Tix is astonished that Tim wants her to suck an entire behemoth legacy database down via the network. It would be kind of like trying to suck the water supply for an entire town through a straw. That is going to introduce a huge amount of latency, (geek for it is going to take a hell of a LONG time,) even in a comic. Tix suggests a more cost-effective way to get the data but Tim blows that idea off. Tix calculates that she must be even more heinously underpaid than she originally believed if Tim thinks her time is worth so little.
If she's being paid by the hour as she sits there monitoring the data download, it might not be all that bad.
Oh, wow, Farty Poop has a slogan; It's a blast. Sign me up. Did this really happen? I can only imagine.
Gosh I hope she has plenty of coffee. Their slogan is a Blast of what??? Expelled Bowel Gas???
That blast thing is the $64,000 question, isn't it?
No one just sits there while some huge job like that runs. You run it in the background and do other things if your computer has enough muscle to multitask, which this one barely did—thanks to some antique memory sticks courtesy of Marilyn. The problem is it takes a couple of days, and during that length of time you're very likely to get a network glitch and the job will halt. If it dies at night, you will lose all those hours. Tix will probably have to find out where it died, realign, and restart where it left off several times, all of which, (even at her heinously underpaid rate,) will cost Tim more and take way longer than if he paid the expensive data center guys to just do it at the remote location where they didn't have to ram it through such a small pipe.
Well, she can just click the "ok" button, then get some blast for herself while the data creeping in. Unless sitting still and staring at user interface is part of her job also.
Hmm…so that's why my supervisor tries to take advantage of all of the Photoshop experience I have by having my design all of the office fliers and signage. I'm a lot cheaper than a graphic artist.
Hell, George, you are a "real" artist.
People in "lowly" jobs who have "higher" skills often do get taken advantage of that way. It's not a bad thing if they can use it to bootstrap themselves. You can say "Look at all these posters I did while working as a busboy/girl at Chile's" when you apply for your next better paying job and meanwhile the Chile's manager is giving you a chance to exercise higher skills.
In this comic, almost certainly Tim is screwing himself DESPITE the peanuts he's paying Tix. He tends to do that a lot. He has a very warped sense of "frugality." We already saw that earlier with the recycled workstation.
Theoretically I could make shampoo for "free" if I rendered animal fat and went out and gathered all the herbs and stuff. But how long would that take me and I can buy a bottle for $6.00