here's hoping the amount that needs doing doesn't destroy her.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

Claire with hiring authority? Oh Boy!
She can poach Momo from Smif. She already has experience helping people access a large collection of resources. Clinton would claw through walls for a job at Cubetown. I think they'd be happy to accept him as a researcher. Myriabytes of weirdness? Emily would -swim-.

( halifax has already exploded once )

[Scarlet Manuka]

bets on the Director being another iteration/body of Yay?

Absolutely no way. Yay is far too organised to be any part of this mess.

[Baz_Yat]

I think Wombat's nailed it. Yes, Claire should logically RUN AWAY. But... at the same time, it's got the possibility to set up some great storylines.

[badbum61]

bets on the Director being another iteration/body of Yay?

Absolutely no way. Yay is far too organised to be any part of this mess.

Yay is required to maintain "at arm's length" status at all times.
They've installed Melon as their proxy...

[BarGamer]

By all logic, Claire should run away screaming. But Cubetown doesn't run on logic. It runs on pure imagination. What Cubetown needs is just the slightest bit of structure, maybe a feasibility study filter, and they could be the ultimate think tank. Will Claire be that structure, or is she gonna take the money and run?

[DaiJB]

Claire's determined expression in the fifth panel struck me as needing a muted fanfare in the background.

Forebodingly, the one that first came to mind was the opening chords of Halo 3: One Final Effort...

[St.Clair]

bets on the Director being another iteration/body of Yay?

Absolutely no way. Yay is far too organised to be any part of this mess.

That prediction was made before it became fully apparent what a disaster this entire project/startup is.

[Ghanima Atreides]

In real life, this would end in a burnout at best, legal repercussions and/or actual injury at worst. This being QC though, it will probably result in wacky hijinks while Claire struggles to whip the place up into shape yet ultimately it all just works out and she realises she's a great manager despite her lack of experience. 

[Jimor]

What's the worst that could happen? Claire comes back for holiday break with some cybernetic replacement parts that makes even Clinton envious (she can't discuss why, tho, because of the NDA).

[BenRG]

What's the worst that could happen?

After resigning for the sake of her sanity, Claire finds that she has been blacklisted by every library on earth (Cubetown is known in the HR world as 'the résumé stain') and suddenly getting her old job back at Coffee of Doom is her only option.

[St.Clair]

What's the worst that could happen? Claire comes back for holiday break with some cybernetic replacement parts that makes even Clinton envious (she can't discuss why, tho, because of the NDA).

Picard S2 spoilers:
[spoiler]Jurati of Borg[/spoiler]

[Welu]

Yes, Claire! Give into to the upward chaos!

[SmilingCat]

Not gonna lie, I wish more job interviewers were like this.

I mean, I'd still turn Moray the hell down if I were in Claire's position, but this is so much better than people asking you "why do you want to work for us" like they expect some answer that affirms the superiority of their own corporate monolith.

[derris_kharlan]

Good lord Claire has no chill. 

In a "real world" situation this would almost certainly end in disaster.  Claire is way too high strung and order driven to function well in an organization that is so fundamentally chaotic, it would be a bad fit for both sides.
But since Claire is Jeph's favorite character and basically the main character at this point it'll probably be more of a Claire imposing order on the chaos situation and saving Cubetown sort of narrative with hijinks along the way.

[shanejayell]

And yup, they DO want her to move too.

[Storel]

Since the purpose of Cubetown is to research everything, I wonder if they know about this website: https://www.everything2.com/

[Perfectly Reasonable]

Now I wonder what applicants they've had. But I think Claire is exactly what they need. From what we've seen so far, a simple wiki would make them swoon with delight.
  Ratfeathers!
   ( practicing for the swear club )

[St.Clair]

Good lord Claire has no chill. 

None of the Augusti do.  This is known.

[JimC]

While on the whole I tend to the "too many red flags: run away" scenario, the clean sheet of paper, start from scratch thing can be a whole lot of fun provided you have the right personality, good training and an experienced peer group to fall back on. I've been in similar situations with IT. And the peer group access is orders of magnitude now with the internet than it was when I was starting out setting up business local area networking before many of you were born.

[Stoon]

Not gonna lie, I wish more job interviewers were like this.

I mean, I'd still turn Moray the hell down if I were in Claire's position, but this is so much better than people asking you "why do you want to work for us" like they expect some answer that affirms the superiority of their own corporate monolith.

I lost my job at the end of March, and accepted a new job offer last week, I start tomorrow.   

Anyway, that "Why do you want to work for us?" question is really irritating.  "Because you have a job opening, I'm qualified to do it, and I need a job."

https://www.tiktok.com/@tylerregan/video/7004929525133872389?is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7004929525133872389