Jeremiah Tolbert

I used to work in a comic book store. Technically, I worked in the video game LAN in the back of the store, but I spent enough time there and occa­sion­ally manned the front enough that I can say, well, I worked in one.  When I was 17, I thought this was the pin­na­cle of jobs. I could climb no higher than work­ing in a comic book store, being paid to school n00bs at Quake. 

I lot of the “reg­u­lars” were… decid­edly sin­gle.  I mean, that doesn’t go far enough in describ­ing it.  They were absolute women-​​hating ass­holes.  Women were made to feel incred­i­bly unwel­come in the store by their leer­ing and out and out crude com­ments.  Many a friend has told me how hor­ri­ble that place seemed to them back in the day .  I was com­pletely igno­rant of it at the time. Well, almost. The “reg­u­lars”, mostly friends of the owner, were very deri­sive of me hav­ing a girl­friend.  They would often try to advise me on how my girl­friend would “screw me over,” and when I didn’t take them seri­ously, they’d insult me instead.  I wrote them off as being a lit­tle bit­ter, but I was liv­ing my dream and I wasn’t going to let their neg­a­tive atti­tudes drag me down.

Reading this web­comic, Our Valued Customers, has brought a lot of mem­o­ries of that time back, and not in a good way.  This is a web­comic that is not funny in a “ha ha” kind of way, although some of them are.  Most are funny in a “this is so fucked up, I hate human­ity now” kind of way.  It’s absolutely mes­mer­iz­ing to read these lit­tle quo­ta­tions of things actu­ally cus­tomers have said in store.

As a writer, I don’t want to shy away from stuff like this.  As a human being, the abject igno­rance, bla­tant misog­y­nism,  and gen­er­al­ized homo­pho­bia on dis­play makes me want to become a hermit.

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Tags: fandom, people, SF Comics