Questions for fan favorite characters!! Please try not to get into arguments or post spoilers in the comment section.
The lack of a "galley" (or mess hall, as Adam says) makes Dirtball kind of unusual, especially as a Jovian outpost. They have more interior space than they know what to do with, so every employee gets a huge fully furnished apartment and there's complete farming operations, but there's no cook staff. They just barely have enough people to grow and distribute produce.
Transcript
Anonymous asked: Adam, why do you have difficulty finding and keeping jobs in piloting?
Adam: It's because of bureaucracy bullshit. You know how it goes, you piss off the wrong people at the wrong time and then you're fucked forever. After leaving the North American Republic, I started training to get my aircraft piloting license in the Socialist Republic of Mars. I started dating this girl in my training group... but then she got licensed before me and promoted up to a useless pseudo-manager position, and was so up her own ass about it… After we broke up, she went on a powertrip and got me in trouble for not doing one of the stupid redundant safety checks that NO ONE in the team was doing, including her!! So, the SRM booted me from the program and barred me from getting a license there. Right now I’m trying to get into the Martian Free States piloting program, because they’ll ignore my SRM record. The MFS and the SRM hate each other, haha. But the MFS is allergic to giving anything government funding, so… I have to pay for it in full.
- SRM
- MFS
Anonymous asked: Adam, what made you decide to take this job?
Adam: ...Money? Why else would anyone work in this literal dump? I guess the apartments are pretty big, too. It’s way better boarding than any other spacer temp job I’ve done. Having to cook everything myself is so annoying, though… I miss mess halls.
Image: Adam holds up a vegetable from the produce box and says "More zucchini??"
Petra asked: Mel , you've known Talita for a long while. How well do you think she's handling her management position?
Mel: Sigh… it's so frustrating that she's trying to avoid taking responsibility for her temps. If she was just more confident, she'd have no problem controlling them! But I’m trying to let her learn to do it on her own… I don’t want to coddle her just because I used to be her foster parent.
Anonymous asked: Mel, are you excited to surprise Talita?
Mel: Hee hee hee! Oh, it's gonna be great! She’s needed this for a while, but you know how she is. You'll die waiting for her to ask you for help.
28 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 43”
Lilac
If only becoming more confident was literally as easy as going “Right, I should be more confident”……..
petra
heeheehee, my question was answered.. its very illuminating to see mel’s opinion on talita. they both have communication issues…
the Inmara
We love how Mel’s answers are basically exactly what we’d have guessed from the text of the comic, but seeing them explicitly laid out here, with their emotions behind them, just makes it hit harder.
Thank you for asking your question!
Cartoon dinosaur
you know, I want to help people like Adam.
a guy from work when I was starting out was having trouble moving on. And he said he got into trouble from the traffic cops because they have a grudge on him. Turned out he was on the Sex offender list.
a few months ago a guy at work was having trouble and I listened to him and tried to find ways to help him. When I talked to my boss about that she went into a 30 minute tirade about all the awful work hes done and how he had a tendency to leave in the middle of a shift if he got upset. He got fired less the a week later.
I want to help people, but I know better. I know id regret it. I know I should just leave them to drown and die. (probable in a gutter) But if i was working with him id probably still want and maybe try to. But I know it will blow up in my face.
swim or die Adam, swim or die.
Anonymous
A neat look into piloting program things! It’s likely Adam is skewing the truth at least a little from his point of view, but if he really did get barred just because of a relationship/personal feud then that majorly sucks. (More likely, people just didn’t do the checks when he was looking haha.)
Meanwhile Mel over here setting a train crash into slow motion as always, I love it. I think these questions reveal that a lot of the communication issues come from Mel being both Talita’s (former) foster parent and her boss; those two roles require different, conflicting types of support, and Mel’s struggling to compromise. Someone who takes initiative when you’re too anxious/busy/etc. to ask for help can be a great thing!…unless they don’t actually know what you need help with, then they’re just adding to the problem.
Trees
“They have more interior space than they know what to do with…”
go-cart track!
Go-Cart Track!!
GO-CART TRACK!!!
GO-CART TRACK!!!!
JoB
Well, technically, the track they already have …
[imagines them racing on it with the front loaders and using their various attachments for MMM-style Competitor Removal™]
Trees
GO-CART TRACK!
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgokartingplanet.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F10%2FGo-Kart-Tracks-in-Niagara-Falls-2048×1364.jpg&f=1&ipt=c349b34370feca83d8f13912e51658b4c6f71b931e38752f710e052f2c6597e8
cabbage
Interesting little dynamic with the libertarian deregulation operating in tandem with a profit motive. I wonder if MFS pilots have a different reputation than SRM
Sabella
Oh my gods Mel. Their problem is they never ask Talita what she needs and assume they know what’s best for her, and is the kind of person that looks at Talita like she’s grown a second head when she comes to them after getting physically assaulted by one of her temps.
