Tag Archives: confusing signs

Mysteries

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No matter what else I’m reading, I always have at least one mystery novel on my nightstand. At the end of a long day of bad news — far too frequent, these days — I need to dip into an orderly world where justice prevails. Yes, I know some mysteries deviate from that pattern. I don’t read those. How do I know whether a mystery fits my criteria? I read the last page first. Real life is surprising enough! Plus, I nearly always forget the identity of the murderer by the time I get to the end of the second chapter.

When I’m out and about, I enjoy mysteries also. Sometimes they show up in an overheard comment: “He’ll do for a starter husband” (one twenty-something woman to another) and “Have you brought your business to a successful conclusion?” (dog walker to poodle). Before you ask, yes, these are real things New Yorkers said.

My favorite mysteries appear on signs. Here’s one:

No one can read this without wondering which ingredients the store won’t sell. Unethically sourced shea butter? Uranium? Magic beans? It’s a mystery.

Here’s another mysterious sign:

Let’s get practical: How does the site owner know what parents have said to their kids? Does telling children of the dangers of trespassing fulfill the parents’ obligation? (“I told you, now go and trespass if you want.”) Also, isn’t trespassing anywhere a dangerous activity? Or only on this site?

Another mystery:

I’m ignoring the subject-verb agreement error (Shower Caps should Keep, not Keeps). What I really want to know is whether there are Shower Caps that make hair wet. Also, is there a shower cap that keeps something other than HAIR DRY? Maybe there are Shower Caps for toes? Or belly buttons? Elbows, perhaps?

The mysteries presented here don’t conclude with justice triumphant, but neither do they honor the guilty. They’re just mysteries that add a little fun to my life and, I hope, to yours also.

Private Lives

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In this age of social media, you might think that nothing is private. Think again:

I do my own laundry, but if I sent it to a LAUNDRY, I’d select this store. My clothing is on the shy side and prefers not to whirl around with others’ duds.

Here’s an odd take on privacy:

I’d love to see a definition of personal hygiene practices. If they’re prohibited, must you forgo handwashing after using these Restrooms? Also, why practices? Is personal hygiene one of those skills you have to spend 10,000 hours on to perfect? I snapped this photo in 2017, so perhaps the word practices is out of date. We all learned how to wash our hands during the pandemic, didn’t we?

This Private Property requires good posture:

Somehow I thought the decision to lean or not to lean was a private matter.

On a more personal (but not private) note, I wish you and your family a happy, healthy 2026.

This Holiday Season

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Who doesn’t love the holidays? Lots of people, actually. If you’re stressed out, I have some suggestions. First of all, ignore signs like this:

If it’s NEW it can’t be a TRADITION, not if you accept the dictionary definition (“a long established custom passed from generation to generation”). Besides, you’re probably too busy to add anything NEW to your to-do list.

If you’re absolutely determined to try something NEW, here’s a possibility:

DROP-OFF your CHILD and let peace and quiet descend. Brilliant! And if the kid comes back in less-than-perfect condition, you can always go here:

After you pick up your clean, neatly folded offspring, stash them in a drawer and head to the mall. But avoid this store:

Why would you buy something at a store promising to lower the price after you’ve plunked over some cash? Be wary of this shop, too:

The 99 CENT part sounds good, but what about the PLUS? Thousand-dollar T-SHIRTS, million-dollar UNDERWEAR . . . the sky’s the limit.

That’s all the advice I have today, except for this: Find a way to enjoy whatever holidays you celebrate, and find a way to help someone who needs it. I wish you all the joy of this holiday season!

Moody Blues

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The national mood, and, I must admit, my own mood, is so down that an elevator to the sub-basement wouldn’t reach it. What to do in response? Well, you can have a serving of this:

(Photo courtesy of my friend Catherine, who prefers grape jelly and proper spelling)

Judging from the muttering and sometimes shouting of Gripe(s) I hear, this is a popular option. However justified your Gripe, though, venting your feelings is a short-term fix at best.

An alternative:

(Photo courtesy of my friend Deborah)

In my experience, inflicting the SILENT TREATMENT on others seldom yields positive results. The target may experience the silence as agreement or worse, welcome it as a peaceful interlude.

What else can you try? Here’s a tempting option:

The problem with BREAKING, REMOTE or otherwise, is that at some point you have to put the pieces back together.

