Signs of the Times

At my gym, a sign appeared on the sauna door in the men’s locker room that I wanted to photograph. Given the circumstances, however, I decided to keep my phone in my pocket. The sign said: Inappropriate behavior in the sauna will result in immediate termination of your membership. Since then, I’ve been thinking about oddly specific notices, as well as enforcement emails, that tell a whole story just by the behaviors they prohibit.

For example, here is a sign outside my condominium’s pool. Rule 7 says that children must be accompanied or supervised by a responsible adult.

At one point, children were clearly accompanied by an irresponsible adult. Management felt compelled by whatever took place to make the rule more precise.  

Another example is an email I received while I was a member of a Miami boat club. The club sent an email to all members that banned certain activities, including:

I don’t know if just one person was responsible for the frequent mishaps, damage, recklessness, and citations from the Coast Guard, or if this is a composite of member conduct. Either way, I imagine each incident comes with a spellbinding story.

A few months ago, my condo association sent an advisory email to all residents that from beginning to end was comedy gold. The context is that in my high-rise, all apartments open into an interior hallway with units on either side. Here is my favorite part:

I’d love to know the thought process of the guilty resident. This individual chose not to open his balcony’s sliding glass door to vent the stench outside, but rather opened his front door to keep the “strong odors” trapped on his level inside. Whatever the circumstances, it didn’t take place on my floor.

Finally, there is a new sign on the chiller at my med spa.  

In this case, I can give you all the details.  

My med spa is trying to offer cold plunging on the cheap. Instead of buying a commercial-grade machine meant for high traffic, it bought a residential-grade cold plunge at clearance prices from a company that has gone out of business.

This spa is also trying to save on electricity costs by forcing plungers of all abilities to use the same temperature. Since the cold plunge sits outside under the intense Miami sun, asking the chiller to produce water cold enough to make you gasp does indeed require a massive amount of power.

The upshot for me is that to reduce the water temp to my preferred high-30s Fahrenheit, I must set the machine to its lowest level and then wait patiently while the underpowered chiller sputters along.

Recently, spa management caught me pounding on the chiller’s buttons as I sought to override its power-saving features and run up the spa’s electric bill. The spa made this sign just for me … which I have summarily ignored.