I thought this was an entertaining article from Fox News today. Personally, my favorite was the Children’s Dimetapp warning, “be careful when driving a motor vehicle.” Most of these warnings are absolutely ludicrous. The article lists only a few examples, so I thought it might be fun to come up with some additional ones that could be posted here in the blog. So…do you have any good examples? Leave a comment and let’s create a list of our own ridiculous product warnings.

Thanks!

A friend of mine who works in Spokane, WA snapped this picture  (near Montgomery and Argonne) and sent it to me. Someone at the road department obviously messed up. I wonder if they recognized the mistake and were “too busy” with other tasks or if they just never looked to see what the message was they were conveying to the public?

Thanks for sending the picture to me Valik!

I had alluded to the need to capture this picture in a previous post. Thanks to my sister-in-law, I now have a picture of this mistake (thanks Tina!).

Rabbit Trail: Why did Tina have the opportunity to get this picture for me? Unfortunately, she had to go to this grocery store to request a refund for a bag of coffee. Yes, it was this company’s coffee. Tina grinds her own coffee at home. Upon reaching the last bit of coffee beans at the bottom of the bag, she discovered a roasted bug mixed in with her beans. Gross! The question I had was, “I wonder if there was more than one bug” followed by, “Hey, where’s the bug’s head and legs…were they roasted off, or did they get mixed into the bag somewhere else?” At that point, I stopped asking questions. I was also relieved to recall that I had not consumed any coffee over at their house recently, haha. Needless to say, the coffee bean bug was a major turn off. Thankfully, the grocery store refunded her money without any difficulty.

So, back to the picture. Have you caught the mistake? Charity’s should be charities (the correct plural spelling). The apostrophe is a killer for many, many people. Unfortunately, this is a common mistake. Even more unfortunate is that this mistake made it out into the public arena (multiple supermarkets and their own website). Perhaps I should contact them and offer my services?

My daughter discovered this sign recently on a local bike path here in Coeur d’Alene. The ironic thing about this particular sign is that it is near the front of a school (Woodland Middle School, by the Comcast Building)! You would think/hope that one of the teachers would have called someone about the error on the sign.

Anyhow, just in case the mistake isn’t obvious to you, there should not be an apostrophe in the word “users.”

The odd thing is that there are many signs like this on the same trail. I haven’t checked all of them, but many of the other signs do not include the same mistake. Interesting…

I seem to be finding a lot of really bad signs these days. I actually found two in the same day. I didn’t think about taking a picture of the second one though. I always seem to forget about the camera on my phone. So, I have to go back to the grocery store and get a picture of the other sign.

But, for now, here’s the latest, greatest finding that I have to report:

Where’s the mistake? Well, it should say cannons instead of canons.

A canon is a law or rule. It is also a group of books, particularly religious books. It is also a term used to describe a church dignitary. Of course, it’s also the name of a large, electronics company.

A cannon is a weapon, or in this case a large water gun.

It’s a mistake that should have been caught by someone at the amusement park. But, even worse is the fact that the mistake obviously slipped past the printing company too. What a shame.

So, now I’m off to get a picture of the other sign. I wonder how many other “sign snafus” I will encounter!

With the last sign we featured, it was the wording that created the confusion. This time, the wording is crystal clear – no dogs allowed. But what kind of animal is depicted on the sign? What exactly is it? A duckbill platypus? Wow.

What do you think…did the owner/manager who purchased this sign really look at it closely? How about the sign manufacturer? Were they unable to create a silhouette that accurately portrayed a dog? This is just another example of how unobservant people can be…

**We took this picture in a campground not far from the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Idaho.