One more:

I posted this photo of a New York Times headline eight years ago, commenting on the repetitive nature of the expression Failing to Succeed. (What’s the alternative — Failing to Fail? Succeeding to Success?) But now I’m focusing on Giving Compromise a Try. Not on matters of principle, of course. But maybe finding common ground around the edges of less important disagreements can lead us, and our national mood, out of the sub-basement. Perhaps as high as the basement? Surely that’s not too much to ask?

The Proofreader’s Lament

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Proofreaders make comments to writers, who are supposed to amend their text accordingly. That’s a good system — when it’s actually put into practice. Not so in these signs.

First is a sign my student Allison sent me. There’s a ton of words, but if you persevere, the last line makes the time you spent reading more than worth the effort:

If it’s still too long let me know must have been meant for the person in charge of placing labels on food, who, based on this sign, either had way too much to do or cared way too little about the finished product.

Next is a sign — one of a dozen or so — posted on West 72nd and Broadway when Pope Francis visited New York City in 2015:

Once again, it’s worth plowing through these nearly unintelligible instructions for trash pickup to arrive at the last line: he said the 4 — 12 shift. If he was Pope Francis, I commend him (posthumously) for his attention to detail.

I found this one while searching for a place to stay during a recent trip. I won’t reveal the name of the perpetrator, but I will say that it’s a major hotel chain:

The fun part of this caption appears in the center of the second line. The text indeed needs a comma, and the hotel needs to pay more attention to its advertising.

Whatever form your labors take, I wish you a Happy change to lower case Labor Day weekend.

If you know, you know . . .

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A former student of mine recently put out a call for catchphrases unique to a family. If you’re in the family, you know the meaning. If you’re not in the family, you don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on. These signs fall into the “if you know, you know” category. They make perfect sense to somebody, somewhere, but they puzzle to the rest of us. Here’s one:

What does RADIANT TUBING do? And what is it radiating — joy, sunlight, cosmic rays? Why must we BEWARE? And does BEWARE mean “don’t come within three miles of this sidewalk” or “take your piledriver somewhere else”? Theories, or better yet, actual information, welcome.

Another enigmatic ad:

I live in the sort of neighborhood where doing one’s own chores is not a given. Even so, I’m surprised that someone would hire someone else for BREAKING a REMOTE CONTROL device. In my experience, all you have to do is throw the thing at a wall. The wall generally cracks, though. Maybe that’s a reason to hire a pro?

It’s well known that some of us are not technologically literate enough to figure out an app. So it would not shock me to see a service offering help with, say, downloading, installing, and using an app. But the service offered by this sign goes a step too far:

I don’t need someone to PICK-APP for me. I can select an app all by myself!

Last one:

No, this doesn’t refer to a haircare product. It concerns parchment paper. Does anyone actually measure and cut the paper and then reinsert it for Decurling? This definitely falls into the life’s-too-short category for me. I use my hands.

Wishing you well in these dog days of summer! If your family has a catchphrase, feel free to share it.

Something’s Missing

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Every once in a while I see a sign that’s missing something: a letter, a word, a punctuation mark, or, all too often, clarity. Consider this notice, which was chalked on an old-fashioned sandwich board near the entrance to a rather fancy (i.e. expensive) food store near me:

I’ve cropped the photo, but nothing I removed answers this question: Place your party platters & cake where? The sign appeared at the beginning of a holiday season, so presumably the store was hoping for advance notice instead of a same-day request to rescue a host who invited 235 people to a celebration despite having only two olives and a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator. Which I’m pretty sure in my neighborhood is not all that rare. My sympathy is with the sign-writer, who neglected to squeeze the word “order” into the message.

This notice, which my friend Andie sent me, is missing an important definition:

I’m guessing the store doesn’t want to Refund any money to its customers. But what does Redone mean? (And why are Refund and Redone capitalized?) If I buy a salad and report that it’s a bit vinegary, for example, will the store rinse off the leaves and apply new dressing?

I’ve held onto this sign for a while, trying to decide whether it’s an insult to neighbors (RESIDENT TRASH) or an attempt to fend off TRASH that turned tourist and went sightseeing inside this bin:

Theories welcome.

I doubt I’ll ever patronize this establishment:

Some crucial information is missing from this sign: How deep are the cuts? Are we talking scalp-scrapes or decapitation? Also, do the police know?

My late husband spotted this sign some years ago, in a major-appliance store that went out of business soon after he snapped the photo:

What’s missing from this label, of course, is a list of the food that comes with — w/ — this Refrigerator. Is it stuffed with macadamia nuts and caviar or leftovers from the manager’s lunch?

