Salary Negotiation
Salary Negotiation
[Ponytail sits in an office chair at her desk, with Cueball sitting in a similar chair on the other side with his hands on his knees. Ponytails has her hands on the desk and in front of her, there is a slim thing standing up. It could be a very small screen, but there seems to be no keyboard in front of her. Maybe it is a small tablet with a support for letting is stand up. Behind that there are what appears to be two piles of papers of different sizes.] Ponytail: We'd like to extend an offer! The starting salary is $55,000. Cueball: Wow. I guess I'm inside a negotiation! Ponytail: I... Weird to phrase it like that, but- Cueball: I can do this.
[Zoom in on Cueball's upper half.] Cueball: I won't accept a penny over $50,000. Sorry, I mean under. Under $60. I mean, $600. Thousand. $600,000. I want a 15% cut of the salary. Raise. Double down. Fold. Pass. Fill it up with regular.
[The same shot, except Cueball is now holding three pieces of paper, and he is looking down on them. Ponytail is talking to him from off-panel.] Ponytail (off-panel): Are you- Cueball: Sorry, sorry. Let me start over. Cueball: OK, my chart says... Cueball: ...Can I borrow a calculator? What's 20% of $55,000?
[Back to the scene from the first panel. Ponytail has taken one hand down to her knee, with the other still on the desk. Cueball has put the papers on his lap and has raised his hand in the air holding one finger up. In his other hand he holds either a borrowed calculator or his own smartphone.] Ponytail: Listen, if you need to- Cueball: I won't take this job for less than $61,333 point 3 repeating! Ponytail: Sure, $61,333 is fine. That's actually- Cueball: Point 3 repeating or I walk!

Ponytail 's company would like to hire Cueball for a job, and she is telling him that their offer for his starting salary is $55,000.
When offered a new job, it is common to negotiate on aspects of the offer such as salary, and employers may offer below the market rate initially in the expectation that the final negotiated amount will be higher. Given that the bedrock of one's future income depends on the outcome of a one-time process requiring skills unrelated to the job one is hired for, it is advisable to take one's time and do as much research as possible.
Cueball has clearly done some research, but perhaps too much as he is flummoxed by this high-stakes situation and starts to ramble with decreasing coherence. First he gets completely confused about the numbers. He says he won't have a penny over $50,000, thus cutting $5000 of the initial offer, and saying he will not have more than that. He realizes this was completely wrong, and corrects to "under", but is still 5000 lower. He then fumbles his words, asking for $60, then $600, then adding "thousand" for $600,000.
Realizing that he is completely off, he asks for a "15% cut of the salary". Here, Cueball seems to confuse salary and commission. "X% cut of the salary" seems like what a recruiter/headhunter may get from their employer as a commission if they successfully make their person hired.
The next word he says is "Raise". This could make sense if he already had a job, and wished to negotiate for a pay raise. After this, he begins to think of raise as in a card game and starts rambling off mainly poker related terms, like "raise", "fold" and "pass". He throws in "double down" in between. This can also be a card game term, as in blackjack where double down means to double a bet after seeing one's initial cards, with the requirement that one additional card be drawn. Lastly, he randomly mentions "fill it up with regular", which could be a request to a gas station attendant to fill a vehicle with "regular" (compared to higher octane) gasoline.
Ponytail tries to ask him something, but Cueball interrupts her, saying he is sorry and that he would like to start over. At this time he takes out several sheets of paper and looks at some charts. He asks if he can borrow a calculator and then asks what's 20% of $55,000. (This would be $11,000.) He eventually settles on a number, $61,333. 3 He even states that the decimals of 3 should be repeating, as in forever. This is exactly $61,333⅓. He clearly states he will not take the job for less than that. A 2016 Harvard Business School study found that avoiding round numbers is a remarkably effective negotiation tactic.
Since this is not that much more than the starting offer Ponytail is ready to accept this and says "Sure, $61,333 is fine." But Cueball interrupts her because what she just offered him was 33⅓ cents less than he asked for.
In the title text it shows that this is not good enough. Cueball has now confused himself to the point he will only accept exactly what he asked for, the bizarre amount $61,333⅓. Ponytail tries to explain to him that the point 3 repeating cannot be paid in whole cents, and tries to let him know that their payroll software only can handle whole cents, and he thus can get either 0.33 or 0.34 (the latter actually being more than he asks for). Alas, Cueball, either out of panic or a love of mathematics, shouts "No deal!" and lets the job slip out of his hands, because he has completely misunderstood the concept of negotiation.
For more interview-related xkcd comics, see for instance Category:Job interviews .
This could also be taken in series with Cueball (possibly as a stand in for Randall) misunderstanding classically "adult" ideas, see for instance 616: Lease , 905: Homeownership , 1674: Adult and 1894: Real Estate .
[Ponytail sits in an office chair at her desk, with Cueball sitting in a similar chair on the other side with his hands on his knees. Ponytails has her hands on the desk and in front of her, there is a slim thing standing up. It could be a very small screen, but there seems to be no keyboard in front of her. Maybe it is a small tablet with a support for letting is stand up. Behind that there are what appears to be two piles of papers of different sizes.] Ponytail: We'd like to extend an offer! The starting salary is $55,000. Cueball: Wow. I guess I'm inside a negotiation! Ponytail: I... Weird to phrase it like that, but- Cueball: I can do this.
[Zoom in on Cueball's upper half.] Cueball: I won't accept a penny over $50,000. Sorry, I mean under. Under $60. I mean, $600. Thousand. $600,000. I want a 15% cut of the salary. Raise. Double down. Fold. Pass. Fill it up with regular.
[The same shot, except Cueball is now holding three pieces of paper, and he is looking down on them. Ponytail is talking to him from off-panel.] Ponytail (off-panel): Are you- Cueball: Sorry, sorry. Let me start over. Cueball: OK, my chart says... Cueball: ...Can I borrow a calculator? What's 20% of $55,000?
[Back to the scene from the first panel. Ponytail has taken one hand down to her knee, with the other still on the desk. Cueball has put the papers on his lap and has raised his hand in the air holding one finger up. In his other hand he holds either a borrowed calculator or his own smartphone.] Ponytail: Listen, if you need to- Cueball: I won't take this job for less than $61,333 point 3 repeating! Ponytail: Sure, $61,333 is fine. That's actually- Cueball: Point 3 repeating or I walk!
