There is a beautiful bit of “fan fiction” written by OhDearGodNo at the previous site, looking into Zucchini-head’s future. It is priceless. I won’t post it here because it’s not mine to share, but I hope that somehow it finds its way to this page because it puts a delicious little bow on the career of the consummate corporate suck-up.
Grumbel’s was already dead some years ago, as trite as it may sound, condemned by short-sighted policies and cost-cutting measures made by people hired to provide the most amount of profit in the shortest bursts of time, to men who couldn’t see past their noses.
As the noose tightened, the employees knew that the bridges were already burning. Those who had new prospects simply left without looking back. Those who didn’t or could make marginally more by staying did so only for their benefit. Those who worked under Marla, it should be noted, landed on their feet, in new jobs, with better pay, better benefits, better people.
Stuart Suchet expected some measure of compensation for his years of services, a proud soldier with pen and clipboard. He received a form letter, regretfully telling him that pensions and retirement funds like his were the first things sacrificed to ensure the ceos he hailed as gods were allowed to keep their bonuses. He retained faith that one day, they would come back to him, giving him a new job and a new store to oversee. He’d show them all, especially Marla.
Time wore on. His home became an apartment. He was forced to work one retail job, then two. He found himself dozing off on breaks that ended too quickly. His savings drained away. Interviews for better jobs came and went. Rejection emails were the rarity, more often new prospects simply never bothered with him again. Too old. Too set in his ways. Branded as a cog in a failed machine, with increasing health problems and a condescending attitude.
It was one day after clocking out from one job to go to the next that Stuart realized the promised day of reward wasn’t coming. Retirement was not coming. He hadn’t had a weekend off in forever. There was a very real possibility that this two-job hell he had thought was for lesser people could be the way it all ended for him.
As he realized he would have 7 hours after his next shift ended to go home, eat, get cleaned, do everything else that needed doing, and sleep, Stuart finally understood that there was a reason for all the jokes behind his back. All the scorn and disgust. He’d believed a fairy tale, an insubstantial myth that one day the wealth would trickle down to the workers, and his devotion to now meaningless rules had earned him nothing.
No one had been outside Grumbel’s to mourn as the sign was taken off, and there would be no one to mourn him.
He scanned groceries. A bad bar code. Some middle aged idiot says “That means it’s free, right?” He can feel a headache coming on as the idiot guffaws. “C’mon, don’t I get a funny customer discount?”
He looks down at what he scanned. It’s a single vegetable.
A zucchini.
He was still laughing so hard he was crying when they dragged him out of the store.
One’s first assumption is that the “they” at the end are whoever 911 sent, preferably mental health workers, taking Stuart away for his own safety. But without the amount of payback and “what goes around, comes around” in this story, I can’t help but think it’s just the store manager and some stock boys tossing Stuart out on his ear.
I know Norm did a liquidation storyline when the South Heights store closed but it would have been fun to watch Stuart forced to do actual work in a store and deal with terrible customers. At least for the last week of February. Then we could have gotten some closure with the secondary characters too. Lunker, Amber and Donnie have been there so long. Crystal and that other girl who dated Donnie (sorry, I forgot her name), too.
Can you imagine Stuart doing the kind of work that Cooper did at the South Heights store?