All joking aside, we’re all missing something these days. Whatever you’re missing, I hope you find it!

Tiny Marketing

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What’s the opposite of “mass marketing” — the attempt to reach as many customers as possible and (unofficially) to bloat my email spam folder? I’m calling it “tiny marketing” — the attempt to reach a specific sort of consumer. Very specific.

Take this store, for example:

I was not surprised to see a going-out-of-business sign show up in the window of this shop. After all, they were marketing to one KID (indicated by the apostrophe’s position before the S) instead of to all AMERICAN KIDS, for which they’d need to place the apostrophe after the S.

The audience for this sign is also rather small:

Opera singers who are into DUMPING GARBAGE into an ARIA — how many can there be?

I truly don’t know how many vehicles this sign addresses:

Question: When you’re riding on ALT BUSES, what sort of alt rock is piped in? May I suggest Nirvana and the Foo Fighters? Maybe a little U2?

This product could have wide appeal, but somehow I doubt it:

I’m not sure I’d ever want my portrait painted, but if I did, I wouldn’t want Abraham Lincoln looming over me. I’d rather be in a canvas by myself.

One last photo, with no-question-about-it mass appeal:

Unless you want Shower Caps that ensure wet hair, this product’s for you. I imagine that’s all of us. I know that’s all for this post. Happy first day of summer!

City Reflections

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I will never love another city more than I love New York, but Madrid comes close. Much made me smile during a recent visit there with my older granddaughter, including some signs.

This one was posted next to the elevator in our hotel:

My granddaughter pointed out that whoever proofread “even just taking the instead of the elevator” should probably have climbed THE STAIRS to increase blood flow enough to notice that some words were missing. She also wondered if the sign implied that residents shouldn’t TAKE THE STAIRS at other times of day. I got stuck on the phrase by the time you get to work. Does that mean work begins at noon or later? We never found out, perhaps because we invariably took the elevator and our brains never got any extra blood flow.

This poster was in the window of a convenience store:

Translation: Water with Gas and Alcohol. In Spain, seltzer is “water with gas,” so I understand that part. But GAS & ALCOHOL? Is the ALCOHOL in question vodka, whiskey, rubbing, or something else? Neither of us wanted to purchase a bottle to find out.

Notice the red-and-yellow swatch on this sign, an allusion to the Spanish flag:

As I snapped the photo, I thought how lovely it is to be proud of your connection to your country. That’s not always the case, as these photos of a box containing a knee brace reveal. Here’s the front:

And the bottom:

The last photo is blurry because I had to enlarge print that was quite a bit smaller than the two flags on the front. Is there a consumer who needs to know the international nature of this product before buying it? If so, that consumer isn’t me. I just wanted my knee to feel better (and it does).

Whatever location you’re in, I wish you a pleasant day!

Command Performance

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“Don’t tell me what to do!” I’ve said that a few times — sometimes screamed it! Thus you can imagine my reaction to these signs, which give commands I have no intention of obeying.

This one comes from a supermarket, where it hovered over a display of creamed corn:

The supermarket seems to be issuing a command to shoppers: “Don’t buy these! Can your own Vegetables instead!” Side point: If I did can vegetables, I probably wouldn’t be able to hit the rather small weight range specified in the sign.

Here’s another ill-advised command:

How do you Freshly Squeeze Organic Orange Juice? Does the Juice have private parts which you can’t Squeeze without being accused of acting Freshly? And if you Squeeze Juice, Organic or otherwise, don’t you end up with a mess, moisture and pulp flying everywhere?

Another command:

The definition of HANDICAP as a verb — for commands are imperative verbs — is “to impede” or “to make a task more difficult to do.” How do you HANDICAP an ENTRANCE? By placing sand in the hinges? Laying a speed bump in the doorway? Side (but important) point: I’d substitute “ACCESSIBLE” for HANDICAP. I’d also specify ON THE OTHER SIDE of what.

The first three signs are missing a D or an ED or an ED plus other letters. This last sign, which appeared on a van belonging to a renovation company, adds ED unnecessarily:

I’m not sure why a van, clearly transporting construction materials to a job, proclaims that it’s FINISHED PAINTING & CARPENTRY. Then again, lots of people complain that their contractor extends the work period to infinity. So perhaps a statement that they’ve FINISHED a job is smart advertising.

Here’s a command to you: Have a lovely Memorial Day, but pause a moment to think about the many, many Americans who have given their lives to preserve democracy, both here and overseas.