This month’s contest featured a drawing by New Yorker cartoonist Drew Panckeri, who helped us pick the winning entry and five runners-up. His drawing is set in an office, where a man in a cubicle is addressing a female co-worker. Behind them is a hellish landscape. There are flames everywhere, and in the distance we can see the ramparts of a castle and what appears to be a dormant volcano. The castle and volcano confused some people, including me. Drew explained that he was trying to depict Hell the way Hieronymus Bosch would have, and when I looked at Bosch paintings like “The Last Judgment” I think Drew achieved his goal.
Drew’s original caption was long but did a nice job of reconciling the disparate elements: “Sure, the workflow is never-ending, but at least we have all of eternity to meet our deadlines.”
Some of you focused on the volcano and submitted Pompeii jokes, while others focused on the cat calendar and submitted “hang in there” jokes, but none of those was particularly well-constructed. There were, however, several good computer-related captions:
- “Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?”
- “How do I change my background for video calls?”
- “Oh, nothing, just doom-scrolling again.”
- “I shouldn’t have clicked on that link.”
- “I put in a request to the Help Desk.”
- “Ctrl+s is SAVE ALL, right?”
- “How do I unsend an email?”
- “Did I reply all?”
- “Our firewall might be outdated.”
That last entry may also be the month’s best pun, but it has competition: “It’s all overtime.” That’s really good, but it would be even better if there were a space between the words “over” and “time,” which would emphasize, but not in a heavy-handed way, that the man is acknowledging that it’s all over.
Here’s another decent pun: “And what fresh hell is this?” The only problem is that it doesn’t address the office setting.
That’s not the issue with this entry: “And you wonder why I prefer to work remote.” The problem, instead, is the last word, which I think should be the adverb “remotely.”
I love this entry: “Boss wants is done by the end of days.” Some of my fellow-judges, however, argued that it doesn’t really make sense because, if the employees are in Hell, the end-times have already happened. I disagree. Though I’m no expert on Catholic theology, my understanding is that many people wind up in Hell before the prophesied end of the world. That’s the whole premise of “Dante’s Inferno.” I just finished that book, by the way, and Dante was one sick bastard. Honestly, I felt like I was reading the novelization of all ten “Saw” movies.
Here’s another end-times caption: “How do you spell ‘Armageddon?’”
Because of all the fire, there were several temperature-related captions, and these were the two best:
- “Maintenance says their system shows it is 72 in here.”
- “It’s not the heat. It’s the flames.”
Like that last entry, the following caption does a beautiful job of creating a fitting caption by changing just one word in an ordinary statement: “Smells like someone’s been cooking flesh in the microwave again.” It doesn’t need the last word, though. “Microwave” is a much better punch line than “again.”
These entries transform an ordinary statement into a fitting caption without changing a word:
- “There’s always a sense of urgency.”
- “This is no time to panic.”
- “That’s not my department.”
The next three captions all allude to the fact that, for some people, work is hell:
- “It took me ten years to realize I’d died and gone to hell.”
- “Honestly, this is just how I pictured it.”
- “This is my own personal hell.”
The following entry suggests that the boss is responsible for creating such an unpleasant work environment: “He says that if I apply myself, I can get a little desk fan.” And this caption suggests the boss is a horse’s ass: “My manager encouraged me to view this inferno and an infer-yes.” Even though that’s a fine example of a caption so bad it’s good, I have to admit it made me laugh out loud, perhaps because I’ve known managers who would makes similar comments in a misguided attempt to sound clever or inspiring.
Bob Mankoff liked this caption because it captured a certain aspect of his marriage: “I can’t believe you would follow me all the way to HELL just to complain about putting the bread away without a twisty tie!”
This caption explains why the office worker who’s speaking ended up in Hell: “I stole a pen once. You?”
The next two entries make the man who’s speaking unusually and inappropriately calm:
- “Of course I know. It’s killing my plant.”
- “That’s nothing. My stapler is missing.”
Finally, here are two captions that make the speaker oblivious:
- “What’s the commotion? Did someone bring doughnuts?”
- “I want to quit, but I’m waiting for a sign.”
Congratulations to ANDREW WELHOUSE, who submitted the winning entry: “Honestly, this is just how I pictured it.” He’s having a good week, as he also just won The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest featuring E.S. Glenn’s drawing of a witch using her camera phone to take a picture of a boiling cauldron. His winning entry was,“Now for the most toxic ingredient of all—social media.”
The runners-up for our CartoonStock contest are:
- “Smells like someone’s been cooking flesh in the microwave again.”
- “How do I change my background for video calls?”
- “I want to quit, but I’m waiting for a sign.”
- “Boss wants it done by the end of days.”
- “It’s not the heat, it’s the flames.”
If you who want to see how we made our selections, we recorded the process and you can see it here. And don’t forget to pre-order my book on the caption contest here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250333407.