Going to post what I posted on the original posting here too…
“I do wish we’d gotten another week of strips. One that featured “endings” for all of the major characters. Marla, Cooper, Val, Stuart, Amber, and Lunker. But hey, I can speculate: Marla: Settles into her office job and enjoys not having to deal with any of the horrors of retail work. And if that wasn’t enough… she and Scott are expecting. Fiona’s going to be a big sister! Cooper: Finds the UPS job to focus on the very few parts he enjoyed about Grumbel’s – without most of the parts he didn’t. He wonders what took him so long – he finally got caught up on his video gaming backlog! Val: Completes a manuscript for her novel, which is rejected by three publishers before being picked up by the fourth. Signs a contract for two additional novels, the first of which she’s currently writing. Amber: Takes a job at a grocery store to make ends meet, where she’s discovered by a modeling agency. She is still in culture shock from such a career change, and from one more little thing: She’s engaged to Connor. Donnie & Heather: Move in together to save money after both take other retail jobs. Their nights off are spent with Heather beating Donnie at Zombie Steampunk Skirmish, but he’s getting better. Lunker: Lunker take job as security guard. Bad guys know if they encounter Lunker… Lunker Smash. Crystal: Oversees the liquidation while applying for jobs. Gets headhunted by Brad at Delman’s and gets an offer from him, but rejects it since she foresees something greater. The next day, she gets hired as secretary for the CEO of a jewelry/gemstone company, with the intent to train her to inherit the business when she (the CEO) retires. STU-MAN: Goes down with the Grumbel’s ship. Is too busy micromanaging 63 liquidations at once to apply for any other jobs, so he takes the first one available when all is said and done. So happens it’s what OhDearGodNo/Robert posted above :P”
Yes I added Crystal and retconned that last part, because what I came up with ain’t as good as THAT. A like button would’ve been nice for that post above, but I can just say I “like” it!
I always envisioned Crystal and Lunker bouncing around the country as friends in a camper van, Crystal with an Etsy shop to pay for gas and meals and Lunker singing without embarassment while driving.
Post-pandemic recon: Cooper survives pandemic warehouse work thanks to his years handling holiday shipments and takes over for Darnell after he’s promoted again. Val self-publishes her novel, which then gets picked up by a major publisher ala The Martian or Senlin Ascends. They get a slightly bigger apartment.
Amber finishes college remotely. We never learned what she was studying, but some kind of physical therapy is something that sounds like a good fit (given her high patience level). She gets involved in rehabilitation and home health care. And she and Connor are still together, although Connor’s had a bit of a bumpy ride employment-wise.
Donnie winds up working nights stocking at a grocery store. Heather picks up gig work with Grubhub. Her comedy stylings still fail. Andy’s idea of them moving in togethers sounds about right.
Marla becomes a warlock in running remote meetings for her new company, which adopts a hybrid workplace that allows her to work remotely for nearly the entire week. Which is a wonderful switch from having to drive to the mall 7 days a week.
I know you were trying to be nice, but it’s pretty sexist of you just plop Amber in to modelling when it’s been apparent from the get-go that she’s working her way through school. But just because she’s “the pretty one” you imagine her in a job that exploits her based just on her looks rather than her finishing her degree and having a career in something where she uses her brain.
She can’t possibly hurt him as bad as he’s hurt her, not really, although leaving him frustrated and unable to do anything about it is likely salve for her soul. Besides, as much as Stuart exaggerates everything and anything negative around him, being forced to have to work the floor one last time even for just a few hours is equivalent to being set on fire from his POV.
I can imagine a storyline where Grumbel’s dismissing calls to self-quarantine, only for their stores to become notorious for becoming “super-spreader” events.
Wal-Mart and other notorious chain stores survived just fine by virtue of being literally too big to be forcibly closed. As in entire neighborhoods, even entire small-medium towns would be have nowhere to shop for groceries or basic necessities.
Once again the rules were only really enforced for the little guys. Curiously, we all didn’t die, but a whole lot of their competitors did. Hmmmmm.
Fourth panel: “Oh, and I *did* lie to you about my car. I just didn’t want to to waste a nice day with one of your dull meetings instead of my family.”
Well, that could be what happens. OhDearGodNo’s story only says “they” dragged Stuart out of the store, with no indication of who “they” are. They could be EMT’s responding to a call to 911, or it could just be the story manager pulling a Stuart on Stuart by having the stock boys toss him out like trash.
