The late Charles Barsotti drew an employee crawling out from under an exploding desk, addressing his colleague, and delivering the line that must address both the explosion and the office setting.
Barsotti is perhaps best known for this cartoon of a friendly and anthropomorphic piece of rigatoni answering the phone by saying, “Fusilli, you crazy bastard! How are you?”
I initially thought of making a reference to that classic by implying that Fusilli was not just crazy but a mad bomber:
- “It was Fusilli, that crazy bastard.”
- “Fusilli’s not just crazy. He’s dangerous.”
Those captions, however, are too self-referential.
The exploding desk reminded me of the Ark of The Covenant that, after being opened, destroys all the Nazis at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” so with that reference in mind I came up with these captions:
- “It’s not a desk. It’s the Ark of the Covenant.”
- “The top drawer had a few pens, some tape, and the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.”
- “Someone switched out my desk for the Ark of the Covenant.”
Maybe the man on the floor had been e-mailing someone who got extremely angry, and the explosion is a manifestation of that person’s anger:
- “It’s not always hard to judge tone in an e-mail.”
- “She could have just used a cursing emoji.”
Maybe he was conducting one of those annoying phone surveys where people must respond to a series of questions by saying, “strongly agree,” “agree,” “disagree,” etc. In that case the caption could be, “I’ll just say she strongly disagrees.”
Finally, I addressed the committees that office employees are often forced to serve on: “I want off the disaster preparedness committee.”
Now let’s see how you did.
Since I started this commentary with two self-referential captions, I’ll begin my review of your entries with something meta: “I think I submitted too many captions.”
And here’s one of the better topical entries: “I tried to print the Mueller report.”
Good puns are rare but I like, “It’s casualty Friday.”
Many of you assumed the explosion was the result of a problem with the computer:
- “My desktop crashed.”
- “I entered the wrong password three times.”
- “Tell the IT department that I have a question.”
- “Ok, I’m going to need you to turn it off, wait ten seconds, and turn it back on.”
- “Not what I expected from a cyber-attack.”
- ”Don’t open the attachment!”
That last caption is good but would be better without the exclamation point. Understated is almost always funnier, as demonstrated by this entry: “We’re still negotiating.”
I like these two captions, which explain why the supervisor looks especially concerned:
- “He would like to speak to a supervisor.”
- “It’s for you.”
As I did, some of you imagined that the man crawling out from under his desk had just been speaking to someone who was irate:
- “If they call back, I am not here.”
- “I miss passive aggression.”
Although I assumed the desk was exploding, some of you looked at the lightning bolts and assumed something else (e.g., a storm or divine retribution) was happening:
- “I’m feeling a bit under the weather.”
- “Zeus, line 1.”
Just as I had posited that what appeared to be a desk might actually be the Ark of the Covenant, one of you suggested it was simply a box: “Turns out you can put lightning in a box, but it’s not a good idea.” That’s good, but it does not explain the phone on the floor. (On the other hand, neither did my Ark of the Covenant captions.)
I did not know Barsotti, but I think he would have been pleased by the number of fine captions his drawing inspired. And I think he would have especially enjoyed, “Tell the IT department that I have a question.”