A junior engineer working for a small engineering firm in Cocoa Beach. The firm focuses mostly on NASA projects.
Neil is Jean’s best friend. When Jean was turned into a genie, Neil became Jeanie’s master.
It’s kind of like Sparks in Phil Foglio’s Girl Genius…each Engineer has his or her own style, and as their boss, he can recognise Neil’s style at work.
Well, it’s not like the boss is wrong. Neil is better at motivating Henry than he is so it’s reasonable to delegate that job to him. Although apparently the company is in a hiring freeze so he can’t just fire Henry and replace him.
I get the same one although I do find it interesting the boss has just essentially threatened to fire someone for showing inititive. He didn’t actually intend to do it but if he had been coaching Roger then it just got his job put on the line if he stops or Roger slacks off. That would be a strong motivation to never help anyone like that again since it puts your job at risk as well as their own.
“Henry”??? Roger’s (not RoDger–almost no one spells it that way…the letter there in Anglo-Saxon was either an edh or a thorn, not a d, anyhow, and would be rendered “th” or “y” [as in Ye Olde…] in modern English 26-letter alphabetics–the y is because of how the letter looks, not how it is pronounced) _last_ name is Heany (or some variant thereof, depending on CD’s whimsical approach to spelling). In the TV series, I believe the character (Tony’s sidekick) was Roger Healy.
I hate when bosses ask “do you take me for a fool”, that is a trick question. Never answer that with a “yes”, no matter how much they say they want honesty in the workplace.
I will always remember the scene from the pilot of disney’s gummi bears show:
Igthorn: Pray tell me, how did you come to fall on me out of the clear blue sky?
Gad: Little boy threw us here.
Zook: From catapult camp.
Igthorn: What kind of a fool do you take me for?
Gad: Dunno, how many kinds are there?
The next time you see them it is probably hours later (the earlier scene was in the morning and in this one the sun is setting) and Igthorn is STILL bashing Gad’s skull into the ground.
So, yeah, no matter what they say about honest in the workplace, it’s never the right answer.
Wait…CD has Dyslexia??? I can certainly forgive, being a Dyslexic myself. I tend to ignore the typos, as I can figure out what he MEANT, so to me, it’s no big deal, I just dig the story and watching his characters evolve, as well as his style progress in leaps and bounds.
@CD – Ignore the grammer nazis and keep on giving us our fix 😉
Okay, we had a big kerfuffle of a discussion about this awhile back so I’m gonna clear the air right now. CD doesn’t have Dyslexia. He’s never been diagnosed, so any accusations of such are simply incorrect (claims on TV Tropes notwithstanding…they’ve since been excised, with extreme prejudice).
Anyone who’s insinuated otherwise either read the TV Tropes article (before my judicious edit, that is), is simply speculating, or is trying to start a flame war. I doubt the latter, but I’m just being thorough here.
There doesn’t need to be a diagnosis here, folks. I’ve got a friend who has much the same problem, and he’s a University Professor. It’s not anything diagnosable, it’s just something he has to deal with. He just has to be mindful of it, that’s all.
(Incidentally, I met him AFTER the last kerfuffle…would’ve been nice to know that was a thing when it came up last time…still, now I know)
Well, I apologise for sounding like an arse. And I further apologise if there’s any dyslexia involved, but I’d be suprised if there was as everything else is written so well. It’s only when a piece of writing is otherwise good that I spot the little errors and expect better from the writer. You’re right, it wouldn’t have been hard to put it in a more polite manner.
I too, apologise. My dyslexia is mostly numeric, I tend to screw up sequences of numbers more than three digits…imagine the bald spots on the side of my head during tax season…waitaminit, it IS tax season…again…OMG, please, kill me now!!!
“Who would you like to go out on the evening with?”
Aracelli is the only female on the list.
Neillie and Jean might be female in body but self identify as male… due to having been male their entire life prior to the magical transformation.
am I the only one a little let down by the fact that “Nellie* didn’t stay up a little longer as the icon. I get the feel His/her situation is about to get a little complicated
He’ll only get “stuck” if Jean refuses to listen to her master when he tells her to transform him back.
