Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #24 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a humorous anecdote about workplace insubordination and clever revenge. Cassidy, a switchman at Minneapolis's Great Northern Railway yards, rudely approaches his superintendent without removing his cap or pipe—a serious breach of workplace etiquette for the era. The superintendent responds with a clever trap: he instructs Cassidy to leave, change his comportment, and return to request a pass properly. When Cassidy returns, now respectfully dressed, the superintendent responds sarcastically by saying the employee should "go to hell" and get a pass from the competing Northern Pacific Railway instead. The joke satirizes both workplace hierarchy and competitive railroad rivalry. The page's closing aphorism—"It is always good to be nice, but not always nice to be good"—suggests the superintendent's calculated rudeness achieved its goal more effectively than direct reprimand.