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Open talks: on the one hand, they’re an invaluable therapeutic tool (NOTE: Open talks have not been certified by the American Psychological Association as a therapeutic tool and are not intended to diagnose or treat any mental illness), but on the other hand they can sometimes lead to feedback — unwelcome feedback. People need to be cautioned about the potential for such feedback! And what better way to caution everyone in advance than to wear a t-shirt with this logo on it?

This logo was designed by faithful reader and logo-design hero A-wel Cruiz and you can now buy it on just about any CafePress product you can imagine, including thongs, but if you want it on some product you don’t see there just email me and I’ll add it. Feedback! Sharing! Open feedback sharing fever! Catch it, by buying products from my CafePress store. And then send me pictures of you wearing them, so I can showcase them on the site!

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Mary Worth, 9/6/13

THANK GOODNESS SHANNON ISN’T GOING TO BE FIRED!!! It seemed that the odds were stacked against her, with the only sliver of hope she had to hold onto being the fact that any threat to her job seemed existed only in her and Mary’s panicked imaginations. My guess is that Aggie only got all this sweet free stuff because Shannon went to beg desperately for her job and her boss, in between the heaving sobs, managed to discern that maybe one of the customers got bent out of shape about dumb crap, let’s waive their bill or something, ugh, get this crying lady out of here, fine, fine, you can keep your job, whatever, just go.

“They’ll most likely caution participants that sharing at open talks may lead to feedback!” is probably the most hilarious sentence you’ll read for the entire month of September, by the way.

Better Half, 9/6/13

The thing I like about this strip is that Stanley is wearing a shirt and tie, which means that it isn’t casual Friday at all, and he’s desperately improvising to excuse whatever horrifying biological noise he just unleashed on the poor client on the other end of the line. This seems much, much more like something you’d get fired for than for providing feedback to someone sharing at open talk.

Crankshaft, 9/6/13

Today’s strip will be Exhibit A in Mary’s multimillion dollar “conspiracy to create a hostile work environment” lawsuit against the school district.

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Mary Worth, 8/29/13

Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on eleven riveting days of vague worries about Shannon’s job, but here, let me sum them up for you: ever since Shannon enraged Aggie during a talk group, she’s been worried that Aggie will complain and get her fired — despite the fact that we’ve seen no evidence that she’s getting pressure from her bosses, or that she would be at all expected to be some kind of qualified talk-group leader, since she was first introduced to us as the teacher for Mary’s yoga class. Being a yoga teacher and being a therapist are not the same things, just for the record!

But anyway, Mary is determined to save Shannon’s job by any means necessary. Those means apparently include undermining the ontological structures that define the very nature of reality for the managers of Pax Wellness Resort. “Those policies that you think you have, that say the customer is always right? Those policies are false. They do not exist. Everywhere in the handbook where you see it written is a lie. Avert your eyes from it and blot it out with the darkest ink, lest your mind become unclean with falsehood.”

Gil Thorp, 8/29/13

Why has it been so long since the Mudlarks have won a championship in any sport? Maybe it has something to do with Gil and Kaz’s scouting techniques, which seem to consist of wandering the school’s corridors at random looking for big dudes. Today’s strip reminds one of 1 Samuel 9, when the prophet Samuel spots Saul son of Abiel — “From his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people” — and immediately hears the word of the LORD in his ear instructing him to anoint the man Israel’s first king. That ended up working out super for everyone concerned, so surely this mysterious hulking shadow will do great on the offensive line or whatever.

Pluggers, 8/29/13

We simply cannot emphasize enough that pluggers are wholly uninterested in sex.