Retail (comic strip)

Infobox comic strip
title= Retail


caption= Retail
author= Norm Feuti
url= [http://www.coopersretailblog.com/ Cooper's Retail Blog]
rss=
atom=
status= Running
syndicate= King Features Syndicate
publisher= Hyperion
first= 2006-01-01
last=
genre=
rating=
preceded by=
followed by=

"Retail" is a syndicated comic strip distributed by King Features Syndicate. It is authored and illustrated by Norm Feuti. It made its newspaper debut on January 1 2006, and then gained quickly in popularity following articles in "The New York Times" [cite news
url = http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60F1EFC3B540C728FDDAB0994DD404482
date = 2005-12-31
title = Panel by Comic Panel, a Retail Clerk Exacts His Revenge
accessdate = 2007-11-09
publisher = New York Times] and "TIME" Magazine [cite news
url = http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156607,00.html
date = 2006-02-05
title = Retail Revenge
accessdate = 2007-11-09
publisher = Time Magazine]

Setting

The strip is set in a fictional department store called "Grumbel's." Grumbel's provides a wide array of goods; customers have been shown shopping for anything from garden equipment and electronics to clothing and housewares. Given the wide variety of products available through Grumbel's it more closely resembles a Sears than other types of retail stores. Although the name Grumbel's is a parody of real life department store Gimbels which closed in 1987.

Besides being in a generic, suburban mall the location of Grumbel's is kept ambiguous. Grumbel's has been operating at least since 1981, as seen in one of the comic strips [cite news
url = http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/retail.asp?date=20080914
date = 2008-9-14
title = Retail strip September 14, 2008
accessdate = 2008-9-29] .

Cast

Marla Masters

Marla, a brunette woman in her 30s, is Grumbel's assistant manager and the main character of the strip. She is good at her job and cited as a reasonable manager, but is often discouraged when the bureaucratic rules set by the corporate office work against the store's stated goal of customer service. While the daily strip's plots often deal with her discouragement, Marla maintains an optimistic attitude and often mentions a dream of opening her own small store or boutique. She vents her frustration by writing a retail manifesto railing against the idiocies of customers and management, which at last mention had grown to 200 pages.

Cooper Costello

Cooper works in Grumbel's stockroom and is the store's clown. He is constantly frustrated by bad policies and customers, and regularly lashes out at the store by goofing off during his work hours and playing practical jokes. This attitude makes him a regular antagonist to Stuart. He has built a small lounge on the roof of the store out of old patio furniture dubbed "Cooper's Lounge" and also spends time constructing "Box Art" out of empty cardboard boxes. Some examples of his art include robots, castles, mazes and even a "Great Wall of Boxes."

Val

Val is a department supervisor and good friend of Marla. She is also a published creative writer and would eventually like to quit working at Grumbel's and write full-time.

Stuart Suchet

Stuart Suchet (his last name is pronounced "soo-shay") is the store manager. Often viewed by his employees as incompetent, he is a "corporate yes man" who implements any instructions sent from the corporate office without question. He has a working relationship with Marla and relies heavily on her to complete his work and keep the employees' morale up. He has a more strained relationship with Cooper and can't understand why Cooper won't follow corporate policy without question.

Minor Characters

Alan
Alan manages the shoe department and is good friends with Cooper.

Courtney
Courtney works as a cashier. She is lazy, ditzy, incompetent, and constantly rude to customers. She is one of Marla's sources of frustration (besides Stuart).

Keith Sanzen
Keith was added to the line up in October 2007. He got his job in the shoe department by contacting Cooper through Cooper's Blog. After starting work at Grumbel's, Cooper discovered that Keith had made a blog that copies his format exactly, hence driving a wedge between these two former friends. Eventually, Cooper hacked into Keith's computer and infected it with a virus. Keith held a grudge, and in April 2008, was able to get his revenge when he discovered Cooper's secret lounge on the roof of the mall, and started blackmailing him by making him give total access to the lounge. Within few days, Keith has converted the lounge into "Keith's Poetry Perch." Realizing that he has no other way of beating him, Cooper reluctantly called the police and Keith was arrested for holding a poetry slam on the roof. As a result, Keith is now banned from the mall. Despite this, Keith vows vengeance on Cooper when he "least expects it."

Keith is the only character known to be based solely on a real person. The real Keith Sanzen is a fan of the strip who won a contest on Cooper's Retail Blog.

Josh Tobin
Josh was hired as temporary Christmas help in October 2007. Marla hired him from a pool of otherwise incompetent applicants for Christmas positions, since he appeared to be the perfect employee: his application was correctly filled out, he showed up for his interview and performed well, and his references were good (if a little foreboding). However, Marla and the rest of the employees quickly discovered that Josh is determined to be the perfect retail worker and that he is fond of pointing out the policy violations (and other flaws) of his fellow employees. Stuart, of course, bonded quickly with Josh and considered him potential management material.

In spite of the other staff members' blatant dislike of Josh and their best efforts to have him fired, Josh cheerfully accepted an offer from Stuart for a permanent position at Grumbel's in January 2008.

Lunker
Lunker is Cooper's coworker in the Grumbel's stockroom. His real name is Mel and, according to Cooper, he is "bald, about 7 feet tall, all around huge and only slightly more articulate than the Hulk." Cooper took immediate liking to Lunker, as he has "chaos potential."

Mrs. Masters
Mrs. Masters' is Marla's mother. She is an understanding mother to her daughter, but frequently frustrates her with her inability to understand many of the inconveniences Marla experiences. A running joke in the strip is Marla's mother asking her to run out and buy something during holidays, which annoys Marla due to her belief that business shouldn't make their employees work then.

Jerry
Jerry was initially the district manager in the strip, who was even more obsessed with rules and a source of great frustration for Marla, whose name he never remembered. While his demeanor may reflect problems in his personal life (as revealed in a November 2007 story arc where he was in a middle of a divorce), the way he took it out on the employees of the stores in his district earned him little (if any) sympathy. Jerry was written out in May 2008 when he was promoted to a regional position.

Connie
Connie replaced Jerry as the district manager. She is portrayed as much more reasonable and understanding than Jerry, leading to surprise from Marla and Val that someone "human" could be in upper management.

Scott
Scott is Marla's boyfriend. He is a bartender at "Dave's Carousing Cantina" in the same mall as Grumbel's. They met after Val insisted Marla spend an evening out with her in February 2007. Marla feared that Cooper ruined her chances with Scott when he spilled the news that she liked him during a visit to "Dave's". Fortunately, Scott liked Marla too, and the two have been shown as a dating couple in occasional strips since that time.

Warren Warren is the buck-toothed mall security guard. His job is to make sure that the stores and the employees in the mall follow all mall regulations to the letter.

Jasper Morley (deceased)
Stuart's former manager, who died seven years earlier when he choked on a "Clucky Chicken" sandwich. He reappeared as a ghost in front of Stuart, revealing that he is forced to walk on Earth for all eternity wearing a chain of "Grumbel's" Policy and Procedure Manuals.

Zoe A barista at the mall cafe who has an uncanny resemblance to Marla (with blonde hair). Marla denies seeing any resemblance, although she was creeped out when Cooper asked Zoe out for a date. The date, however, went downhill when Cooper discovered that Zoe's dad resembles (and acts like) Stuart.

Style

The strip is drawn in great detail and appears in colour. The characters lives revolves in and outside the mall, with items like computers, sales registers, vehicles and other items drawn and presented as close to reality as possible.

While the strips generally are daily and stand alone, on occasions it is serialised or sometimes themed with the story running for a week.

The daily strip usually runs to four panels but on occasions there are three panels. The Sunday strip is in a two tiered format with a large logo panel appearing on the left of the strip.

Themes

The strip primarily focuses on the interpersonal relations between the characters and the additional people they are forced to interact with as a result of their profession. These types of relationships are based very much on the real life interactions of retail employees, and are then presented in a humorous light. There are several types of relationships that are explored repeatedly.

Employee-Management Relationship
This type of relationship occurs in nearly all types of employment, but there are facets of this relationship that are unique to retail situations. Some of the struggles that take place in retail employment is the issue of scheduling, managing difficult customers, enforcement of store policies, the perception of management incompetence, and so on. Feuti has used the dynamics of the relationship between Stuart and the rest of the staff to illustrate this relationship.

Employee-Customer Relationship
While the customer dynamic exists in all types of businesses, in retail stores this dynamic can take on a unique flair. Since retail stores cannot choose who their customers are, retail employees are forced to wait on anyone who walks through the door. While most customers are polite and understanding, a small percentage can be rude, egocentric, demanding, mentally unstable, emotional, or suffer from any number of other types of undesirable traits. Since all retail stores have a goal of earning repeated business, employees will often sacrifice their better judgement or dignity to meet the demands of such customers. On the other side of the relationship, stores often hire individuals who are not up to the demands of the work placed on them. When customers find themselves dealing with an employee who is incompetent, it can often be a very frustrating experience. Dealing with annoying customers is probably the most frequently recurring theme in the strip. For the flip side of the relationship, the character Courtney is typically used to highlight incompetent retail employees.

Employee-Employee Relationship
As with most emplacement situations, retail employees find themselves working with their coworkers for dozens of hours each week. This proximity forces relationships, some of which work well, other don't for a variety of reasons. While for the most part the employees of Grumbel's are shown as a group of friends, there have been exceptions throughout the strip's run.

Individual Store-Corporate Headquarters Relationship
Retail stores policies are often set by a corporate headquarters, by people who do not interact with customers on a daily basis. This can create tension between what the employees see as practical and what corporate headquarters views as financially lucrative. This dynamic is most often illustrated in the strip through the relationship between Marla and Jerry.

Publications

Collections

No collections have yet been published

Treasuries

No treasuries have yet been published

Parodies

Cooper's Retail Blog

In early 2007 the strip followed a short plot line where Cooper won $5000 in a scratch off lottery. While initially excited by his luck, he became despondent when he realized that $5000 was not enough money to have a significant effect on his quality of life. He cheered up though when he realized that he could use the money to purchase a laptop and air his grievances through a personal blog. Once the strip was published Norm Feuti published the blog and wrote it from the perspective of the fictional Cooper. The blog is used with his own personal blog to communicate with his fans and keep them updated with news on the strip.

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.coopersretailblog.com Cooper's Retail Blog]
* [http://web.mac.com/normfeuti/iWeb/normfeuti/Blog/Blog.html Norm Feuti's Blog]
* [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/retail.asp Today's Retail Comic Strip]