As self-serving and work shy as he is, I’d imagine Stuart would either manage to avoid catching it by locking himself in the office area and avoiding customers, or somehow getting a shot of the vaccine as soon as possible (likely by posing as an old lady a la the “Titanic”). That being said, I can also imagine the Grumbel’s board of executives seeing this as a way of having one last blowout sale, only to wind up causing a series of “super-spreader” events across the country they get pilloried for by the media if no one else.
Poor Crystal. You just know that Stuart would have made her life miserable just to get back at Marla. He knows Crystal doesn’t have the confidence or experience to stand up to him, so he would ignore her demands and spend his time heaping work on her and reminding her at every step that she wouldn’t be in this stressful situation if Marla hadn’t bailed out on them.
Honestly…Marla did it right. Knowingly or not, she took a leak out of Cooper’s book in regards to leaving. Stuart was a prick but he was not worth the trouble of a rightly deserved beating. Marla just left him high and dry and never thought about him again.
I would have liked to see Marla settling into her new office management job, and finding out that while it’s a different scene, office work can be just as challenging as retail work.
There is a beautiful bit of “fan fiction” written by OhDearGodNo at the previous site, looking into Zucchini-head’s future. It is priceless. I won’t post it here because it’s not mine to share, but I hope that somehow it finds its way to this page because it puts a delicious little bow on the career of the consummate corporate suck-up.
This is OhDearGodNo.
Your wish is granted.
AHEM.
“Requiem For A Zucchini”
Grumbel’s was already dead some years ago, as trite as it may sound, condemned by short-sighted policies and cost-cutting measures made by people hired to provide the most amount of profit in the shortest bursts of time, to men who couldn’t see past their noses.
As the noose tightened, the employees knew that the bridges were already burning. Those who had new prospects simply left without looking back. Those who didn’t or could make marginally more by staying did so only for their benefit. Those who worked under Marla, it should be noted, landed on their feet, in new jobs, with better pay, better benefits, better people.
Stuart Suchet expected some measure of compensation for his years of services, a proud soldier with pen and clipboard. He received a form letter, regretfully telling him that pensions and retirement funds like his were the first things sacrificed to ensure the ceos he hailed as gods were allowed to keep their bonuses. He retained faith that one day, they would come back to him, giving him a new job and a new store to oversee. He’d show them all, especially Marla.
Time wore on. His home became an apartment. He was forced to work one retail job, then two. He found himself dozing off on breaks that ended too quickly. His savings drained away. Interviews for better jobs came and went. Rejection emails were the rarity, more often new prospects simply never bothered with him again. Too old. Too set in his ways. Branded as a cog in a failed machine, with increasing health problems and a condescending attitude.
It was one day after clocking out from one job to go to the next that Stuart realized the promised day of reward wasn’t coming. Retirement was not coming. He hadn’t had a weekend off in forever. There was a very real possibility that this two-job hell he had thought was for lesser people could be the way it all ended for him.
As he realized he would have 7 hours after his next shift ended to go home, eat, get cleaned, do everything else that needed doing, and sleep, Stuart finally understood that there was a reason for all the jokes behind his back. All the scorn and disgust. He’d believed a fairy tale, an insubstantial myth that one day the wealth would trickle down to the workers, and his devotion to now meaningless rules had earned him nothing.
No one had been outside Grumbel’s to mourn as the sign was taken off, and there would be no one to mourn him.
He scanned groceries. A bad bar code. Some middle aged idiot says “That means it’s free, right?” He can feel a headache coming on as the idiot guffaws. “C’mon, don’t I get a funny customer discount?”
He looks down at what he scanned. It’s a single vegetable.
A zucchini.
He was still laughing so hard he was crying when they dragged him out of the store.
Thank you for this.
<3
Excellent, thank you for writing and posting this!
One’s first assumption is that the “they” at the end are whoever 911 sent, preferably mental health workers, taking Stuart away for his own safety. But without the amount of payback and “what goes around, comes around” in this story, I can’t help but think it’s just the store manager and some stock boys tossing Stuart out on his ear.
