Blogfromthebarn

Signs of the times, revisited


I was walking through a shopping centre recently, just passing through as opposed to the indescribable hell which is "I need some shoes to go with this dress".

As I approached the bank of glass exit doors there was, predictably, a queue of sportswear-clad inbreds, too idle or obese to physically push a door open, lined up to be recognized as infirm or disabled by the infra-red beam and enabled to escape through the automatic doors.

No such easy option for me though, I'm emotionally uncomfortable with the concept of queuing and I'm in reasonable physical shape for an overweight man who's endure the gulags and 75 years of hard physical labour.

I strode manfully toward the doors, arm outstretched to thrust boldly against the aluminium plate marked 'push', expecting to emerge, like Orpheus from the underworld, like Gandalf from Khazad-dum, like Mole from the spring cleaning, blinking into the watery sunshine.

Sadly it was not to be, I stopped dead, I recoiled, the vibrations traveled through my rigid outstretched arm and noticeably loosened both of my remaining teeth. The door was locked, obviously I'd missed a clue, indeed as my eyeballs regained the ability to focus I discovered an A4 sign, power-pointed, laminated and sellotaped to the glass.

Did it say "This door is locked"? No, (although it obviously was).

The sign announced in bold capitals, in big block letters, that

"THIS FACILITY IS NOT CURRENTLY FUNCTIONAL".

Gentle reader, unlike the painfully verbose and erudite author of that piece of public informative signage, for once, words failed me.



More signs of the times here

Labels: signs morons verbosity management-speak

posted by Stuffy @ 11:49 am