I Saw The Sign - Or Maybe Not

Rebecca — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:16:00 -0500

Try counting the number of signs you pass on your way to work in the morning. If you ride a bus, this is a little easier, but if you drive, well, maybe you shouldn’t actually try to count the signs.

My point is that there are a lot of them. They are everywhere, and they are not limited to taking up space on the roadways. They are in supermarkets. They are in Wal-Mart, Block Buster, Chevron, and every other store or service provider office you can think of. We are bombarded by signs.

Some of these signs we pay attention to. Most of us pay attention to roadsigns. We may blatantly ignore one or two and speed, and I’m sure all of us have missed an exit every now and again. In airports, we pay attention to signs because we want to get to the right gate or pick up our luggage so we can go home and sleep in our own beds.

But I’ve noticed that there are a lot of signs that get ignored. I have signs on my copier at work that tell people to put their originals face down in the feed tray, and to enter a leading zero before their account number. Inevitably though, I have two or three people per day come ask me why their copies came out blank, or why they can’t log in to the copier.

I was recently traveling back from Brenham and stopped at a gas station to get Gatorade and use the facilities. I walked up to the cashier to pay for my Gatorade and handed her my debit card. She (rudely) flicked a little neon poster board sign attached to the back of the register, which read “All purchases under $5.00 cash only.” She had flicked the sign in frustration, because of course people don’t see it. I certainly didn’t.

I sometimes wonder why it is we don’t see helpful signs like the ones on copiers and cash registers. Is it because the signs are not eye-catching? Do we blatantly refuse to see some of them because we don’t want to obey them? Is it because we are lazy and don’t want to read for ourselves? Or are we just too overloaded with visual stimuli to notice them all?

I personally think it is the latter. I see so many signs and billboards in a given day that it’s crazy. I often can remember seeing a sign for a restaurant, but I can’t tell you where it is, because my only point of reference is some other sign that was near it.

Why do you think people don’t see signs?

This is who I am: I Saw The Sign - Or Maybe Not

I Saw The Sign - Or Maybe Not