I’m sorry, I meant to say “_with_ the amount of payback […}”. My diction software needs rebooting.
those nice young men in their clean white coats
they’re coming to take him away
BRAVO on the fanfic! Well done!
*Standing ovation*
Thank you, Robert. That really is perfect. Gold star.
Perfect story to the perfect ending…Thank you so much❣️👏🤗
Bravo.
I know Norm did a liquidation storyline when the South Heights store closed but it would have been fun to watch Stuart forced to do actual work in a store and deal with terrible customers. At least for the last week of February. Then we could have gotten some closure with the secondary characters too. Lunker, Amber and Donnie have been there so long. Crystal and that other girl who dated Donnie (sorry, I forgot her name), too.
Can you imagine Stuart doing the kind of work that Cooper did at the South Heights store?
Going to post what I posted on the original posting here too…
“I do wish we’d gotten another week of strips. One that featured “endings” for all of the major characters. Marla, Cooper, Val, Stuart, Amber, and Lunker. But hey, I can speculate:
Marla: Settles into her office job and enjoys not having to deal with any of the horrors of retail work. And if that wasn’t enough… she and Scott are expecting. Fiona’s going to be a big sister!
Cooper: Finds the UPS job to focus on the very few parts he enjoyed about Grumbel’s – without most of the parts he didn’t. He wonders what took him so long – he finally got caught up on his video gaming backlog!
Val: Completes a manuscript for her novel, which is rejected by three publishers before being picked up by the fourth. Signs a contract for two additional novels, the first of which she’s currently writing.
Amber: Takes a job at a grocery store to make ends meet, where she’s discovered by a modeling agency. She is still in culture shock from such a career change, and from one more little thing: She’s engaged to Connor.
Donnie & Heather: Move in together to save money after both take other retail jobs. Their nights off are spent with Heather beating Donnie at Zombie Steampunk Skirmish, but he’s getting better.
Lunker: Lunker take job as security guard. Bad guys know if they encounter Lunker… Lunker Smash.
Crystal: Oversees the liquidation while applying for jobs. Gets headhunted by Brad at Delman’s and gets an offer from him, but rejects it since she foresees something greater. The next day, she gets hired as secretary for the CEO of a jewelry/gemstone company, with the intent to train her to inherit the business when she (the CEO) retires.
STU-MAN: Goes down with the Grumbel’s ship. Is too busy micromanaging 63 liquidations at once to apply for any other jobs, so he takes the first one available when all is said and done. So happens it’s what OhDearGodNo/Robert posted above :P”
Yes I added Crystal and retconned that last part, because what I came up with ain’t as good as THAT. A like button would’ve been nice for that post above, but I can just say I “like” it!
Curious to know what you originally had intended for ol’ Light Bulb-head… going nuts and becoming the Phantom of the Shopping Mall?
I always envisioned Crystal and Lunker bouncing around the country as friends in a camper van, Crystal with an Etsy shop to pay for gas and meals and Lunker singing without embarassment while driving.
Post-pandemic recon: Cooper survives pandemic warehouse work thanks to his years handling holiday shipments and takes over for Darnell after he’s promoted again. Val self-publishes her novel, which then gets picked up by a major publisher ala The Martian or Senlin Ascends. They get a slightly bigger apartment.
Amber finishes college remotely. We never learned what she was studying, but some kind of physical therapy is something that sounds like a good fit (given her high patience level). She gets involved in rehabilitation and home health care. And she and Connor are still together, although Connor’s had a bit of a bumpy ride employment-wise.
Donnie winds up working nights stocking at a grocery store. Heather picks up gig work with Grubhub. Her comedy stylings still fail. Andy’s idea of them moving in togethers sounds about right.
Marla becomes a warlock in running remote meetings for her new company, which adopts a hybrid workplace that allows her to work remotely for nearly the entire week. Which is a wonderful switch from having to drive to the mall 7 days a week.
