Sort of grassy
Check out that world building. New characters, new locations, new ideas. How do I do it? Sheer day-to-day panic.
The Rag And Bone Man latte art was a proud moment. I’ll be candid here and say that I changed it from 21st US President Chester A Arthur at the last minute. I did not, I will add, change the actual artwork.
MINIMUM WAAAAGE, HEEYAH!! *whip crack*
What actually is the minimum wage in the UK? Is there a single one or does it vary by locality?
£9.18 an hour. Not great, but it can add up if it’s not all going towards rent.
If Charlotte isn’t 21 yet then it is a much less impressive £6.83 – I lose track of timelines with these comics but I suspect she’ll be on the 18-20 rate not the “adult” one.
(Is there an Eisner for most boring comment on a web comic? I think I could win it with this..)
I suppose it depends on whether her “excellent fake ID” mentioned two pages ago can convince this pair that she is 21.
Hopefully she’ll earn tips. I ran pizza delivery and made comparative* bank** on tips.
(*compared to the minimum wage)
(**hundreds, but not thousands)
It also depends where you live. £6.83 goes a lot further ‘oop north’ in places like Sheffield than it does down here in the south.
Heaven forbid you live in London. Though then you often have ‘London Weighting’ added to salaries to cope with the cost of living. Which of course does nothing at all to inflate the cost of living in London.
Oh ho ho. London weighting? Not on minimum wage jobs. Ah, retail.
Actually, given that, in the US, servers/wait staff usually make far UNDER minimum wage, that’s practically a king’s (or queen’s) ransom! Though, I’m not so sure about barista pay levels.
Barista, in my small experience, was tagged to non server wages in the US. Since tips are a much smaller part of the income and there is a great deal of non server actions going on like making coffee.
But this is mainly based on some reading and 2 years in the industry 20 years ago. So look further.
HOORAY! Glenn and Claire will be so proud of her♡. Finally a job where Lottie can use her skills for help others!
Well, beats milking unicorns.
So, what was wrong with her previous job then?
Too far from Claire, it seems.
Erm, I ship them now? Damn it John. It’s just supposed to be this nice wholesome comic, but you see, the thing about mystery solving dyads is, it’s completely impossible to *not* end up with sexual tension.
I’m not even sure it’s a shipping thing. Lottie’s clearly been very lonely. Shauna and Mildred have both gone their separate ways and left Lottie behind. She never really had any use for the boys, except as minions to be commanded, and who knows where they even are these days. Claire’s the only one of the old mystery team Lottie has left, and she’s hanging onto her tight, even to the point of quitting her job and moving to a different city just to be close to her.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that it’s not a shipping thing. Lottie has spent basically their entire acquaintance taking every opportunity to tease Claire about how cute she is, and has now taken to calling her pet names. (And not like “Pepper” or “Archibald”.)
She didn’t have a problem with her previous job until they tried to promote her.
It was in Tackleford, a place you are “from”, and not a place to “be”.
As a non-coffee drinker, I feel oddly immune to Lottie’s powers here.
Indeed. You can tell me where it comes from, but can you make it not taste like battery acid?
You put cream in it, then it doesn’t taste like battery acid (creamer cuts the acidity.)
Then it just tastes like roasted leather, which is a good thing.
I think the trick is that, like IPA, it tastes like battery acid and *other things*. You just have to learn to ignore the acid. Burny burn.
Depends on the IPA. Some of the more fruit flavored hops have very little bittering to no bittering.
Though IBU is rather subjective as well.
As a half-English “Yank” I must confess being a bit disappointed that Lottie’s not more into TEA.
Btw, what is non-coffee like?
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee.
I think Amy’s directly or indirectly responsible for getting all the mystery girls hooked on coffee.
Middle panel – is is Lottie developing a stutter?
I can see her happily working at Bean There, but I don’t see Lottie standing for minimum wage after making what she knows they know was a stellar audition. If they don’t sign her on, they will probably end up Has Beans.
I noticed that double “is”, too. But, then, I sometimes notice people actually using a technically incorrect double “is” in everyday speech (“the thing is is that”), so I wasn’t sure whether it might be deliberate.
A fault I notice in myself but rarely other people. I’ll find myself composing a literary passage and notice the double “is” and find my self drastically rewriting the passage to avoid it. That sets my teeth on edge.
If you find yourself writing a long literary passage and you really need to emphasise a final bit, the trick is this. Break the sentence in half.
I’m going to error on the safe side and just assume it’s part of Lottie having a slight caffeine buzz.
i love pete and dud running the cafe! i’m so invested in this storyline now
Pete and Dud? Have we seen these characters before? If they were in Giant Days, I suppose I fail to remember them.
