While on vacation in New York City, Christine came across this sad little sign in the window of an indie cafe in the East Village.

Luckily for the shop’s current/future proprietors, this year’s G20 summit is in France. So don’t worry, passively-anti-corporate New Yorkers: soon you’ll almost certainly be free to fret over your Frappuccinos without fear of finding shards of broken glass in your whipped cream.

related: Remember that the cheese loved you more than you loved it!

related: Raging against the little guy

When he first moved in, says our submitter in Melbourne, the apartment across the way already had the two big handmade nuclear posts in the window. Two months later, up went the note at the left about unneighborly acts like obscene “jestures” (which makes me envision of motley crew of courtyard jugglers giving the finger to nosy busybodies in the apartments above.) The cigarette notice is the latest addition.

Says our submitter: “I’m tempted to strut about without trousers and see if I can get a mention, too!”

In the meantime, his other neighbors seem to already be getting in on the act.

(As always, just click on the images to enlarge them.)

related: WiFi for Passive-Aggressives

According to reports we’re receiving here at PAN headquarters, it appears that proletarians with a predilection for the chocolate-cookie-caramel confection known as Twix are battling Soviet-like conditions in order to procure their precious candy bars. 

In some areas, workers are forced to pay a hefty premium (unlike the bosses and bigwigs upstairs). 

Even then, what remains for the masses is likely to be rejected, bottom-of-the-carton stock.

And in the hardest hit areas, shortages have led hungry Twix lovers to beg for mercy from The Man himself. 

(Thanks to informants Sean in Philadelphia, Rachel in Salt Lake City, and Mark in Buffalo.)

related: Comrades, take notice!

extra credit: Twix bars unfairly taxed in Colorado? [WSJ.com]

…the proprietors of this Toronto bar will leave you pondering some different questions instead.

Meanwhile, as Will observed, a Shell station in Austin apparently abides by a similar “honesty is the best” policy.

…as does a shopping center in Tyler, