Retail

Yeah, I couldn't possibly be right about anything. I'm wearing a nametag.

—Marla Masters

Retail is a comic strip created by Norm Feuti, that ran from January 1, 2006 to February 23, 2020. Set in a fictional store called Grumbel's, it was a Satire of the world of minimum-wage department store jobs.

The strip centered around an assistant manager named Marla Masters. While she's a good boss, she can't stand the bureaucratic nonsense set by the corporate offices, the intolerant and abusive customers, the ditzy and spacious employees, and the stigmas associated with retail workers. Other than that, she likes her job.

Marla was most often seen working alongside Cooper, a stock boy with a sarcastic wit, geeky tastes and a dim outlook about his job; Val, an aspiring writer and encouraging friend of Marla's who wants her to move onto bigger and better things; and Stuart, the store manager who sucks up to his superiors, follows every rule to the letter, and is a generally ineffectual boss.

Feuti has written a book based around Retail, called Pretending You Care: The Retail Employee Handbook.

---

Tropes used in Retail include:

• Aborted Arc: A Halloween storyline in 2008 took a break from the strip proper to feature a horror story written by Val. The story abruptly ended a few days in without resolution and the comic returned to its normal hijinks without comment until a 2010 strip had Val getting ribbed for the quality of the story.
• Art Evolution: Most of the characters didn't change much in terms of appearance, but Stuart seemed to have gone through art evolution the most. Cooper's nickname for his boss, "Zucchini Head," makes more sense if you read the first few months of the strip.
• Babies Ever After: Marla gives birth to daughter Fiona in the strips from Easter weekend of 2012.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Poor Marla. Anyone who has to deal with Stuart all day has to be beleaguered.
• Benevolent Boss: Marla is shown as a very competent, level-headed manager who is consistently frustrated by her higher-ups.
  • In a way, Cooper and Lunker's boss at the convenience store, even saying that the two are the best employees the store ever had (for not stealing anything). But that may be because of his low standards.
• Bilingual Bonus: This one (All hope abandon, ye who enter here).
• Blackmail: Cooper once blackmailed Stuart into giving him extra hours on the job after discovering that he will lose his job if the inventory goes poorly. He also blackmailed Stuart on another occasion to protect Marla's job.
  • Courtney is currently blackmailing Marla on overhearing that she's planning to open her own store. Her demands so far are to have all Friday nights and Saturday mornings off, a demand which Marla points out to Val is worth accepting since Courtney always calls in sick for those shifts anyway.
• Bland-Name Product: The store name is a play on the now-defunct Gimbels department store chain. The font used for the logo is similar as well.
  • The new girl Amber comes from Abersnobby and Finch, and frequently mentions how shallow and demeaning the place is.
• Bonus Material: Cooper's Retail Blog
  • The number used in the barcode of the logo used to be an actual phone number. People could call it, and leave their retail stories on the answer phone. Unfortunately as newspapers didn't always display the logo, the idea was eventually dropped due to lack of interest.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The health care subplot ended with Cooper conveniently winning the $20,000 he needed to pay off his hospital bill, along with a note that he had a benevolent cartoonist that looked out for him.
• Butt Monkey: Cooper is typically on the receiving end of most of management's dumb ideas.
• Catapult Nightmare: Happened to Cooper a few times (pretty much a Running Gag, really). Including one instance where he dreamt that Stuart wished everyone a Happy Easter, while naked inside a giant plastic Easter egg. Eeew...
• Character Blog: The now-defunct Cooper's Retail Blog, which sadly was discontinued due to time constraints - and according to Feuti, he lost the original material.
• Conservation of Competence: The low-level employees are almost all smart. The managers and corporate suits are all idiots.
  • It remains to be seen how consistent this trope will be now that Marla is to be promoted to store manager.
• Contest Winner Cameo: The character of Keith was named for the winner of a contest on Cooper's Retail Blog.
• Cool Big Sis: Cooper regards Marla as one of these, in his own words when speaking to Scott.
• Deadpan Snarker: Marla, Cooper, and Val.
• Delegation Relay: "Did they want a manager, or the manager?"
• The Ditz: Courtney, who is meant to parody all the incompetent people behind the register.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Cooper frequently refers to Stuart as "Zucchini Head" behind his back...and sometimes directly to him.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: After a fashion. In a 2008 strip, Stuart just can't understand why Connie (the new District Manager) would want to help them with inventory pre-counts.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Retail is a strip about... retail.
• Express Delivery: Marla's water breaks in the 4/5/2012 strip. She's holding her daughter in the 4/9/2012 strip.
• Failure Is the Only Option: No matter what the workers at Grumbel's do, someone won't be happy. And rest assured, they're going to hear about it.
  • Cooper will never win the Halloween costume contest (legitimately). Furthermore, no one will ever appreciate his costumes - and the one year that he dressed as a "normal" character instead of as a geek icon, everyone except him dressed as geeky characters instead.
    • Actually that storyline in question turned out to be All Just a Dream.
• Fisher Kingdom: Type 1, where anyone who works in retail long enough becomes jaded and cynical.
• Fourth Wall Mail Slot: Attempted, but abandoned - the number in the barcode in the comic's logo was once a real number where readers could submit their retail stories, but as most Sunday papers omitted the title panel, nobody ever called the number and it was eventually disconnected.
• Gentle Giant: Lunker, unless he's flipping out on Stuart.
  • Or when apprehending someone who pulled a knife on him.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: One strip featured Val telling Cooper about her friend's online business. When asked what she sold, Val replied, "her dignity and self-respect." It's pretty clear from the context what she really meant...
• Heroic BSOD: Marla has a moment after an encounter with a exceptionally clueless customer.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: After a fashion. Marla, whose pregnancy was revealed in August 2011, doesn't want it made public until she passes the 12-week mark; only she, Scott, and Val know about it. This leads to Stuart looking even more unreasonable than usual when she calls in sick, because he doesn't know what's causing it and thinks she's looking for another job.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: One storyline has Stuart passing on the job of doing presentation to Marla in order to get out of doing it. Marla gets even by doing the same thing and getting Cooper to do it (complete with costumes). The plan worked and Stuart vowed to never let her do any presentations again.
  • In a storyline where Marla takes a vacation, Josh takes over for her and Stuart abuses his Lickspittle mentality to the point of even having him wash his hubcaps. When Marla comes back, Stuart lords over her that he intends to fire her and replace her with Josh...only to learn that Josh can't work management hours, and thus Stuart is forced to wash Marla's hubcaps to keep her from quitting.
• Identical Stranger: Zoe, the barista, who looks exactly like Marla with blonde hair. Marla swears she doesn't see the resemblance, but at the same time is unnerved when Cooper starts dating her.
• Incompetence, Inc.: Grumbel's tends to promote based on lack of competence and writes draconian policies that make no logical sense. Just like a REAL retail shop!
• Ironic Hell: Jasper Morley, in an obvious Shout-Out to Jacob Marley, is forced to walk the Earth wearing Grumbel's Policy and Procedure Manuals around his neck.
• It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY": Stuart's last name, Suchet, is pronounced "soo-shay".
• Jerkass: Stuart, often, but the district manager Jerry takes the cake.
• Karma Houdini: Stuart, often, although he gets his comeuppance once in a while (see Hoist by His Own Petard above).
  • Courtney certainly qualifies. Marla once tried to get her fired but Stuart refused, because she's so incompetent (and thus can be paid a lower wage). One strip showed Marla threatening to fire her, but Courtney was actually ecstatic because she saw it as an opportunity to collect unemployment checks. As Marla uttered, she's impossible to punish.
• Most Writers Are Writers: Val's dream is to get out of retail and write full-time.
• Limited Wardrobe: Lampshaded hilariously in this strip.
• Morning Sickness: Marla is shown to be suffering from extremely bad sickness all day long during the first several weeks of her pregnancy.
• My Name Is Not Durwood: One of the running gags was that the district manager Jerry could never remember Marla's name, often calling her "Darla." Eventually it was revealed that he only pretended to not know her name. After that he started calling her by her real name.
• Nice to the Waiter: Anybody who works on the floor at Grumbel's is typically nice to other retail workers.
  • This could also, arguably, be the point of the whole comic.
• No Indoor Voice: Many of the customers communicate by shouting.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Stuart and Jerry, the district manager, always implement and follow corporate policy, no matter how ridiculous or obstructive, without question.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Lunker's real name, Mel, was only mentioned once throughout the strip.
  • A number of recurring customers are referred to only by nicknames coined by the staff based on their obnoxious habits.
• Only Sane Man: Marla, but also any worker who isn't in management.
• Only Six Faces: The main characters have distinct designs, but other people (customers and what-not) look very alike. Jerry, for example, looks like Cooper if he was older.
• Predatory Business: The employees are affected by their retail jobs even when they're not on the clock.
• Pointy-Haired Boss/Stupid Boss: Stuart, oh so much.
• Punch Clock Villain: Quite literally.
• Put on a Bus: Keith is arrested after holding a poetry slam in Cooper's lounge on the roof of Grumbel's.
• Rank Up: In spring 2012, Stuart was offered a promotion to district manager, and urged corporate to promote Marla to store manager (so he wouldn't appear as misogynistic as Jerry). He even got them to time the promotion to coincide with her return from maternity leave.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: To some extent; the comic is based on Feuti's own real experiences in the retail world.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Marla; Connie, for her short stint as district manager
• Right Behind Me: In one strip Marla says to Stuart that their district manager is a "mean-spirited jerk". Guess who was behind her.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Very, very deep on the cynicism side.
• Snipe Hunt: One of the pranks Cooper likes to play on the new employees is to have them find a "wall stretcher".
  • Cooper ended up being the receiving end of this when he briefly worked in the shoe department. During his training the shoe manager was telling him about the Brannock Device, but Cooper called him out, believing that it's one of the snipe hunts. As it turned out, the Brannock Device is a real thing (it measures shoe size). The manager than asks Cooper to search for a shoelace extender...
• Status Quo Is God: Grumbel's employees occasionally come up with great ideas to make the store run better... only to have them shot down by the management. Also, if any higher-ups turn out to be nice people, they typically don't last long; the old Jerkass managers come back all too quickly.
• Straw Misogynist: As the strips went by the district manager Jerry displayed this trope more and more, especially evident in how he treats Marla. Became even more magnified when he told Stuart that if the inventory count went poorly, he'd be forced to replace him with Marla because, as a woman, they can get away with paying her less.
• Super Slave Market: Grumbel's appears to be this.
• Take That, Critics!: While Retail was never actually a target of The Comics Curmudgeon, that didn't stop Feuti from devoting a Sunday strip to Cooper's reaction to "hateoncomics.com".
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Cooper finally wins the Halloween costume contest after several years. Although it turned out somebody else won, but Marla bribed him into letting her give the prize to Cooper.
• Truth in Television: Series creator Norm Feuti worked in retail for fifteen years. Many of the things that happen to the employees at Grumbel's have actually happened to him.
  • One character, Keith Sanzen, was based on a real person who won a contest to be in Retail.
• All the Tropes Wiki Drinking Game: The inventory service, EGRGIS, is a Portmanteau of Real Life inventory service RGIS and Egregious.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Cooper's massive crush on Val, which even had him end another relationship in order to pursue her. He finally worked up the nerve to ask her out for Valentine's Day 2011, and the two are presently a couple.
• Wedding Day: Scott and Marla had theirs in June 2011, followed by a honeymoon in Bermuda.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The location of Grumbel's is never given, but one strip describes a "three-hour drive to New Hampshire," suggesting it's somewhere on the east coast.
  • Based on other strips, evidence points to Massachusetts, which is where the cartoonist lives. Also, the district manager Jerry was mentioned to be in charge of the New England district. (Of course, a later strip says that Grumbel's added Georgia to the New England district...)