Theoneandonlyvoid
Sure Mel it will go great keep saying that to yourself.
Theoneandonlyvoid
Also the she has needed this for a while line is sickening. If she needed this for a while then you should probably have asked her a while ago.
Egg
Talita. Talita you need to get out of here.
Peter Jensen
She needs to … run away … somewhere …
pitviperofdoom
What really gnashes my teeth about Mel here (I mean, besides the comment about asking for help after brushing Talita off when she asked for help) is that management is such a specific skill set that not everybody has. Not everyone has the temperament and instincts for it. You can’t just say “oh, if she were just more confident she’d be fine” well she’s not! And that’s okay! That’s not something she necessarily needs to improve if she doesn’t want the position that requires it in the first place! She doesn’t have to be a manager if she’s not good at it and not happy doing it!
And in their efforts to treat Talita fairly instead of like a foster child, they’re actually treating her UNfairly, because a good manager’s entire job is to provide support and guidance and feedback to their reports. That’s not coddling, that’s what managing is. A good manager doesn’t just kick you into the deep end and tell you to figure it out, they provide you as much support as is reasonable, and if that’s not enough, they work with you to figure out if the position is right for you.
..can you tell I read a lot of Allison Green blog posts
eden
I know!! and literally the next question mel was babying her. hypocritical
eden
it reminds me of this time my mom and I were working with stained glass (for context the last time I touched that medium was five years ago but I draw regularly, and this also happened right in front of someone I really respected so it hurt extra) she had decided that I needed to be taught how to use a square but when I held the glass cutter wrong (a dull pizza cutter looking thing that creates micro fractures in the glass) she took them from me and said i should know how to do this. it was really humiliating
P2Mc28
Oh man, normally I just refresh and wait for other commenters but I’m impatient this time.
I absolutely love it when you get to see the other side of things. Being able to sympathize with the “bad guys” makes the story to much better. Even if all this got out of me was a series of “oooh nooooooo” lol.
I still don’t get Adam’s motivation of being a racist/specist jerk but at least I understand his stance of “management is the enemy.”
Jay Eaton
I considered answering one of the ones asking him about his feelings on aliens and GMH, but it doesn’t really go deeper than “they’re kind of weird and make me uncomfortable.” He resents people who have a more secure career situation than him without ‘earning’ it, and bullying someone physically bigger and stronger than him makes him feel cool.
P2Mc28
Oh neat. I appreciate that leaves his future open to a “but once I got to know X, I’d realized how much of a jerk I used to be.” Y’know, maybe. I mean there’s an equal chance something could happen and reinforce his discomfort further but hey. I enjoy realistic feeling characters!
Amanda/OwlBear
Mel drives me up the wall, awful parental figure, Jesus F*ck, talk to your ex-foster child, do not surprise the person you damn well know has anxiety, height of rudeness
Adam … needs to do some introspection
Maybe making some friends and cooking together would help, share the load, build a bit of a community, though I guess that would require him to be less of a wangrod, again, the introspection
aves
I gotta hand it to ya, you’re very good at writing absolutely insufferable characters with realistic, sympathetic motivations that make them No Less Insufferable.
Adrienne
Wow, if I didn’t know Adam was a bully I’d almost feel sorry for him. Even jerks have problems… (Though he probably made many of those problems for himself. Or might be lying/fudging the truth.) Mel’s somehow never looked more like a villain than they do in the final panel?? Uh-oh Talita…
Claire
Oh yeah, I assume Adam’s comment about how “Nobody else was doing redundancy checks” is fallible. Either they were and he was wrong, or more likely IMHO, he was told that it was HIS job and responsibility to do redundancy checks.
May
I assume he was punished more for his response then for the mistake itself. It is likely common for people to just get a verbal warning if they say something like “Sorry, I’ll remember next time”. A small mistake is forgivable for someone who is still in training. His description of the skipping the check sounds like “I knew I was supposed to do it, but I intentionally chose not to do so”, which is way worse than just forgetting. In addition, given his attitude towards following safety protocols, I would bet it wasn’t even his only mistake that day.
Claire
Oh you know what? Yeah, yeah I could see that. He does seem a bit… short in the communication skills department, to put it kindly.
Zack
[pinches bridge of nose] Mel. Talita has asked you for help. And you brushed her off. Do you think that might be, just maybe, contributing to her problems w the temps?
(also I am absolutely dreading the surprise reveal. I strongly suspect it’s far from what Talita needs)
eden
especially when Mel’s reason for the surprise is that talita refuses to ask for help