To me this sounds suspiciously like an episode of The League, but Stephen from Cherry Hill, New Jersey claims his daughter recently caught him heading into the bathroom “for a little sit-down,” laptop in hand. When five-year-old Rosie asked why Daddy was bringing his computer into the fecal mist zone, he replied, “Multi-tasking.”

A few minutes later, Rosie slipped the following note under the door. (The drawing had already been done earlier.)

Translation: What are you thinking Dad? That’s a horrible thing to do.

Can you really argue with her?

related: Never put nature aside for television.

My friend Brooke said the doors at this New Jersey gas station were covered with notes, but this one in particular caught her attention.

(I particularly enjoyed the suggested topics of conversation. Kinda softened the tone a bit compared to this version from Toronto, no?)

related: A plea from your Boston-area barista

Angela and her father were poking around the local dollar store in Metuchen, New Jersey when we they came across these boxes of Christmas lights.

“We originally thought these vaguely ominous messages were meant to harken back to the ‘true spirit of Christmas’ but these threats don’t exactly engender goodwill toward men,” Angela says. “I don’t know for whom these vaguely ominous messages are really intended, but s/he must have seriously pissed off the manufacturer.”

related: Subliminal self-esteem killers

extra credit: Evil Elf on the Shelf

Writes Roxanne in New Jersey: “When my niece, Diana, returned from a yearbook-signing party, she showed me this inscription from a girl who Diana says she hardly even knows. We’re both dying to know what those terrible warnings about her could have been (but of course, grateful that Leah apparently gave her a chance in spite of them.)”

related: 2good 2be 4gotten

Nadia in Greensboro, North Carolina spotted this gem of a “you break it, you buy it” specimen at a local thrift store. “Apparently,” she writes, “Secondhand Punctuation Has Its Drawbacks? You Can’t Pick And Choose? You Have To Make Do With What You Have On Hand? Handwritten Notes Are Not Exceptions?”

The D.C. tourist trap that Amy visited took a less tentative tack with its signage, though I doubt the “four times is better than one” approach is any more effective.

These two stores, on the other hand, pretty much nail it with reverse psychology.

related: As Davy Crockett once said…

You’re a zookeeper. You’re sick of answering the same damn question all day long. How do you handle it?

Well, there’s the PC approach…

The pedantic approach…

And then there’s my personal favorite, the German approach.

(Thanks to Gina in Cincinnati, Sarah in Los Angeles, and Andrea in Berlin for their submissions!)

related: Don’t die; it’s expensive