Signs of the Times

Signs are getting ever more peculiar, as if we were quickly losing touch with the English language and slowly moving into some other related language with a very different grammar. Today, at the super market here on the Sunshine Coast, I am told via a professionally-made sign at the entrance: “Please Use a Basket for Your Convenience.” Now, it seems to me that they may have provided baskets for my convenience, in which case the sign would say ‘Baskets provided for your convenience’ or even ‘Baskets happily provided for your convenience.’ Alternatively, perhaps they think I should be so considerate as to use a basket for their convenience (presumably to keep my purchases from falling out of my hands and onto their floor). Then the sign would say, ' Please use a basket for our convenience.' But in no case could I reasonably be thought to be pleasing them by using a basket which serves my convenience. I just have a hard time thinking of a bunch of grocery executives sitting around talking about how to get customers to recognize that using a basket serves the customers’ own convenience. ‘Maybe,’ says one well-mannered executive, ‘we just need to say, Please!?’


Not a mile away, I was greeted on the highway by a sign that said ‘Skilled Carpenter, Large or Small,” followed by a phone number. I’m thinking about the jobs that I would need a small skilled carpenter for as opposed to jobs that definitely require a large one. Or the jobs that really need a medium skilled carpenter, but then would a ‘medium skilled’ carpenter be medium sized or medium skilled? Hard to know. Although it may not matter, because they do not appear to have medium carpenters. In any case, too many choices are required to hire those carpenters, regardless of their size or degree of skill.

My favorite sign on the road home from the supermarket, however, is not ambiguous in anyway. Nevertheless, I have spent a good deal of time thinking about what it implies, if not what it specifically means. There is a modest house with a small, hand-painted sign mounted on a post next to the driveway. The sign says nothing more than ‘BISCOTTI.’ I think I can safely say that the sign means that someone in the house is making and selling biscotti to highway passersby. But what kind of business can this be that sells nothing more than biscotti to drivers?

Biscotti, it seems to me, is a pretty specialized baked item, largely associated with Starbucks and similar coffee places. You buy them WITH a cup of coffee. I like them, but on their own, they don’t seem like that much of a treat, at least not one that would merit the least bit of inconvenience. Would I be driving down the road on a cool morning or a hot one, a rainy day or a sunny day, and say, ‘Wow, I think I’ll just pull off the highway so I can pick up a biscotti to go with the cup of coffee that I just pulled off the highway to buy at Tim Horton's'? It just doesn’t seem likely.

And since the clientele levels seem small, how many biscotti would you have to have on hand as a responsible biscotti proprietor to ensure that the need was met? What would you do with the stale ones that didn’t sell? And would you have to have multiple kinds of biscotti for this small number of customers to choose from? And, although biscotti tend to be pricey, they’re not luxury items, so it’s not like you could make any kind of living from selling the occasional biscotti to the occasional driver who suddenly felt the need. It would seem that one might do much better selling fresh eggs.

But maybe the householder associated with the sign isn’t in it for the money; is instead a dedicated biscotti maker who just likes to make biscotti and doesn’t care whether anybody buys them or not but is willing to sell to the random customer since he/she is going to be making more biscotti than he/she can really use him/herself, anyway. I don’t know; it just seems an inexplicable business. It could be a narrower business: the sign could say ‘Almond Biscotti’, of course. But either way, I’m baffled by that sign.

It’s been there for several years. However, on my last couple of trips by, I didn’t spot the sign (although I was driving rather than riding so I might have missed it because I was actually looking at the road). But if it’s gone, I’ve missed my chance to buy a biscotti, of course, from the former proprietor and get all my questions answered. Maybe these biscotti were incredible. Maybe I’ve missed the best biscotti ever made. Maybe not. Most small businesses don’t turn out well because they’re under-capitalized. But I doubt if that would be true of the roadside biscotti business. If very little gained, at least very little ventured.