Yeah I think the “lesson” here if there is one rather than just advancing the plot for Gabi is that the work Gabi is doing is real productive work that makes something whereas the work the others are made to do is completely pointless. It doesn’t quite land though because that work wouldn’t be pointless if the machine weren’t faulty.

This is quite a difficult thing to draw, it would arguably be better to show Chief’s labour vs Gabi’s labour but that would undermine future comics where Gabi is going to end up doing the managerial and logistics stuff that Chief does. The problem here is that this is a fantasy setting so there isn’t really a “capitalist” to show the difference between labour and not-labour.