Or wait, are you saying that they’re Cook and Moore?
I find myself bedazzled by the likeness
I hope John makes them an actual couple though, that would be funny.
They are holding hands in panel 5.
HAH! Perfect. I didn’t even notice.
“Human After All hitmaker Chester A. Arthur” sounds pretty good, too
If you were worried that people might not have thought your drawing bore sufficient resemblance to 21st U.S. president Chester A. Arthur, I assure you that as a reasonably well-educated American I’m not sure what 21st U.S. President Chester A. Arthur looked like, except that I think he had big sideburns, but even then it’s possible I’m confusing him with a different former U.S. president, or, less probably, with a fictional vampire. (Well… I suppose the “fictional” qualifier wasn’t really necessary there.)
I admit as an also, reasonably well informed American, that the guy in the cup made me think more ‘Older Ernest Hemingway’ than it does President Arthur… Though for whatever reason when I try to conjure up Arthur’s visage in my head, I keep getting Taft.
Also Rag’n’Bone Man got a lot of play here in the states on the radio for a couple years, but I haven’t heard the 8000th repeat of Human for a least a year.
Since rag’n’bone was mentioned I was trying to work out if it was a younger version of Old Steptoe or an older version of Young Steptoe.
I am not especially well educated, but I had heard of Chester A. Arthur a long time ago being referenced in ‘Die Hard with a Vengeance’ by a truck driver.
It’s a movie I’ve seen several times, because one of my favorite female singer/songwriters is in it, Leslie ‘Sam’ Phillips, who plays the psychopathic terrorist knife lady, Katya, helping to rob the gold reserves stored in New York. She had no speaking lines according to the backstory because she was shot in the throat or something, and had a scar on her neck to prove it.
She is a wonderful singer/songwriter, BTW. I recommend ‘The indescribable wow’, ‘Cruel Inventions’, and ‘Martinis and Bikinis’ as far as albums are concerned.
I can’t put into words how seen I feel by this comic. I love my minimum wage skill…
That middle panel is honestly one of your all-time greats. If you were still in the print game I’d be seriously tempted.
If a digital copy has any allure to you, Ketchup, there is the hi-res PDF version available through Patreon, as noted on https://badmachinery.com/comic/vair-unprecedented – the first paga of this chapter of SOLVER. I know I’d be seriously tempted if my work situation were better than Lottie’s.
I love that ‘Dook’ onomatopoeia.
Also the action backgrounds that go with the Shake Shake and Dook Dook
If Lottie doesn’t negotiate a better wage I’ll lose all respect for her.
She’s under a time constraint, needs to have proof of employment back to the landlord that evening. In the longer term she can build a following and threaten to take them with her when she departs unless she gets a healthy raise.
Fun fact: I technically went to school with Rag’n’Bone Man, although he would have been Rag’n’Bone Year 7er then, and I was in sixth form so I didn’t know him.
Alas, I did not go to school, technically or otherwise, with US President Chester A Arthur.
…that you know of
Didn’t we all go to school with U.S. President Chester A. Arthur, in a way?
Arthur is everywhere.
Arthur is everything.
Everyone’s got a little Chester A. Arthur in them.
Except for one person, the evil anti-Arthur! (Grover Cleveland)
Not a song I was expecting to see referenced here.
Grover Cleveland Must Die.
I have news.
Honestly?
Give Lottie a good business manager, and a personal assistant with the energy and ability to… well not reign her in, but perhaps able … uh. Shoot I’m not sure how one would actually point her at the right problems, ANYWAY, I think she could make a killing actually Owning and Running a coffee shop. She’d at least be a great face and spokeswoman for it. Maybe some hobbyist mystery solving on the side. Her Non-Mystery related calling just seems to be Coffee.
… Honestly part of me wanted to call myself a coffee connoisseur, but I’m really not. I’m just a dumb American coffee drinker who likes their coffee black, strong, and Fairtrade. Maybe a nice Colombian or Swedish-style you’d see in a proper Fika.
She definitely has the marketing fizzle and pop but a business is about consistency and making numbers work, she’d need a partner who has good business sense and… wait
Yup! My Point!
so Gilbert or Claire.
Your description of an assistant brought this to mind:
https://youtu.be/jrmZIgVoQw4
I LOVE RAG & BONE MAN
You’re only human after all
I’m no prophet or messiah!
(And in no way, shape, or form did my friend and I do an unauthorized remix of “Human” simply because we were so obsessed with that song)