Receptionist: DID YOU NOT SEE THE SIGNS!?
Patient: bitch I’m blind.
What? I-I don’t understand what … what does … miss, can you open the door please?
Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department
Understood. Don’t do anything apart from stop him entering the room.
Just like those ominous whispers when you look at the soft spot on a baby’s head
Or the things the knives whisper.
I’ve always been too terrified of bumping those to let the intrusive thoughts in.
The very first time I put my then-newborn to bed without anyone else present, I accidentally bumped the back/top of their head against the top frame of their bedding area. They made the saddest expression then started screaming their despair. Even if I hadn’t been worried about it before then, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so much guilt or apologized so much, nor been so worried about long term consequences (to their development, not to myself).
Fortunately, they seem to be developing well and, though I can’t forget that happening, I very much doubt they even remember it to be upset.
I very much doubt they even remember it to be upset
That may or may not be a good thing (I’m joking I’m sure it’s all fine!)
Nice! I try to be generally positive and uplifting on this account, but I admit I wish I’d thought of this joke. It’s a good one.
Define “emergency”
The button not working
They’d have much more success if they wrote “DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON” on the actual button.
Had one of those electric bug zappers on the wall at work what was hooked to a wall switch. I taped it in ON position with a note ‘keep on’ and every once in a while some eager closer picked off the tape to switch it off along with the other ones in the row.
Those are the actions of someone who has dealt with The Public
Literally had to put a sign on my door saying to use the god damn doorbell with an arrow pointing directly at it. The pizza guy would then call me, asking why I didn’t open when he knocked. Maybe because I can’t hear your fucking knock, which is why I bought a god damn doorbell! Fuck the public.
This is like when there are way too many signs for the restroom at a restaurant - I like to imagine how each & everyone added has a little origin story to tell.
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But how do I get in?
I would still push the door latch.
Legitimately, the majority of people would still miss the signs. People just don’t want to admit how little we truly pay attention to what is around us at any given moment. Our minds filter out so much information before we even have a chance to process it.
Many years ago, before we automated our deployment, we got our devs to do it manually. The guy that wrote the instructions in bold red letters at the top, put something like “log in as X” and no one would follow. He asked me what to do, I said, “put it as step 1 instead of bold letters at the top”. Never had anyone mess up afterwards. Thank God we automated it though.
Our brains work in weird ways.
I have no trouble understanding why this has to be this way.
Twice a year our facility has a staff day where we get hit up by aflac and find out how we are doing as a organization. We have huge placards we place in the walkways leading up to the doors. Our meeting room is right by those doors and inevitably we will have people who ignore all the signs saying closed walk to the doors and pull them several times before finally reading the sign that we also put on the door.
Truthfully it’s a design issue. If people keep coming up to a door and pulling on it, it’s because the design of the door is instructing them to do so. Design imparts information. A door in a home can have simple knobs - anyone living there can just learn which doors to push/pull. A door in a public space instead needs to be designed to tell people how to operate it, even without any labeling.
A door is a simple device. It shouldn’t require reading labels or a manual. It’s operation should be abundantly obvious. After all, even those who don’t speak the language or are illiterate need to be able to operate doors. A door that needs instructions is one that is poorly designed.
And sometimes you get so used to there being brightly colored ads,
corporate propagandamotivational messages and various warning signs everywhere, that you develop a blindness for everything too flashy and ignore it until you encounter a roadblock that doesn’t yield.You don’t normally have to step around a billboard.
Good thing they weren’t specifically talking about billboards and instead were speaking to the much broader spectrum of advertising strategies.
Good thing you aren’t them so its not up to you to say what they were talking about.
This is true and not just about ads. It’s called ‘sign blindness’.
Having more signs can actually exacerbate the problem.
It’s not (always) about being dumb or careless, it’s our nature.
There are (still) a surprising amount of people that only ever saw and understood one mechanism 30-50 years ago.