OR if he makes a stupid wish. For example, “I wish I didn’t have to keep changing sex.” Poof, he’s permanently female and the world always believed he was female and now she’s also dating her coworker.
I’m having trouble following the boss’ logic. From what other people above have commented, he’s apparently mad that Rodger is just imitating Neil, instead of doing his own work? Or… I just don’t understand. I must be missing something.
I would expect the boss to be pleased that a formerly under-performing employee starts performing, and I would expect him to reward the employee mentoring him (not threaten to fire him). Unless the boss suspects something fake is going on, instead of real improvement. But I didn’t get that from the comic dialog itself.
The boss is pissed as rodge has been performing very badly recently and neil has been seemingly uninterested to fix it and now he finally has. The boss knows that neil helped rodge and is pissed he didnt do it earlier. And if he lets rodge slip again the boss will get rid of them both, one for bad performance and the other for not fixing his coworker. I think the main trick is the boss assumed neil was failing at helping him, but now it seems the boss thinks neil hadnt bothered until he had threatened to fire his friend.
It’s not that surpising, look up Xyz theories of management. In this case the boss is close to a X theory manager: Theory X is a management approach that “assumes workers are lazy, have little ambition, and are motivated by coercion and threats.” Sadly many managers fall into theory X.
No matter how many articles and books are written on modern management, nor how many companies decline and founder, Theory X management, despite now being some fifty-plus years out of date, will never disappear because it appeals to the kind of person who becomes a manager out of desire to have power over other people. These people are typically psychopaths (sociopaths) and are far more driven to seek management roles than those who want to manage for other reasons (to realize ideas, to help develop other workers, etc.) In my career, I believe that over 50% of my bosses have been psychopaths. They are also very good at escaping from the organization before it crumbles from the consequences of their misrule.
Poor Neil! He not only is working for such a boss (you can tell, because he uses threats as motivation, and brings up termination as a “remedy” from the beginning), but he is living with one, Jea(nie), who wreaks havoc with her powers, indifferent to the problems caused for other people. “Hey, I don’t want to go on a dinner date with Neil’s jerk colleague, so I’ll just TURN NEIL INTO A GIRL AND HAVE HIM/HER DO IT.” Textbook sociopathy (if psych texts allowed for magical cosmic genie powers).
Jeannie has already littered the landscape with TG-ed victims. How long before Neil ends up stuck as Neille (or whatever name she decides to go by) while Jeannie moves on–such as by having the bottle change owners when the cleaning lady accidentally knocks it out the window and onto a passing truck…
It’s rare that I’ve had bosses that think that way — at least immediate bosses. Their bosses and the upper management of a company are a different picture, but my software jobs are usually run by people who think and feel and have a strong capacity for real analysis. Sadly in many places, those aren’t the people seeking to become managers.
I want to say I have enjoyed this strips from beginning to the end. It has kept my attention and I check on the strip once a day to find out if a new strip has been added. I am very thankful !
Oh dear. This will get awkward.
So he knows that Neil was giving Rodger tips on the work? And does he know that Neil is Nathalie too?
More likely the boss recognizes Neil’s input into Rodgers work. He’s unaware of Nathalie.
It’s kind of like Sparks in Phil Foglio’s Girl Genius…each Engineer has his or her own style, and as their boss, he can recognise Neil’s style at work.
So Neil … i mean, “Nathalie” … will have to keep dating Rodger?
Pretty much. I guess this means Natalie becomes a regular character now. 😀
I mean… regular appearance. She’s not a totally new character… unless Jeanie makes a female clone of Neil…
*RUNS AND HIDES!!!*
@CD – Woo, you are taking away Hitchcock’s title, Y’know…*laff*
I doubt the boss knows Neil was a girl. I’m sure most people don’t…
But, I think the boss is just being a typical boss, and is threatening Neil in order to get Henry to work harder. 😛
Well, it’s not like the boss is wrong. Neil is better at motivating Henry than he is so it’s reasonable to delegate that job to him. Although apparently the company is in a hiring freeze so he can’t just fire Henry and replace him.
He said “replace” not “fire”. So there’s no hiring freeze. I get the impression he had been planning to fire roger and neil just saved roger’s job.
