Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for December 10, 2022

At least he doesn’t have to deal with constant e-mails

Love the blocks holding up the desktop. Wiley always love the little details

Time to sell them on a better situation or a new job.

I think Bob will find it easy to give the " unicorn salute "

Once again, I don’t get it. Maybe I will tomorrow morning.

The hinges still attached to the “desk,” as well as the doorknob and back plate, are nice touches.

Every call and every new piece of equipment will come out of his commission. And, given his physical appearance, a week on that stool will make him question his choice of underwear.

The pay phone will be a tax write off

I’ve had jobs where I worked solely on commission, and the companies were really quite supportive.

I don’t understand this.

Welcome to life at Twitter 2.0, because your life as you knew it is over. Now bend over forward and….

This benefits the company how? I don’t see the point.

Click Like if you could not recognize that rectangular box hanging on the cube wall that is to Bob’s left.

I’ve worked at places that actively sabotaged their own work force, for ‘reasons.’

I like the details: the –still hinged– door on cinder blocks as desk, the payphone… There’s probably even a paymeter for the electricity and surveillance for the bathroom, water dispenser and tea kitchen to make him pay for his use of the facilities.

Independent contractor vs union worker. But the IC gets to keep his money without paying dues and its up to him if he is successful. 29 years of being an IC and a good retirement later, I’m not worried about pension fund fraud or bankruptcy…..

Rented furniture for a rented mule…

Love the pay phone and the single light bulb!

If you work on commission or as an independent contractor you are much more your own boss and responsible for your success or failure. Commission sales were very popular in the past and made many people a very good income. In my opinion and experience a very good way to make a living.

I have to laugh about this one. I worked 100% from home. I had a cube in the office. My laptop was on the desk hooked up to the network (I remoted into it from my home computer). Otherwise it had a broken chair and junk and papers that other people didn’t want in their cubes.

The “point” is always in the details! I would rather spend my time analyzing Wiley than just accept a simple sight gag as my morning entertainment…

At least he has a coffee cup and that’s a start

Too many companies hire workers as “independent contractors,” but control every aspect of their work, don’t let them work for anyone else, and the workers get screwed on taxes and unemployment. All because the companies do not want to pay a living wage.

Hey, they made money the hard way a few decades ago. Go for it dude.

The pay phone is a great touch. The company even makes him pay for his phone calls.

He could have got paid like a waitress…

Horribly exaggerated! A real company wouldn’t have given the guy his own cube, they would’ve had him work from home, where HE’D be responsible for the rent, electricity, and connectivity.

Wow! Not even an ergonomic chair, a computer or a stack of quarters to get him started on the payphone. Maybe door-to-door is what he will have to do. Wait! What is he selling? Missiles!! Oh, boy.

wanna bet one of the legs on that stool is shorter than the others?

Working strictly on commission is sort of like waiters who are expected to work only (or mostly) for tips. Back in my college days, there were several fancy restaurants in town that paid no salary and, unfortunately, this was in the the Midwest [and not one of the big ‘cities’] — not an area of the country known for big tipping.

It’s also not a customer-friendly practice — potential customers who are looking for less expensive goods get ignored and / or pressured into buying things they really can’t afford. Never understood why it seemed better to pressure someone into buying something they really didn’t want or can’t afford.

Years ago we followed a particular salesperson from one car dealership to another because he asked what we were interested in and showed it to us. He would tell us the pros and cons of that model and only showed us another model if we asked. We followed him from Chevy to Honda to Toyota until he retired. Why did he keep changing jobs? Because the dealerships didn’t like that he didn’t bother trying to ‘push’ a model or spend time on their various add-on spiels. He just sold cars and was almost always the top salesman of the month. He told us once that he could sell two or three cars to customers in less time than it took others to sell one. And his customers usually asked for him when buying their next car. I wish more salespeople could figure that out: happy customers come back and they tell their friends.

although, his is the only cubicle with color.

Where I work, the sales people work on commissions. When I started there back in 1990, the original owner had everybody work from a salary. That way, the sales people weren’t pressured to make a SALE. They made sure the customer got the right product for their application. When the company was sold to the french back in 2000, everything changed and the sales people did ANYTHING to make their sale and to heck with the customer. A really poor state of affairs.

Looks like a drawing of a cartoonist’s workstation.

I wonder – where is the red Swingline stapler?

As an office clerk for the 2000 census, my desk was literally a well folded corrugated cardboard box. No drawers but a couple of flaps over cubbyholes in the pedestals. Wasn’t working commission though.

Looks like any workplaces I’ve been shoved into, in my time …

Hey, at least he’s closest to the coffee pot!