Tag: austin

Essential Worker: Union-Busting Instacart Fires Austin Employees During the Pandemic

Posted on January 25, 2023 by nachonova

I’m still so bent out of shape about this I don’t even want to write about it. I worked for the grocery delivery app company Instacart from 2018-2020, including when the pandemic hit. The majority of their workforce are contract workers, which is what I was when I started working as an in store shopper. I preferred to just do the shopping rather than driving around Austin too. Eventually I accepted an offer for shift lead, which meant signing paperwork to become a real employee with rights & health insurance.

During the pandemic, Instacart consistently failed to adequately provide employees with masks, hand sanitizer, guidance, hazard pay, etc. They made the choice to cut pay for employees and contractors at that time. I was pissed. Nothing happened to my pay, but the cut impacted a lot of people I worked with. I tried to unionize after I heard about Instacart’s first union being established in late 2019 in some store up north. Instacart did everything they could to shut down unionization efforts, including firing all their Austin area employees.

What a shitty move! So please join me in protesting Instacart. They’re a terrible, amoral company. I remember asking in a Zoom meeting why managers who didn’t even set foot in the actual grocery stores were getting hazard pay but actual employees weren’t. The regional director manager guy got all pissed & said people like me had a bad attitude. No shit dude, if I got way more money for doing way less I’d probably be all content & pissy if someone called me on it. This whole situation bummed me out, I liked what I did.

If I can provide one piece of commentary that isn’t me griping about my old job, it’s remember drawing this page & finally getting frustrated about how small I draw these comics. When I started doing these comics, I chose to draw them small (they’re reproduced for print basically at 1:1). It was to allow myself to make quick & dirty comics & not think too much or spend too much time on it. Clearly I’ve reverted back to my old ways & done the complete opposite. This format isn’t the best for the wide shots with a lot of detail. After Human Stuff #3 is complete, I’m excited to change up how I draw these autobiographical comics.

Social Distancing: A Comic About the Pandemic

Posted on January 18, 2023 by nachonova

I’ve been meaning to post these comics for a long time. It was something I stopped prioritizing because I wanted to release this comic series out as a zine first. Now that I’m doing the zine, I can share this series of pandemic comics. These also appeared in Human Stuff 2: Cuts of Me.

These comics are about how I was processing the pandemic at the time I drew them, from late 2020 through early 2021. It was a lot that was happening at once, felt like the world was experiencing a major event. It caused me to take stock of my life in a way that I’m sure a lot of people did.

This comic is sort of the overture to the next six pages. I remember how the signs the pandemic was happening arrived before the pandemic actually got to the Austin community. People were freaked out. In my head it seemed like a repeat of the bird flu & swine flu outbreaks from the mid/late aughts. At that time I worked in a pharmacy in San Francisco & was used to people wearing masks during times like these. Maybe it was this false sense of security that led to me getting coronavirus in February 2020 before thinking to take any precaution.

Wild how the pandemic is still happening, right? It’s just sort of a way of life now, people pretend like it’s over. Anyhow, tune in next week to learn how the pandemic ended my job.

Hourly Comic Day 2022

Posted on February 1, 2022 by nachonova

Another thrilling Hourly Comic Day! I’m a big furniture assembly head. Just try keeping furniture unassembled around me. I didn’t get too far with the name Generator, I have a memory of those things being more imaginative, or at least having better prompts.

Despite trying to stay busy, grief still has a pretty strong hold on me. Shock finally turned into sadness. The beginning of a process, I guess. The little routines help on days like this.