Signs tell you what people do when nobody’s watching.

“Please don’t flush paper towels.” That means somebody flushed paper towels. “Employees must wash hands.” That means somebody didn’t. I saw a sign in the grocery store the other day that caught me off guard. “No vaping, no smoking in the bathroom.

”

I’ve never considered either. But the image of someone at the urinal or washing their hands while vaping made me chuckle.

Signs like that don’t just appear. Somebody did it and probably more than one person. And somebody on staff walked in, or smelled it, and they had enough. Every posted rule is a tiny history lesson. It means something happened here, and it’s probably still happening.

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