I get the same one although I do find it interesting the boss has just essentially threatened to fire someone for showing inititive. He didn’t actually intend to do it but if he had been coaching Roger then it just got his job put on the line if he stops or Roger slacks off. That would be a strong motivation to never help anyone like that again since it puts your job at risk as well as their own.
He also doesn’t now Niel’s last name evidently. If he had hair, I bet it’d be pointy! (Just google “Pointy Haired Boss”)
“Henry”??? Roger’s (not RoDger–almost no one spells it that way…the letter there in Anglo-Saxon was either an edh or a thorn, not a d, anyhow, and would be rendered “th” or “y” [as in Ye Olde…] in modern English 26-letter alphabetics–the y is because of how the letter looks, not how it is pronounced) _last_ name is Heany (or some variant thereof, depending on CD’s whimsical approach to spelling). In the TV series, I believe the character (Tony’s sidekick) was Roger Healy.
You may have noticed, most of the characters have different names then the tv show counter parts
Even ‘Jeanie’ instead of Jeannie. Which was done on purpose.
Visit the cast page for this comics version of the characters names.
😮
Oh dears… well hey, Jean has some company in the forced-to-be-female camp then, least neil will only part-time it.
I hate when bosses ask “do you take me for a fool”, that is a trick question. Never answer that with a “yes”, no matter how much they say they want honesty in the workplace.
I will always remember the scene from the pilot of disney’s gummi bears show:
Igthorn: Pray tell me, how did you come to fall on me out of the clear blue sky?
Gad: Little boy threw us here.
Zook: From catapult camp.
Igthorn: What kind of a fool do you take me for?
Gad: Dunno, how many kinds are there?
The next time you see them it is probably hours later (the earlier scene was in the morning and in this one the sun is setting) and Igthorn is STILL bashing Gad’s skull into the ground.
So, yeah, no matter what they say about honest in the workplace, it’s never the right answer.
Its a fun one though especially if your planning to leave soon anyway.
“There best effort” ?!. Fail.
No, the fail is in being a jerk about how you point it out.
Being a complete prat about CD’s dyslexia?
Epic Fail.
Wait…CD has Dyslexia??? I can certainly forgive, being a Dyslexic myself. I tend to ignore the typos, as I can figure out what he MEANT, so to me, it’s no big deal, I just dig the story and watching his characters evolve, as well as his style progress in leaps and bounds.
@CD – Ignore the grammer nazis and keep on giving us our fix 😉
Okay, we had a big kerfuffle of a discussion about this awhile back so I’m gonna clear the air right now. CD doesn’t have Dyslexia. He’s never been diagnosed, so any accusations of such are simply incorrect (claims on TV Tropes notwithstanding…they’ve since been excised, with extreme prejudice).
Anyone who’s insinuated otherwise either read the TV Tropes article (before my judicious edit, that is), is simply speculating, or is trying to start a flame war. I doubt the latter, but I’m just being thorough here.
There doesn’t need to be a diagnosis here, folks. I’ve got a friend who has much the same problem, and he’s a University Professor. It’s not anything diagnosable, it’s just something he has to deal with. He just has to be mindful of it, that’s all.
(Incidentally, I met him AFTER the last kerfuffle…would’ve been nice to know that was a thing when it came up last time…still, now I know)
CD HAS said that he doesn’t mind being told about grammar problems as long as it’s done in a POLITE AND RESPECTFUL MANNER.
CD, it should be “And as long as a team looks ITS best when all the players give THEIR best efforts”.
There. Was that so hard?
Well, I apologise for sounding like an arse. And I further apologise if there’s any dyslexia involved, but I’d be suprised if there was as everything else is written so well. It’s only when a piece of writing is otherwise good that I spot the little errors and expect better from the writer. You’re right, it wouldn’t have been hard to put it in a more polite manner.
And that’s all CD has asked, Andrew. I can’t speak for him, but I think he’d accept your apology.
Take care.
I too, apologise. My dyslexia is mostly numeric, I tend to screw up sequences of numbers more than three digits…imagine the bald spots on the side of my head during tax season…waitaminit, it IS tax season…again…OMG, please, kill me now!!!
