Your mileage may vary, I don’t want to make light of emotional abuse and gaslighting… but I still snicker at panel 2. Honestly, this whole page of Phil’s is kind of macabre fun for me, the way it stretches a skin of normal human emotions over the rattling skeleton of HR’s insane actions. Look at that awkward, head-on-shoulder pose in panel 5 as he feels around for something in his drawer: a pen, perhaps, or a pair of scissors… no, it’s a hacksaw, because of course it is.

Not sure why Ferris was without his ID tag. I don’t think we’ve shown those, though we wouldn’t have seen them in the opening scene if the employees were wearing them on their belts, like they did at the last ID-requiring company I worked for.

If I had to guess, I’d say he’s part of a caste of “first employees” who came in before employee IDs were standard and who therefore aren’t as strict about them nor held to the same standard as others. This and attendance record would be the only two ways in which he and Carol were peers.