Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for October 10, 2021

And starring Rat as the Pointy-Haired Boss.

Avoiding homelessness is also good motivation for going to work. Took a job that was 6 days/60 hours a week to pay my share of the rent.

Food and rent. That’s the motivation of 99% of workers.

Good job, Pig.

Maslow’s hierarchy of need comes to mind.

The definition of wage slavery….

Fake it til you make it Pig!

People are driven by, among other things, herd instinct, team loyalty, religious fervor, machismo, mother love, pain, the profit motive, and the service motive. Only one of those groups ever gets rich. But that’s the one that always brags about how much better it is than all the others.

Do what Wally does on Dilbert. Nothing else that laziness-

Sometimes just the desire to get out and do something with your life is motivation enough!

had a chance to climb the corporate ladder, saw what it did to people; decided not to!

I have often noted that life is a game of waiting to die. I only work so I don’t have to do that waiting outside, naked and hungry.

Yeah, good a reason as any

the only good things about going to work are the free air-con and the snacks in the pantry

I don’t think the word “toss” needed to be added there

We need to put bread in the table somehow.

Pig got off the dole and onto a payroll.Yay!

We call working for someone else to avoid starvation “freedom.”

Early retirement.

If you’re not having much fun at work you’re living a life of increasing hell. Why do that when you know there’s fun things to make a living doing just for you.. think it through. It’s there.

Common sense WILL kick in eventually… if we let it.

Survival in this dog-eat-dog world is becoming harder, when a PIG is involved. He barely does his job but gets the same pay. He’s always late but leaves on time! Boo Hiss

Since giving people money for food destroys their work ethic and turns them into lazy bums, maybe we should outlaw all inheritances and save the children of rich parents from being corrupted by all that free cash?

Looks like all but the last panel are zoom backgrounds.

That last one has always been my only motivation for going to work. I haven’t gone to work in over five years.

How about…. to learn responsibility and become a productive part of society and oh yeah so you can stop leeching off of responsible individuals!

yeah, I like living indoors.

I suppose survival in somewhat important for my life.

That last one gets us all……

Too bad so many well-meaning parents have eliminated the last panel as a consequence for their little adult darling’s who don’t want to hold down a job!

It’s so silly to me that so many Businesses complain that they can’t find people to take the jobs they offer when a 40 hour week at the wages they pay won’t cover the basic expenses (food and shelter) of sustaining life.

Gotta eat ….

“Quote most men lead lives of quiet desperation” – Henry David Thoreau

“Absolutely devoted” is pretty strong language. But I could honestly tell my children that I didn’t have a day when I wished that I didn’t have to go to work.

We have an on going demonstration that the idea of “If people didn’t work, they’d all be lazy bums.” is wrong. It’s called retirement, and there are millions of people here in the US who are retired. Many, perhaps most volunteer in their community, church, library, school, whatever. They have found something that speaks to their soul and are giving back.

Are their some who become lazy bums? Of course, but many of them tend to die within a few years of retirement. Their own bad habits and lack of motivation do them in. The idea of someone like Andy Capp who lives on the dole forever, is a cartoon fantasy. In real life, he would be long dead from drinking and smoking or one of the people he cheated at pool would have knifed him on the way home.

“Pay bills” works for me

Live indoors. Eat at least twice daily.

“We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living—a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age.”

Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt National Progressive Party Convention in Chicago, August, 1912

I always wondered why this strip is called Pearls Before Swine, and now that I have an account I can ask, as google for some reason isn’t showing answers really. So why is it called that?

—In which Pig finally cuts to the chase! Truth, Pig!

@Imagine It’s not just about working or not working. The kind of work I’ve done, first in Germany, now in Canada, I do in order to have a steady flow of income. If there was UBI, maybe even if I didn’t have kids, I’d be more willing to take risks and work for myself or do lower-paying, but more meaningful work.