Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Two Minutes Hate







Your Mother Doesn't Work Here...

Your Mother Doesn't Work Here, You Must Clean Up After Yourself (or something similar)


I have hated this saying ever since I first heard it on the first day of Fifth Grade Physical Education and good ol' Mr Baltzly assigned us our lockers told us that "Your Mother doesn't work here, you have to pick up your own things." I understand what point they are trying to get across and it was probably appropriate for fifth graders. The problem is that now 20 years later, I still hear people using it...and they seem to think it is witty. It is not. We are all adults now. Seriously, if an asshole is leaving a mess be a dick to them and tell them to clean their shit up. Don't put up a cutesy passive aggressive sign...chances are the type of person that is going to make and mess and leave it is not the type of person that is going to be influenced by a sign.

We have one of these signs in the office break room where I work. I hate is so much...there was supposed to be a picture here but thanks to the Blackberry servers not wanting to cooperate it is not to be. And it is really too much effort on my part to track down a digital camera to take another picture. I know you can imagine though. It makes me angry every time I am in there.

If we have to have a sign, can't we just say "Please Clean Up After Yourself"? It looks and sounds so much more professional and just less stupid generally.





End Hate

3 comments:

kelly said...

You should just hire Terry Tate, Office Linebacker. He will take care of the people who don't clean up after themselves. "You kill the Joe, you make some mo'!"

When I worked at AmerUs, now Aviva, I worked on the 14th floor in the Hub Tower. Everyone on that floor either worked in accounting or were on my IT network team. I don't think there was a single person on that floor that made less than $50K minimum. Stay with me, this relates to signs.

So anyway, out of the blue one day, boogers started appearing on the wall above the urinals. Huge, nasty, magic nose goblins. The poor cleaning staff would clean them off about once a week, by which time there would be 10-15 of the nuggets.

Perplexing and disgusting, no one could figure out who was doing it. I was about to put up a webcam in there to catch the culprit but didn't want to get sued for invasion of privacy having a camera in the bathroom.

Anyway, a guy on my team printed up a sign that said something to the effect of "This wall is not a tissue, please use a Kleenex". It was not up for more than 2 hours when, you guessed it, a huge slimy nasty booger was wiped across the sign. Thus proving the effectiveness of homemade signs when dealing with morons in the workplace.

We never did figure out who the infamous booger wiper was. My money is on Eggman.

kelly said...

The rest of the Terry Tate videos.

Michael said...

Yeah, it is amazing at how childish supposedly respectable adults can be.

I don't mean you can't have fun and act like a kid...but seriously there is a time and a place. If you want to spill coffee all over or wipe nose goblins on the wall, do that at your own house not in a shared place.

My first cubicle in customer service was previously occupied by a nose miner and the underside of the desk was COATED. I spent about a week scraping and disinfecting before I would take the desk (it was built in, so it was not like I could just get a new one). I also made them give me new keyboard, phone, chair....any that could be replace was.

Triple T is awesome, I wish we would hire him! Pain Train's coming Woo-Woo! Funny...I never realized that it was called Felcher and Sons, the hotel manager was Du Coque, and the consultant worked for Sanchez, Steamer, and Co. (How did I never realize these?)