Our submitter, who works at a language school in France,  isn’t 100% sure which one of the managers posted this on the staff board. However, there is one person he can think of who “has a fondness for long patronizing notes when a simple ‘please close the door’ would do.”

(just click the photo to enlarge)

related: Ceci n’est pas une porte

Just in case you were still under the impression that leaving an anonymous note will somehow allow you to maintain the moral high ground, take a look at this classic neighborly exchange from Drew‘s apartment building in Atlanta.

related: I hope your cat chokes

In one of my clearest memories of first grade, I distinctly remember my teacher telling us, on the first day of school, that the bathroom in the back of the classroom was only for emergencies. For non-emergencies, we’d have to wait until lunchtime. In my six-year-old mind, however, “emergency” meant only one thing: “throwing up.”  And so, when I had to go, I held it. And held it. Until…well, I wasn’t holding it anymore.

That’s right: It actually took wetting my pants for me to learn that the word “emergency” means very different things to different people — a concept some people apparently still haven’t figured out.

It’s unclear, for example, what might constitute a “citrus emergency” at this Pleasanton, California optometrist’s office. (Perhaps a masochistic mandarin peeling itself?)

You might think people would be a little more precise in their language on a military base. At Arizona’s Fort Huachuca, you’d only be about half right.

At Gustavo’s new office building in Seattle, it only took about a week — and about a bazillion false alarms— before someone decided a little clarification was necessary. (Sorta sounds like something you’d expect from a classroom of first-graders, no?)

Meanwhile, Andrew in Cirencester, England only noticed this sign after pushing open one of his office’s alarmed fire doors (triggering a sudden and unforeseen occurrence — i.e., ear-shattering noise).

related: Gee, thanks for the clarification

Though your attention might have drifted ever so briefly, I’d like to reassure you that the ongoing debate over which restrooms (men’s or women’s) are the foulest continues to rage on — and yes, it’s as nauseating as ever!

I literally received these two submissions — the first from an EMT school in Massachusetts, the second from a non-profit in D.C. — within minutes of each other. Mere coincidence? Or a cosmic clue from the Internet gods that it was time for a showdown between “Angulated Rectum Guy” and “The Queen of Diahrriah?” Okay, that was a gimme. The real question: who would you rather share a loo with?

Exhibit A) as witnessed by Josh in Fall River, Mass.

Exhibit B) From an anonymous bystander in College Park, Maryland

related: And you thought college students were foul…

Angie in Columbus, Ohio says this is the second (hilariously) furious fridge note to be posted lately in the office kitchenette. Adds Angie: “Who knew a Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich fit into a ‘special diet’?” Perhaps next time the writer could just hop (er, drive) on over to Taco Bell?

related: It’s not funny, it’s my sandwich

extra credit: This is why you’re fat.

“Our office manager was upset that people weren’t responding promptly enough to the Christmas party invitation,” says our submitter in San Diego.

In keeping with the holiday spirit of things, the office manager  apparently channeled that anger into the posting of this (uncredited) About.com excerpt in the office kitchen, for the edification of all. How that’s for savoir faire?

related: An evening of congenial abnormality

Exhibit a) From a share house of would-be flip-cup players in Garfield Heights, Ohio (!!!)

Exhibit b) from an office in Dallas. Writes our anonymous submitter: “Everyone in the building knew who was trashing the bathroom, but no one ever confronted the guy directly about it. After about a year, this note went up.” (Not surprisingly, it didn’t work.) Finally, our submitter says, the building engineer went directly to the guy’s boss to, um, clarify the situation further.

And then there’s exhibit c) from a restaurant in Delaware.

related: That means pants + shirts as a single unit

Jen says this liquor store in Chicago’s Lincoln Square is completely plastered with notes like these, but — vexingly enough — the guy at the register was such a hawk she was only able to snap a few photos. Happily, I’d say Jen scored a hat trick for insolence with these three.

related: Free markets, free people, free papers

Our anonymous submitter says this display is just one of many microwave missives his coworker has created. “Someone tore it down and threw it on the floor once,” he says, “but she put it back up, laminated with heavy-duty tape.”

And of course, the art-imitating-life inspiration for this post: Pam Beesly.

related: To each his own microwave

extra credit: The Office: “Frame Toby”