Two weeks ago, I was working in the beautiful city of Oslo. After a couple of hours, the client finally couldn’t take any more of my tedious hand-waving and badly drawn architecture diagrams so he suggested we had a five minute coffee break.
In the immaculate pine kitchen, my eyes were drawn to a notice in Norwegian affixed to the kitchen cupboard. One of my hosts smiled and said ‘I bet you don’t know what that says’.
Quick as a flash, I replied ‘Oh I bet you a pint of expensive beer that I do.’
‘Please, please wash up your plates and mugs. Your mother doesn’t work here’
‘God that is absolutely amazing. Why didn’t you say you spoke Norwegian ?’
In a similar vein, Andrew Sherman brings my attention to a marvellous blog devoted to passive-aggressive notices posted in office kitchens, officious post-its stuck on fridge doors and not-so-polite notices hanging on toilet walls from all around the world.
If only I’d known, I would have taken a photo of this British entry.