humans
Explanation
The Joke
The comic shows God in the Garden of Eden, proudly announcing: "There! I've created humans. Brand new ones with no ideas or opinions or anything. Now to leave them in the company of that evil talking snake." The caption below reads: "If God worked at a pet store, He'd be fired."
The joke reframes the Genesis creation story as a case of catastrophic workplace negligence. God is portrayed as someone who has just created extremely naive, defenseless beings (humans with no knowledge or opinions) and then deliberately leaves them unsupervised with a known danger (the serpent). The caption drives the point home by comparing this to a pet store employee leaving helpless animals with a predator -- something that would obviously get you fired in any normal job.
The Humor
The humor works by applying mundane, real-world standards of professional competence to a theological narrative. In the biblical story, God places Adam and Eve in the Garden alongside the serpent and the forbidden tree, knowing full well that the serpent will tempt them. When you strip away the religious gravity and view it through the lens of basic workplace responsibility, the setup looks absurd -- like an employee who deliberately creates a dangerous situation and then walks away. The pet store analogy is perfectly chosen because it captures both the vulnerability of the "products" (new humans/animals) and the obvious negligence of the caretaker.
The votey panel shows God looking at a clock face and saying "Better flush it and start over," a reference to the Great Flood narrative in Genesis, where God essentially destroys humanity and starts fresh -- further reinforcing the comic's portrayal of God as an incompetent caretaker who keeps making the same mistakes.
References
- Genesis (the Bible): The comic directly parodies the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where the serpent tempts Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 3).
- The Great Flood: The votey references the story of Noah's Ark (Genesis 6-9), where God floods the Earth to destroy wicked humanity, keeping only Noah and his family alive -- here reframed as "flushing it and starting over."