A while back I told you about these great new door signs that the district installed in (I think) all the schools. They match the ones at the district offices, which is good, because the more everything is alike, the more individualistic we become*. But I posted about their fix for the plaques that wouldn’t stay on, which was one screw right in the middle of it. Which is all a-ok, until you get to the ones for the restrooms and see right where the screw was put (see picture below). Well, over the last few months I discovered a couple more interesting plaques.
Let’s play “Whoever is in charge of quality control needs to be replaced” and try to figure out what’s wrong with this one:
And then there’s this one, which makes one ponder “Why not just lock the door?” 
Seriously. Lock it, key it so only the custodian (who ought to know it’s useless) can open it and call it a day.
And then there’s this one, which makes one ponder “Why not just lock the door?” Seriously. Lock it, key it so only the custodian (who ought to know it’s useless) can open it and call it a day.
* From the speeches at my high school graduation I got the impression that the theme was “The way to be an individual is to conform”. I wish I could remember specifics or find copies of them, but I remember walking out of there thinking “WTF”?
12 comments:
Absolutely hysterical. I'm going to e-mail these to myself at school and share them with my students.
We have the same signs, but none are this bad. And we don't have the screws. (Maybe it's your custodians, as we have no funny signs like this that I've seen.)
Oh, I do recall, however, that when a new junior high opened up in the district about 23 years ago (where I did my student teaching), they had installed all the pencil sharpeners in corners where no full-length pencil would fit; you had to break the pencil in half before you could sharpen it. And the handicapped only restroom had a lock that was chest high for a standing person. Yeah. Logical that.
Personally, I think it's something in the air, it's the only thing that explains a lot of goings-on at this school. I talked to the head custodian and he denied having anything to do with the new plaques, said they were all done by the district people.
That pencil sharpener thing is hilarious. Talk about a major DUH!
Hilarious! Custodian has a sense of humour, maybe? Oh no I see now; it wasn't his doing.
Seriously though I agree with your satirical comments about "the more everything is alike..."
All secondary school students here have to wear a uniform. It always makes me laugh that just at the age where adolescents are testing the boundaries, discovering themselves, etc etc, we make a rod for our adult backs by trying to force them into wearing certain clothes.
Even funnier though - on "Mufti" days (they pay and wear their own clothes. The money raised goes to a charity) - they all turn up in jeans and a t-shirt :)
It is ironic how when given the opportunity to "be themselves" they often come all dressed wearing the same thing.
I remember driving home quickly on one of those "dress up days" when my son (being 6)was the only child who dressed up, and he wouldn't leave the restroom until I brought him a change of clothes...
Funny signs that remind me of some road signs that are just as useless, like the ones that post an exit to somewhere after the turn, lots of those around here!
The woman sign looking like a man too funny ...! and who nailed it? :)
Alexia brought up an interesting item, mufti....would love to hear more about that! Very cool!
and the custodian...could he be pulling your leg about the sign...!
My 7Gt kids thought this was hysterical. We also discovered that the braille bumps on many of the signs at our school have fallen off (they're little plastic marble thingies.), making the braille useless, unless, like one kid in my class, someone can read braille by LOOKING at it. (This boy has a brother with a degenerative eye disease. The brother is learning braille by touch, but the brother has picked it up by sight.)
Even funnier, since the only reason I could come up with for them to put all these up was for the braille. But if the whole idea was to make it easier for visually impaired people to get around in the schools, putting up cheap ones where the braille falls off within the first year kind of defeats the whole purpose.
Irony at it's best.
I e-mailed the women's dressingroom pic around our school today, explaining that it'd come from your blog. I got at least 10 reactions to it, but most people didn't realize there was anything but the screw -- even though I'd told them in the e-mail to look for more than the screw. Your favorite science teacher had to explain it to a few of them.
Now that makes me laugh, picturing you-know-who explaining it to everyone. :)
My original e-mail:
[Max], who used to teach here at [name of my school] and who is now over at [name of Max's school], has been laughing a lot lately over the signs the district has put up all over. Apparently, the ones at [Max's school] were falling down a good deal, so the district workmen “fixed” them with screws – in places no one should put screws on signs in a junior high school. But this particular sign in the photo shows an amazing lack of intelligence. Look carefully; it’s not just the screw on this one.
Later, among all the responses, this one was sent out from TR (math):
Lack of intelligence? Oh contraire! I think it be a genius putting the “screws” to the signs.
This made it obvious he'd missed the point, which inspired this response from your favorite science teacher:
You are all hung up on the screw. Forget about the screw. It was placed there as a distraction.
What about the intelligence of using the symbol for male on a female dressing room sign?
Does that mean that males who walk in there cannot be suspended or prosecuted?
Your sign post (pun!!) has inspired me to do my own. Please have a look at my latest post. I don't think I've ever shared this one with you before and it is amusing. :)
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