As the plot thickens
“Who would you like to go out on the evening with?”
Aracelli is the only female on the list.
Neillie and Jean might be female in body but self identify as male… due to having been male their entire life prior to the magical transformation.
Belle is a female too
How illogical.
I concur.
am I the only one a little let down by the fact that “Nellie* didn’t stay up a little longer as the icon. I get the feel His/her situation is about to get a little complicated
I don’t see how this could possibly go horribly wrong. There is no chance that Niel could get stuck as Nathalie is there?
He’ll only get “stuck” if Jean refuses to listen to her master when he tells her to transform him back.
OR if he makes a stupid wish. For example, “I wish I didn’t have to keep changing sex.” Poof, he’s permanently female and the world always believed he was female and now she’s also dating her coworker.
I’m having trouble following the boss’ logic. From what other people above have commented, he’s apparently mad that Rodger is just imitating Neil, instead of doing his own work? Or… I just don’t understand. I must be missing something.
I would expect the boss to be pleased that a formerly under-performing employee starts performing, and I would expect him to reward the employee mentoring him (not threaten to fire him). Unless the boss suspects something fake is going on, instead of real improvement. But I didn’t get that from the comic dialog itself.
What am I misunderstanding here? 🙁
The boss is pissed as rodge has been performing very badly recently and neil has been seemingly uninterested to fix it and now he finally has. The boss knows that neil helped rodge and is pissed he didnt do it earlier. And if he lets rodge slip again the boss will get rid of them both, one for bad performance and the other for not fixing his coworker. I think the main trick is the boss assumed neil was failing at helping him, but now it seems the boss thinks neil hadnt bothered until he had threatened to fire his friend.
It’s not that surpising, look up Xyz theories of management. In this case the boss is close to a X theory manager: Theory X is a management approach that “assumes workers are lazy, have little ambition, and are motivated by coercion and threats.” Sadly many managers fall into theory X.
No matter how many articles and books are written on modern management, nor how many companies decline and founder, Theory X management, despite now being some fifty-plus years out of date, will never disappear because it appeals to the kind of person who becomes a manager out of desire to have power over other people. These people are typically psychopaths (sociopaths) and are far more driven to seek management roles than those who want to manage for other reasons (to realize ideas, to help develop other workers, etc.) In my career, I believe that over 50% of my bosses have been psychopaths. They are also very good at escaping from the organization before it crumbles from the consequences of their misrule.
Poor Neil! He not only is working for such a boss (you can tell, because he uses threats as motivation, and brings up termination as a “remedy” from the beginning), but he is living with one, Jea(nie), who wreaks havoc with her powers, indifferent to the problems caused for other people. “Hey, I don’t want to go on a dinner date with Neil’s jerk colleague, so I’ll just TURN NEIL INTO A GIRL AND HAVE HIM/HER DO IT.” Textbook sociopathy (if psych texts allowed for magical cosmic genie powers).
Jeannie has already littered the landscape with TG-ed victims. How long before Neil ends up stuck as Neille (or whatever name she decides to go by) while Jeannie moves on–such as by having the bottle change owners when the cleaning lady accidentally knocks it out the window and onto a passing truck…
🙁
It’s rare that I’ve had bosses that think that way — at least immediate bosses. Their bosses and the upper management of a company are a different picture, but my software jobs are usually run by people who think and feel and have a strong capacity for real analysis. Sadly in many places, those aren’t the people seeking to become managers.
So, his boss is ordering him to help his co-worker pick up his slack?
Anything special planned for #200?
I want to say I have enjoyed this strips from beginning to the end. It has kept my attention and I check on the strip once a day to find out if a new strip has been added. I am very thankful !
How about having Neil sponsor a needy child through Children International.
I didn’t think we seen the end of Nell the sexy librarian .
Please have Jean Neil into Neilie more often.
The comma in the last panel changes the meaning of what the boss is saying and is a bit confusing.
“I want you to keep coaching your friend, Mr. Heeny.” – is the same as “Mr. Heeny, I want you to keep coaching your friend.”
Without the comma, it becomes equivalent to “I want you to keep coaching Mr. Heeny, your friend.”
Yeah, Yeah, Grammar nagging again….sorry…