Category / (Not a Cidu)

by Winter Wallaby

Your call is very important to us [OT]

When I’m on hold, if they play some bland, inoffensive music, I can put my headset on, and ignore it for hours, as I work, read e-mails, etc… A long wait can be a little annoying, but it’s not really a big deal.

If they interrupt the music to tell me “your call is very important to us” I can’t ignore the interruption. Having a person “talking” to me jolts me to attention, and disrupts me from whatever else I’m trying to do. It doesn’t make me feel like my call is important to them; it just makes me more aware of how long I’ve been on hold, and increases my annoyance. And if I’m on hold for 45 minutes, and the music is interrupted every 35 seconds to tell me that my call is very important to them, that shifts from annoying to maddening. (You may begin to guess that these numbers are not arbitrary, but based on a recent experience.)

Anyway, this is not (just) a rant, but a genuine question: What’s the point of interrupting the call like that? Is my reaction atypical? It seems “obvious” that this is annoying, and will not endear the company to me. But almost every company in the world does it (albeit not with 35 second intervals), and it would be easy enough not to, so my guess is that there’s some logic behind it that I’m not seeing.

by Winter Wallaby

Covid consistency

Some comics completely ignore the new post-coronavirus world, continuing on as if nothing had changed. Some comics consistently reflect the new post-coronavirus world.

But some comics are inconsistent, sometimes acting as if they’re in a world with a pandemic, and sometimes acting as if they’re in a world without. And sometimes they’re even inconsistent within a single strip. For example:

Dagwood goes to work every day without a mask, as if there’s no coronavirus. That’s fine. But in what conceivable world, with or without COVID, does his boss plan an in-person Halloween party, but change it to a Zoom party at the last minute?

Send in your single worst offender for a comic that’s inconsistent in it’s treatment of coronavirus. Here, we mean a single daily strip that’s inconsistent within its panels on a single day, not one that’s just inconsistent between different days. Include “coronovirus inconsistency” in the e-mail title.

Comments are turned off in this post to save the discussion until we get the actual comics.

by EditorM

Is it too late to be asking “Too soon?” ?

Thanksgiving is coming up, any day now! How can we be aghast at seeing decorations and cartoons on a holiday theme? Is it too late to be asking “Too soon?” ?

That’s what Reply All Lite wants to know:

If you’re Moderately Confused twice … is that Fully Confused? From Anon and Andréa:

Santa already being featured, notes Andréa:

So why hesitate over Thanksgiving, which is well nigh upon us!

And Cathy can have the last word, asking the question for us:

by EditorM

Never-ending job

The job of drawing Sisyphus-related cartoons, and keeping track of them, never seems to approach an end, as noted by Arvy, who contributed these first three.

The collaboration of cartoon artist Harry Bliss with comedian Steve Martin has now resulted in a book. For those who haven’t used up their NYT views, here is a review of the book: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/books/steve-martin-harry-bliss-wealth-of-pigeons.html

Steve Martin wanted to make cartoons, but he can only draw stick figures. He teamed up with the illustrator Harry Bliss, and the result is their new book, “A Wealth of Pigeons.”

New York Times 2020-11-11

Sometime-NewYorker cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein can’t seem to let go of the Sisyphus theme! The “work at home” one also qualifies for our “pandemic-related” tag.

In addition to those from Arvy, here’s a long one from Existential Comics.

And another one: https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/110

by Winter Wallaby

Price of a small coke

The anonymous submitter asks: “Although virtually all of the movie theaters have been shut down because of Covid-19, I would be interested to know what a “small coke” currently costs in an American theater (or, for that matter, in any fast food restaurant). I’m betting that Breathed’s presumably wildly inflated $6 (in 1986) won’t sound all that inflated now.”

by Winter Wallaby

Saturday Morning Oy – October 24th

Sent in by Andréa. This is an Oy, but also a CIDU: why so many coats?

Also from Andréa.

From Olivier.

We don’t see “Shoe” all that often around here. But this seemed like a sweet OY, and ‘just what we deserve’.

A Tomversation from Ollie.