I know you were trying to be nice, but it’s pretty sexist of you just plop Amber in to modelling when it’s been apparent from the get-go that she’s working her way through school. But just because she’s “the pretty one” you imagine her in a job that exploits her based just on her looks rather than her finishing her degree and having a career in something where she uses her brain.
A truly smart person will take a job that’s high-pay and low-effort.
Spoken like a spoiled child. No, a smart person will embark on career path they find sufficiently fulfilling and stimulating.
From two quite smart people: Generally, only lucky ones do. Much more common to find fulfillment and stimulation on one’s own time.
Excellent “fan fic,” Andy. Adds to the satisfaction quotient.
I like to headcanon that Marla’s office later takes on some interns, one of whom turns out to be the hide-and-seek girl who inspired Fiona’s name.
“After all these years, this is how you repay me?” Is he high?
Yes..Stuart has been smelling his own Stupidity & Hubris for ages…Smh!
“Yes, I didn’t sue or press charges….”
Revenge
She can’t possibly hurt him as bad as he’s hurt her, not really, although leaving him frustrated and unable to do anything about it is likely salve for her soul. Besides, as much as Stuart exaggerates everything and anything negative around him, being forced to have to work the floor one last time even for just a few hours is equivalent to being set on fire from his POV.
At Will Employment isn’t working for you now, isn’t it Stuart?
I love Stuart’s face holding Maria’s keys haha. I will miss this strip and it was a great re-read
Ironic how the store closed right before Covid hit the United States. There is no way they would have survived.
I can imagine a storyline where Grumbel’s dismissing calls to self-quarantine, only for their stores to become notorious for becoming “super-spreader” events.
Wal-Mart and other notorious chain stores survived just fine by virtue of being literally too big to be forcibly closed. As in entire neighborhoods, even entire small-medium towns would be have nowhere to shop for groceries or basic necessities.
Once again the rules were only really enforced for the little guys. Curiously, we all didn’t die, but a whole lot of their competitors did. Hmmmmm.
Fourth panel: “Oh, and I *did* lie to you about my car. I just didn’t want to to waste a nice day with one of your dull meetings instead of my family.”
Ditto! 👍👍
I’d love to see Stuart:homeless,filthy and living in a cardboard box, begging for money beneath a bridge.
…Oh how the mighty have fallen…
Well, that could be what happens. OhDearGodNo’s story only says “they” dragged Stuart out of the store, with no indication of who “they” are. They could be EMT’s responding to a call to 911, or it could just be the story manager pulling a Stuart on Stuart by having the stock boys toss him out like trash.
Hands up, who else thinks Stuart would die of COVID?
As self-serving and work shy as he is, I’d imagine Stuart would either manage to avoid catching it by locking himself in the office area and avoiding customers, or somehow getting a shot of the vaccine as soon as possible (likely by posing as an old lady a la the “Titanic”). That being said, I can also imagine the Grumbel’s board of executives seeing this as a way of having one last blowout sale, only to wind up causing a series of “super-spreader” events across the country they get pilloried for by the media if no one else.
Sorry, meant to say the board would see this as an opportunity. My diction software needs rebooting.
He’d be vastly more likely to die from getting hit by a drunk driver on the way to work each day.
Poor Crystal. You just know that Stuart would have made her life miserable just to get back at Marla. He knows Crystal doesn’t have the confidence or experience to stand up to him, so he would ignore her demands and spend his time heaping work on her and reminding her at every step that she wouldn’t be in this stressful situation if Marla hadn’t bailed out on them.
Fortunately, Lunker is there to back Crystal up, and to make Stuart back off if he gets too pushy.
Agreed!
Honestly…Marla did it right. Knowingly or not, she took a leak out of Cooper’s book in regards to leaving. Stuart was a prick but he was not worth the trouble of a rightly deserved beating. Marla just left him high and dry and never thought about him again.
Thank You & Amen! 乁(ツ)∫ (Doing a Happy Dance)
I would have liked to see Marla settling into her new office management job, and finding out that while it’s a different scene, office work can be just as challenging as retail work.