Original Release Date: January 20, 2019
This and issue 7 are the first two issues of The Sbuirrels to have cover artwork for the issues. Over the years of working at Lowe's, I was starting to get fed up with many inefficiencies there. Mainly, the sugary pop gunk that would blare frequently throughout the store and the break room; stuff like Fergie, Andra Day, Daughtry, etc. I even made a drawing about it.
But another major beef I had was this. For whatever reason, we hardly had any cashiers at regular registers. In fact, we ended up having no cashiers at the regular registers and the only cashiers were at the self-checkout machines. This resulted in lengthy lines, with customers who often had large items on massive carts that were more suited for regular registers, customers with no knowledge on how to work the self-checkout machines, and no apparent help coming. I would call the code for extra cashiers to come up to the front end to help, Code 3, but rarely, people would show up.
I had told the store managers about this a few years ago and they said they had hired new people recently and the problem would be solved. And the problem was indeed solved...for a few months. I kept on getting frustrated with this and in the summer of 2018, I sent the store managers a profanity-laced email (some of which is in Ryan's dialogue here) complaining about it. The store managers understood my complaints, but were uneasy with my profane tone.
Lowe's corporate, however, was not so forgiving, and on August 4, I went to work as scheduled, only to be called back to the HR office. The two assistant store managers looked very sad. They explained the situation to me and told me I was fired (it wasn't as harsh as the webcomic here makes it). I was engulfed in total misery, angrily questioning myself why I had sent that email to begin with. It was pretty obvious that I wasn't in a happy place writing this issue, so I decided to release another issue the same day as this one so that people wouldn't be too worried about Ryan.
I originally designed two covers for this issue, one with text and one without. I wasn't sure which one was better. In the end, I selected the one without text as the image which it's spoofing is so obvious to the public eye. Here's the original cover with text:
Blood tutorial available here.