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Signs and stuff I can kind of understand. Our world is chock full of things (ads) that try to get our attention at any point. At some point you develop an internal adblock and since 98% is irrelevant it is a reasonable drawback that the remaining 2% gets filtered out as well.
Exactly this. Imagine the gall of people to complain I don't interact more with their ads. Pricks.
Perfectly fair point. But in business you're supposed to read emails to know what you're supposed to do. But no one does. (too many emails)
Menus have the descriptions of what you want to eat but no one reads them (too vain to wear glasses?)
Forget the creative writing work you've been doing. I mean. Y'know. That's a given.
Sign, Sign, Everywhere a sign, Blocking out the scenery, Breaking my mind
But in business you’re supposed to read emails to know what you’re supposed to do.
So often I get a set of instructions that's missing information, out of date, or deliberately misleading.
I'm often on the line with support walking through the steps and saying "How did you get from D to E?" and then finding out there's a second secret set of instructions only tech support has - possibly even a different website or application - that they don't want to tell you about unless you're talking to an agent for some reason.
Menus have the descriptions of what you want to eat but no one reads them
Sometimes. Often they do not. They also regularly use shorthand or code.
My favorite is a series of red chili peppers next to a menu item. If I order the 1 pepper meal, am I going to be shitting blood for a weak? If I order the 5 pepper meal, are you going to White Guy Spicy it for the table because not everyone looks like they can handle it? It's anyone's guess. If I don't explicitly see the words "peanut" or "shellfish", am I confident it won't have allergens?
Why even have a waiter if you're not allowed to ask these questions, anyway? Just make everything a vending machine.
TL;DR?
/s
Explain it to me, but don’t use any words
|D30|D|_3 |\|07 |234|)
I should have mentioned no numbers either
[] |<
I worked gate security at a baseball stadium. Right next to where I stood there were two huge signs reading "No Smoking" and "No Re-entry". Guess what questions I got asked all day.
Ah yes.
Also: instead of googling for the opening times better waste everyone's time by sending a text or an email to the shop and making them spell it out for you!
Also: if you see the shop is clearly closed, lights aren't on and you can see the opening times on the door and they say it's not open but someone is inside better start knocking because surely they wish to serve you.
Also: never read the instructions of a product. Instead complain that it's broken and demand a new product. Repeat.
Also: if you see a price list/menu/price tag or similar and you accidentally read it, better double check the price by asking "does this item cost what it says here"
Also: "employees only" actually means "for adventurous customers"
Also: if it says push, pull, if it says pull, push.
sending a text or an email to the shop and making them spell it out for you!
That’s because the shops know that no-one reads the website and doesn’t bother to update the opening hours when they change.
When I worked retail, people would always call asking about hours, especially around holidays. I started answering the phone "[Name of Store], we're open until 9."
The amount of people that didn't process this because they were too focused on what they were about to ask was amazing. The best were the people that realized right after they asked , and you could hear the hamster fall of the wheel.
Not only do people not read, they don't listen either.
Not only do people not read, they don’t listen either.
Wrong. They don’t listen in the specific circumstance you expected them to listen. The beginning of a conversation isn’t meant to carry information. It only sets up the communication channel. The thing people are “listening” to are: Is the other person loud enough? Are they speaking my language? Do they have an accent that requires special attention from me to understand?
When people call a store, they expect the first few seconds of dialogue to be a greeting, which can be ignored; the name of the store, which they know; some phrase to indicate politeness, which they don’t care about; and then either silence or some other indication that the other end is now ready to process their request.
These expectations have been hammered into their brains for years by every store they have ever called. You are the odd one out. By trying to be extra helpful and give them what they want, you throw them off. Of course they need to recover, because the plan they had for how the conversation was to be going needs readjustment.
This also assumes that the callers had a chance to understand what you were saying in the first seconds. The first syllable or so of a conversation might be cut off because the line isn’t established quickly enough (which throws off the processing of the rest of the sentence). Their phones might not be set loud enough for the volume you’re transmitting. You might have fallen victim to the disease every person who regularly says the same things on the phone suffers from: You rattle off your script so quickly (and mumblingly) that the other person doesn’t understand.
All this is based on my experience and theory on how communication works. Don’t take it for granted. I’m no expert.
Also: if it says push, pull, if it says pull, push.
If there is a handle I pull, if there is a plate I push.
