Archive for ‘Comic’
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While the customer is king in many businesses, it seems that at Roost Air cash is king, and the customer is only king by association to said cash. I’m sure they’re not alone with that business philosophy. But to be honest, with that mindset, they’re still ahead of the amazingly high number of businesses who won’t even let the fact that you pay them money deter them from treating you with absolute indifference.
Fun fact: In Japanese, the phrase actually goes “the customer is god”. Although one has to keep in mind that the Japanese have a different concept of god or gods. They certainly don’t mean Yahwe with that expression!
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Sorry for the slight delay with today’s upload, folks! I had a dentist appointment that took longer than planned. But you can’t prolong fun and joy forever, so I finally had to leave and just came back to the office.
Now to today’s strip: If I remember correctly, this one actually happened almost word for word. Not the fight between Chuck and Julio, but the way that a boss who shall remain unnamed handled the situation. I think it happened many years ago, before Chicken Wings was invented even, but it’s another example that sometimes all we have to do to come up with jokes is Mike taking notes at work.
Admit it, everyone of you guys out there who have ever had a marshaling wand in their hand have at least thought about using it as a light saber. (Or light sabre if you’re in the UK). I would venture to guess 90% of you guys have even made the light saber sound while swinging this thing. I know I sure have.
Of course leave it up to Julio to take it to the next level. It seems business for Roost-Air is still slow enough to give those two plenty of time to goof off.
You know what else would be cool? A light saber fish knife! Imagine the show at the local sushi place …
Do you remember the fuel prices back in 2008? It probably was my biased perception, but I got the impression that when crude oil prices doubled during the course of one year, so did the gas prices at the pump. However, when oil consequentely dropped from $150 to $35, I don’t remember the gas prices falling to 1/4 of what they were at the peak. I know, I know, there’s more than the crude oil price determining the price at the pump. Where I live, about 2/3 of what I pay is taxes. But although I use my car very little, gas prices are one of my pet peeves. It’s the only retail product where the price changes daily. I mean there are other commodity markets with highly variably prices too. Like wheat, meat, coffee, cocoa etc. Yet Starbucks doesn’t change its prices daily. And also burger prices seem to be stable over the short term. I see no reason why a company can’t calculate its prices and keep them stable for a month at least. Is it just that gasoline is such a fast moving market with razor thin margins, or are they ripping us off?
I’m sure this one strikes close to home not only with mechanics, but with everybody who has a well-sorted toolbox and any kind of spouse, friend or roommate living under the same roof. More than once have I searched for a certain tool, and finally given up, thinking that I must have put it somewhere stupid (my basement is a mess, and if you put a tool in the wrong place, it blends in the chaos and disappears like the Predator). But sometimes, a certain person who shall remain nameless, sneaks off a tool, e.g. my combination pliers, to fix my wife’s broken earrings, and forgets to bring it back. It may or may not have been a situation like that, that inspired today’s comic strip!
The real Nobu has a lot more stories about this particular subject since he has many more hours of flying helicopter tours than me. I had most of my “pukers” during fixed wing flights (among them my dear brother even) and not quite as many in helicopters. People are always surprised when I tell them that but I think with it fast moving skinny blades, a helicopter “cuts through” a lot of turbulence as compared to a stuck wing with a whole bunch of surface area for the turbulence to act on. Although, it’s been said that once you get sick in a helicopter, it will take you the better part of the day to recover. After many years of flying I have developed almost a 6th sense about spotting a puker before he or she gets in the aircraft. It has saved me from massive clean-up operations many times.
And on a side note: I have had days where I did so much flying and making so many decisions all day that when the clerk asks me at the end of the day if I wanted plastic or paper, I’m often so burned out and tired that I find myself unable to make that one more decision.
Has that ever happened to you?
Every now and then you make that special bond with a certain aircraft. I have flown many different aircraft/models/types/categories but I only have a few machines that are really dear to my heart. Everybody who’s been following us over the past years sure has heard about “Panaca Jane” I’m sure. She was one of those machines who never let me down for many years and still stands out as one of the top 3. It also turned out that by giving her a name, the crew paid extra attention to her and took great care of her. She wasn’t just a vehicle; she was part of the crew.
This year she retired from fire and started a new life in the power-line inspection/construction world. And yes, she still is painted the original baby blue / baby poo.
If she could talk, what would she say?
As a very little kid, I thought clouds came from the chimneys of factories. Not an entirely unlogical conclusion, I think. It’s probably because for a couple of years, when I was still in kindergarten, we used to live in a little valley with a huge paper factory. The river downstream used to be colored in weird colors, like pink, depending on what color toilet paper they used to make at the point. As a kid I thought that was really funny! But now I’m glad that we have stricter environmental protection rules!
Oh, and talking about smoking chimneys… Is anybody else annoyed, whenever there’s a tv news or documentary piece on pollution or the evil CO2, that they show smoke stacks emitting water vapor on an obviously cold day? I mean there is enough crap and pollutants being emitted, why not show the really nasty stuff?
Careful what you wish for! I know I would really like to listen in to what other people are talking behind my back. Although I assume that in 99% of all cases I wouldn’t make an interesting enough subject and they’d probably talk about something completely different. And with some people I know, I’m probbably better off not knowing what their true opinions are.
Decisions, decisions. I might react similar to Chuck here, because as a libra, I tend to be indecisive. Fortunately my ascendant sign is sagittarius, which means I don’t believe in astrology!
