another one of my uni portfolio pieces. something about kind gestures of strangers that go unnoticed because we’re so used to them and the inherent goodness of people etc etc etc
honestly i just wanted to draw a comic because i wanted to show off my illustration skills. i wish i had spent more time on these & drawn more comics for this series but i was running out of time :(
(made in photoshop)
[ID: a comic with three slides per image. The first slide shows a character standing on a bus or train. They are standing up and holding onto one of the overhead supports. They are surrounded by strangers and the whole image is black and white with expressionless faces. The main character wears headphones, a backpack, and an oversized, cropped jacket with a high collar.
The second slide shows the same scene but the character sneezes “ha-tsch!” and every stranger around them turns and says “gesundheit”. The character replies “danke”. The whole slide is turned from the black and white scene in the previous slide, now into warm colours (reds and oranges and yellows).
The third slide shows the character and strangers returned to silence. They look off to the side sheepishly. They are once again in black and white.
The second image. The first slide shows a middle aged stranger. They have a loose top and chin-length hair. They stand at a door which, on the opposite side of it, reads “push”.
The second slide is in warm colours, showing the stranger holding the door for the main character as they rush through, smiling and saying “danke” to the stranger.
The third slide shows the main character walking off in expressionless silence. The scene is in black and white.
The third image. The first slide shows the character in black and white. They are sleeping in a row of chairs in a building. Their bag sits on the chair next to them.
The second slide shows an old aged stranger approaching the character. The stranger has curly hair and a fluffy, buttoned coat and hat. The main character is now awake and takes the bag from the chair, hugging it to their chest, freeing the seat for the stranger. They smile at the stranger, who responds “danke sehr”. The scene is in warm colours.
The third slide shows the stranger and the character both sleeping on chairs next to each other. They look content. The character hugs their backpack and the stranger rests a cane against their legs. The stranger has placed a small purse on the chair next to them. The slide is in black and white. /End ID]
Working in retail is really fun, and the times when major fuck-ups happen, they can be either anxiety-attack inducing, or make it possible to get through the rest of your god-awful shift with a smile depending on the customer. My all-time favorite absolute fuck-up is as follows:
This kind woman is just doing her thing. She scans her membership card from her keychain. The register beeps to acknowledge the scan. We continue as usual. Neither of us notice right away, but after I’ve scanned a few more items, I hear a very quiet, “Um,” from the lady, very polite. I look at her. She is looking at the screen of my register, blinking. I, too, look.
And lo and behold. There is a charge of over four-thousand dollars ($4,000) worth of garlic bread staring us in the face. There are no words for a minute. We’re just… in awe. How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?
She didn’t even have garlic bread in her cart.
I sputter a partial apology - I was incapable of forming actual sentences in the moment - and try to void the garlic bread. Since there was no garlic bread to scan, I try to manually remove $4,000-some from this transaction.
Well, the registers don’t like it when you try to void off more than five dollars ($5) from a transaction, so naturally it pings my manager for confirmation, but she’s not by her pager.
At this point, both myself and the lady are just… dumbfounded. She’s not even mad. I’m not even all that embarrassed. Both of us are just looking at the screen. There’s a bit of laughter, but it’s mostly just… confusion.
I have to call through the whole store for my manager on the intercom because she’s not answering. She shows up, ready to override and void it, when she too, sees what exactly is being voided.
“What… did you do?”
“I genuinely. Have literally. No. Idea.”
She voids it, and I go to finish the transaction and tell the woman her total (minus the garlic bread). My register pings. It tells me that she hasn’t scanned her membership card. Odd. I distinctly remember her doing that. The woman goes to scan her card again, and I notice that her library card is stuck to her membership card. I tell her gently, and she separates the two and scans her card.
My manager, hovering nearby still, sees this and says, “I think it mistook the barcode of her other card for garlic bread, and the remaining digits were read as the price.”
And that’s when the laughter really came over us. There were no hard feelings at all. In fact, the woman was incredibly glad that the receipt still showed the garlic bread and the voiding of. I will remember it until the end of time, my only regret in the entire situation being that I didn’t take a damn picture, because she has proof and I don’t. But I swear to God it happened.
TDLR; Library Card Charged $4,000 of Garlic Bread.
that’s just how valuable library cards are. each one is worth at least $4000 of garlic bread
A picture is worth a thousand words, a library card is worth $4000 worth of garlic bread, if we can figure out how many words the average library card can check out at once, we can probably work out a picture-to-garlic bread conversion here, too.
I just. I just… i have discovered something. And I have laughed too much. I have laughed every time I have tried to explain it to someone. I cannot get through this.
Look. Okay.
There are two things you need to know, here.
First: There’s a style of Greek pottery that was popular during the Hellenic period, for which most of the surviving examples are from southern Italy. We call them ‘fish plates’ because, well, they’re plates, and they’re decorated with fish (and other marine life).
Like this one, currently in the Met:
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Or this one, currently in the Cleveland Museum of Art:
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They’re very cool. We’re not 100% sure what they were for, because most of the surviving ones were found as grave goods, but that’s a different post.
The second thing you need to know is that when we (Classics/archaeology/whatever as a discipline) have a collection of artefacts, like vases, sculptures, paintings, etc. and we do not know the name of the artist, but we’re pretty sure one artist made X, Y and Z artefacts, we come up with a name for that artist. There are a whole bunch of things that could be the source for the name, e.g. where we found most of their work (The Dipylon Master) or the potter with whom they worked (the Amasis Painter), a favourite theme (The Athena Painter), the Museum that ended up with the most famous thing they did (The Berlin Painter) or a notable aspect of their style. Like, say, The Eyebrow Painter.
Guess what kind of pottery the Eyebrow Painter made?
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