Sunday, June 25, 2017

should this bother me?

I saw this information on the door to a bagel place early this morning. Sunday morning, I figured grab some bagels.  Parked my car, approached the doorway,  spotted the sign.

Should this trouble me? Kind of nice thin font for the title, and scripted look for the days. Interesting touch with the word to sandwiched between the two horizontal lines.

You have to figure someone approved of the sign. Likely more than one person.  Someone probably ran the design by management.  A manager or two of some stripe had to read it through before giving the okay.  Make sure all words were spelled correctly and the information was accurate.

Maybe someone can explain the rationale to me.  Why not

Monday through Sunday 6 -5; 

If you are an acquaintance reading this entry, you have probably heard my rant about pizza sizes.  It began years ago when I visited a New Jersey establishment.  I asked for a pizza and they told me that there were two sizes, Medium and Large.  Does this bother anybody else?

How can there be a medium size if there is no small size? As far as I know the American Pizza Organization or some other association like that has not designated certain diameters of pizza pie to be small, medium, and large.  This proprietor could have been offering a choice of large and larger, or small and less small--but there is no such thing as a middle ground if you only have two options.  The proprietor did not warm to my comments along these lines.

Once in Plainview--the town where I lived as a teen, a town that has earned a reputation for having an excellent school system--I noticed that the candy store that had been there for a long time had been purchased and was now a different sort of establishment. A huge sign on the storefront attempted to describe the type of merchandise therein.  The sign read Stationary.    This was both amusing and disheartening.  I don't think they were attempting to let all know that their lease was a long one.  How can you open a stationery store, and be in the business of buying and selling stationery items, and then buy a sign, review the sign, and place the sign above your place of business, (how many people must have been involved in the decision making) and spell the main brand of your trade incorrectly.  When I informed the owner of the error, she acted icily and defensively.  Apparently, she had heard this comment before. She sneered at me and said, "that's the second spelling of the word. Look it up in a dictionary"  Did she really say that to me? Sure, if you go to "stationery" in the dictionary you will see another spelling. This is because there are two different words with two different spellings, one referring to the merchandise in this establishment, and the other meaning something temporarily or permanently not moving.  How's this to describe the distinction?

The stationery on the shelf was not selling, apparently-given current consumer patterns--the stationery would remain stationary.  

Too high brow for the proprietor?

If I go to another meeting with people with PhDs who comment on a new innovation or an idea that is very unique, I will extract the remaining hairs from my scalp.  Innovations are, by definition, new. When a process ceases to be new it ceases to be innovative. Unique means one of a kind. You can't be very unique, any more than you can be unique.  One of a kind is as unique as it gets.   A recent graduate is not an alumni, unless she or he has multiple personality disorder. The person is an alumnus or alumna.   And there is no such word as criterias. If you have only one litmus test it is a criterion. More than one: criteria.

Should this trouble me?

A student once wrote in a paper that he had great sympathy for the Jews because throughout history they have always been used as "escape goats."  Interesting image that.  I probably could have used an escape goat at one time or another to avoid the evil eye of some allegedly educated sort who felt there was nothing wrong with selling two sizes of soda pop--medium and large--and endured my pedantic rant.

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