I hate combo plate/handles
Also a big fan of
if you see a price list/menu/price tag or similar and you accidentally read it, better double check the price by asking “does this item cost what it says here”
Because it happens when management has three different prices and five confusing "discount" offers scattered in line of sight. Is this 50% off or does that happen at the register or does it no longer apply? And you've got the same thing on the menu as a side and a meal, which one am I ordering, again?
And
“employees only” actually means “for adventurous customers”
Oh, bathroom for employees only? At every location inside three city blocks? I guess I should just take a crap on the floor.
This is the PTSD of working with customers talking.
Many of us recognize it well.
I dont wanna say the average person is stupid but they make it really difficult to not think so.
Call it illiterate tunnel vision or whatever else youd like, but come one.
Heres some personal examples from work:
those are just my personal examples but outside of that you see it seemingly everywhere.
big neonsign at the door at eyeheight telling people when the store opens, 1 out of 6 people looks at it the rest doesnt even see it, one once was even mad and blew out the doorglass with a kick.
This sounds like real-world banner blindness. Almost all neon signs are ads or usless bling-bling to catch your attention. It’s no wonder people don’t look at them anymore.
Is it next to the 30 big neon signs advertising 4% off expired yoghurt? I must've missed it while I was looking at literally anything else.
Is that sign next to the other shitty advertisements trying to get me to buy an overpriced candy bar before I'm out the door? Sucks, I'm not reading any of them. Deal with it.
Your store is literally designed to make people get lost and lose track of time. You're welcome to go fuck yourself and take your annoyance out on your corporate overlords instead of the regular people just trying to find the onions.
im not in america, our stores arent filled to the brim with neon signs
we have exactly one when we have a big sale and the ones at the register, nothing else
our stores are designed for things to be easily found
registers, big neon signs to say "hey douchenozzle, next one this is closed)
This is just bad design. Almost comically, your sign shouts, “Look at me, there’s nothing to see here”. You’re drawing attention away from where people should go. Of course this isn’t going to work.
Whoever thought advertising a closed register was a good idea needs to have their idea generator checked.
A significant fraction of America is illiterate. 21% or 1/5. Yeah.
It's even worse than that:
21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024. 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).
So 1/5 can't read at all, and over HALF can't read better than an 11 year old.
Anyone curious, I fact checked this and according to snopes it's true. This is just sad.
Nooooooo! IT's because the DeMoCrAts didn't address the needs of the working pooooooor! nooooooooooo!
How does that work out, are there 50% of 11 yo in the USA?
:-) Jk
émail
andswer
When what's written is in a language you can read, what's up with that? Reading is free, so to speak, and it enables laziness by not having to find and ask people stuff
I'm not going to defend people that are too lazy to comprehend words on a sign.
What I will say, is that it took me entirely too long to look up when I was at the grocery store. One of my first jobs was at a grocery store and it took me far too long to notice the signs.
in my experience, its easy to not notice a sign altogether. too busy looking for some(one|thing) possibly
Weird, I read anything my eyes set upon without even thinking about it. Why wouldn't you, unless you're illiterate?
In my previous job i had to do a lot of coordination via email. I learned very quickly you can only ask a single question per email because very very few people would ever answer more than that. God forbid there was some semi complex task that needs done.
Ha! I just gave that advice to someone on Lemmy a couple weeks ago. They were having problems getting people do respond to stuff at work and I had to explain how the average person can't track more than one subject in a single communication chain.
Work retail and you'll see how little people read. There can be a sign in giant huge letters when walking in the door saying "Sale things aisle 7" and they'll stop en employee right by the sign and ask where the sales things are
There are some levels to "without thinking about it". You miss some things. You just aren't aware when you do. Your brain will get tired at some point in the day and will adjust its capacity/willingness to get into detail, unless you're not human.
And yet, the documentation must be written
There's this one guy in the office who were so adamantly anti writing documentation, he basically pored through the contract to find loopholes to state that doing documentation is not actually part of his job description.
This guy either believes his code is god level (and has a huge ego), or just a crappy coder who can't explain what he wrote.
Signs at stores are ads. Email is spam and ads. Menu is ads. Post online is ads. Street signs are ads.
Instruction, caption with answer to question and group handouts aren't ads, but I had ads fatigue from the rest of the shit you've been trying to cram down my neck, so go fuck yourselves and your written words.
I read everything, what's wrong with everyone else?
Also people always only answer one question. Don't ask two things at once. This is so infuriating.
Yep.
I have a habit of sending out a list of questions, even when I number it, and only get a basic response to 1-2 questions.