The caller ID “BOSSMAN” and the Weezer ringtone sound like things Carol came up with when she was still starting the job and full of the youthful sass we saw more in Chapter 9. But then, she seems to have briefly recaptured some of that sass.

Carol, like Annunziata, starts out fighting one fight and is about to get completely blindsided by a much more urgent crisis. In panels 1-3, her mini-vacation has been doing her psyche some good, and she resists HR’s attempt to draw her out of it. Note how she’s sinking back into the tub in panel 3, after taking the phone from the toilet, kicking a leg up as if to savor the air on her damp skin, and not even offering a hello. If she’s not entirely ready to accept that HR is “back,” she’s at least starting to treat him as more of a peer again. And then that all goes to hell.

Around this time, some readers started to think we were getting kickbacks from brands for product placement. Hahahaha no. I wouldn’t necessarily trust Carol’s taste too far anyway. I mean, remember what the inside of her car looks like.