* {{Adorkable}}: Lunker is downright adorable; his repertoire of cuteness includes singing in the stockroom, noting that his 'ultimate dream pet' is a kitty, and wearing a bow tie simply because "Lunker feeling fancy today."
* FanNickname: The commenters tend to call Brice 'Brick' when they're criticizing him.
* FandomSpecificPlot: It's common to speculate what happened to the individual characters after the BittersweetEnding of the strip, especially the ones whose fates aren't resolved or hinted at. [[spoiler:While Marla, Cooper, and Val all have some form of closure and/or future, it's Stuart who tends to get the most speculation as to what happens to him. Common fates include a HeelRealization where Stuart figures out that all of his hard work was AllForNothing, that his bosses never cared about him, and that Marla and the other employees of Grumbel's were right the whole time about the corporate higher-ups.]]
* {{Fanon}}: Everyone have varying opinions on what happened to most of the characters after Grumbel's closure, but almost everyone agreed that Lunker finally got his TARDIS to work and Crystal became his first companion.
* HarsherInHindsight:
** A story arc about rumors of Grumbel's shutting down some stores just so happened to post the same week a bunch of Sam's Club stores shut down--controversially, some without warning. And with the final story arc revealing that Grumbel's files for bankruptcy, this becomes even more harsh.
** ''Retail'' actually ended its run ''right at the beginning'' of the UsefulNotes/Covid19Pandemic, so Grumbel's would have likely been doomed anyway. This may cross over a bit with HilariousInHindsight, though, depending on which specific characters are involved: many of the comments for the later comics (particularly those involving Val deciding 2020 is when she'll write a book) note the irony of the situation.
* HateSink:
** Stuart, oh so much. He's a PointyHairedBoss because he's LawfulStupid, committing to following every rule of what the corporate higher-ups want, even if it's impossible and/or self-contradictory. That he seems to have no sympathy for his employees and is a complete kiss-up to his own bosses only adds to how the audience is meant to dislike him.
** Josh got a lot of it too thanks to being Stuart's [[TheRenfield lackey]].
* JerkassWoobie: Marla's third assistant, Brice Tanner, tends to micromanage everyone and be a thorn on their sides, but he is portrayed more sympathetically than Josh ever was, especially when he is on the receiving end of Stuart's idiotic policy. Having the wool pulled from his eyes about how paranoid and ruthless corporate can get, and finding out how much ''worse'' his job could be under Mina, certainly helped.
* MisaimedFandom: This strip naturally had a great many current and former retail workers among its fans. Some retail employees, however, seemed to have difficulty distinguishing between their own work experiences and that of the strip's fictional world. For example, in one strip, Cooper enters the stockroom to learn that the day's shipment had never arrived, and Crystal (who was the manager on duty at the time) had done nothing to address the situation. When Cooper scolds Crystal for this, some readers insisted that it was actually Cooper who was at fault and he was bullying Crystal into taking the blame for his failure. Apparently, in the stores that these readers had worked in, stockroom supervisors were expected to call the store during the times that they weren't working, to verify that everything was running smoothly. These readers then imposed their own expectations onto Cooper, even though it was never stated in the strip that the Grumbel's stockroom supervisor is responsible for what happens in the stockroom when he is away from the store - and, in fact, in some real life stores, that responsibility would fall on the manager in charge of the store at the time - namely, Crystal, as the strip depicted.
* [[SpiritualSuccessor Spiritual Precursor]]: The British TV series, ''Series/AreYouBeingServed'', is in many ways the 1970s British precursor to this strip and the contrast of retail styles from the 1970s and now is quite striking. This similarity has been acknowledged by one or two {{Shout Out}}s to ''Are You Being Served?'', like Stuart spending his vacation at a "Power Management Retreat" run by a [[http://retailcomics.com/comic/april-27-2009/ Mr. Rumbold]].
* TearJerker: The ending of the strip. As much as the main cast hated it for years, for so many years Grumbel's was a part of their lives, and now it's all over for them. And while one hopes they keep in touch over the years, it's very likely they will drift apart. The [[NoEnding non-ending]] is also rather poignant: [[spoiler:Grumbel's will be replaced by a dollar store.]] A sign of the times, and [[HarsherInHindsight all too familiar]] to some people.
* TheWoobie:
** Cooper. His father ran out on the family when he was young, and when he was in high school his mother fell ill, forcing him to enter the workforce at a young age (and not go to college) just to provide. He spends a good portion of the series teetering on the edge of poverty, at one point having to work two jobs to make ends meet, and would have been forced to file for medical bankruptcy after contracting appendicitis had a DeusExMachina not intervened. Just when he decides he needs to improve his life and starts looking to go to community college, his [[TheAllegedCar car]] breaks down for good and his scooter gets stolen the same day. Things only really start looking up for him when he gets promoted to stockroom supervisor and moves in with Val. (Even his promotion contributes really, because he could have gotten promoted, with the benefits that came with it, much sooner but Stuart had no intention of letting Cooper be promoted ''or'' letting Marla know her store gets a stockroom supervisor until Cooper quit, and it only happened anyway cause Marla found out from another manager.) Notably, when he tells Lunker about the first sentence, Lunker tears up.
** Gary, Delman's stockroom supervisor, who's so beaten down by Mina's reign of terror that he just stands there and takes it, even having a BeardOfSorrow. Some fans expressed the hope that [[spoiler:when Brice quit to be a store manager in New Hampshire]] he took Gary with him.
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