Sign O’ the Times

I was visiting my doctor at the local medical center, went to use the bathroom, and was greeted by some words of wisdom mounted just above the toilet:

So it's warning me that, not only should I not put my hands down the toilet, but if I did happen to do just that, contrary to the generally accepted understanding of toilet plumbing, there are sherp things down there that will slice me up.

Whew! That was a close one.

So apparently there's a device called a Traptex that addresses the issue of people flushing random cr..., uh, items down the toilet. It's a metal collar with spikes around the edge. It snags the offending item, and there's a companion spiky tool that can retrieve the item.

Sounds reasonable as such, but it requires a crazy warning sign. As an engineer, I have a lot of experience with product design and user interaction. And in this area of endeavor, it's generally considered a really bad thing if your product requires a crazy warning sign.

Maybe this is local to California, I don't know.

I am seeing an awful lot of these low-budget laminated signs stuck up throughout the medical center. And in the examination room, I counted at least a dozen warning signs pertaining to what kind of trash can be disposed where.