A couple of years ago, in a break room, someone set their popcorn to cook for 30 minutes instead of three minutes, then walked away. A fire broke out. Subsequently, all microwave stations now have a sign that reads "DO NOT LEAVE FOOD UNATTENDED IN THE MICROWAVE." Attached to that sign is one that reads "Please cover your food when using the microwave. Or, clean the microwave when you're done. Thank you from everyone that uses the microwave after you." Next to the coffee maker, there's one that says "Please only push the coffee button once to avoid overfilling." Ok, fine, that one is legit. But it's ugly and tacky because it's a little printed sign hanging in a plastic sheet protector taped to the wall.
A couple of weeks ago, some addition to the passive aggressive signs that I don't even remember now aggravated me into action. I was going to take all of them down and ranted loudly about it. Until a coworker suggested that I start adding signs of my own to see what happened. And this post was born!
I started thinking about this and solicited some help. Some coworkers made contributions. A couple of friends made suggestions. I went into action with a grand scheme to culminate on April Fool's day after which ALL of the signs could come down. The experimental first sign went up shortly after the beginning of March. It read "Please remember to ring out the sponge." Every time I type that, I have to go back and intentionally misspell it. It was a relatively small strip of paper that I printed out, cut down and taped to the wall next to the sink. Poetically, when I put it up, the sponge sat soaking in bubbles and god knows what level of filth in the sink. And then I sat back and waited.
While I waited, I made more signs and downloaded signs that someone else made so I could create the PASM AFD climax. I should probably say that I have WAY too much free time at work, if you haven't figure that out already. And after a few hours, my waiting paid off. Someone hand wrote a "w" onto the sign to correct the spelling error. I giggled with glee. That one sign may be the greatest accomplishment of this whole experiment because it was left up for several days before some party pooper got offended and took it down.
*flashback* Looking back through the pictures I took of the signs, I remember now why I was so irritated. Someone printed out really nice, very professionally done signs that were posted to the fridge, gently reminding the workforce that neither their mother nor their maid worked here. I was so irritated that people can't just be grown ups that I decided to take everything down and here we are.
To my delight, someone also corrected an error on one of the original signs that I'd been meaning to do for months. They crossed out "that" and inserted "who" using a Sharpie in the statement about cleaning the microwave. Bad grammar makes me twitch but I rarely carry a pen out there so I hadn't gotten to changing it yet. I thought "people here have a sense of humor after all!" and vowed to keep posting signs.
I was so wrong. People here suck. Every subsequent sign I've posted since then has come down within a matter of hours. They're not pointed at any one person and they're certainly not mean. But some stick in the mud just cannot allow people to giggle once or twice a day in this godforsaken intellectual vacuum. Am I discouraged? No. It just makes me more obnoxious. Stay tuned....
