Section 1: Panels 1-2: A person points down a road of life events that lead to a series of jobs, teaching, waiting tables, and a desk job.Section 2: Panel 1: A boardroom shows a collage of inspirational buzzwords. Panel 2: The same words are tattooed on a person’s chest. Panel 3: A person jumps over a series of hurdles. Panel 4: A ghost representing a hiring manager floats away from a computer screen showing a job application email.Section 3: Panels 1-2: A person takes calls on a crisis line, and hands out hors d’oeurves at a fundraiser. Panel 3: Two hands representing an employer’s hold items representing essential items like health, housing, and food. Panel 4: A cover letter with an anatomically illustrated bleeding heart drawn on it. Panel 5: Text message bubbles informing the applicant the job went to someone else.Section 4: An annotated job posting website. The annotations point out the difficulties in getting a job through a job posting site.Section 5: Panel 1: A person shouts amongst a falling pile of cover letters. Panel 2: A group of workers stand underneath a vending machine claw, shouting pleas to be chosen. Panel 3: An illustration of Karl Marx states that industry needs an unemployed population to take low-paying jobs, preferring to pay fewer workers to do the same amount of work as a larger group.Section 6: Panel 1: Two rows of green soldier toys represent the “Reserve army of Labor.” Panel 2: A shop door displays a sign for a new job, with smaller text indicating a signing bonus after 6 months. Panel 3: A circled job ad from a newspaper offering safe working conditions and a living wage.Section 7: Subway riders sit beneath signs quoting the late anarchist anthropologist David Graeber’s on the impact of investing most of your time and energy on jobs that feel meaningless.Section 8: Panel 1: A room of people doing meaningless jobs, selling things people don’t want, an assistant job to make someone else look important, a person holding a bucket underneath a leaky roof. Panel 2: A man sitting at a table doing meaningless paperwork, what Graeber calls “a terrible psychic wound.”Section 9: Panel 1: A pile of ground up detritus, with a text bubble saying that the most necessary productive jobs (like nurses, sanitation workers, farmers) are often underpaid and lead to workers being ground down. Panel 2: Workers doing jobs they love, a figure reading to a group of children, and another painting at an easel. Panel 3: A painting with the quote “Do what you love and never work a day in your life” next to an illustration of journalist Sarah Jaffee explaining that late capitalist era workers are exploited.Section 10: Panel 1: A prospective employer holds up a cover letter to the person from the beginning of the comic. The person says she wants to explain her work history. Panel 2: The person stands in front of a copy machine while eating lunch, and works at a desk late into the night. Panels 3: The person makes coffee as a barista in the morning at one restaurant and is weeping the floor to close a pizza shop at night.Section 11: Panel 1: Two pie charts showing time spent, one showing the majority of pre-pandemic time working various jobs, the second showing an increase in time spent not working during the pandemic. Panel 2: A person guiding their grandma by the arm asks her if she has an regrets, she responds “I wish I’d told that one boss to fuck off!” Panel 3: A swarm of workers fill a highway approaching a city, causing a cloud of pollution. Panel 4: The person and their grandmother enjoy a day off by walking near a clean beach, the grandma remarking their grandchild got another day off.Section 12: Panel 1: A person sits at an airport bar for a work trip for a glamorous job. Panel 2: Two hands mending a sweater. Panel 3: A group of people working in a marsh. Panel 4: A person floats on their back in a swimming pool, relaxing.Section 13: Panel 1: A person lays with her head on the table, looking up at their laptop, exhausted from writing cover letters. Panel 2: A person stands in front of a sign advertising cliched job-seeker advice. Panel 3: A job seeker sits across a desk from an employer, asking questions about the quality of the job.Section 14: Panel 1: A zoom call screen shows the job seeker giving feedback to a boss who does not receive it well. Panel 2: The seeker kneels with a stack of bills behind their back, begging for a job.
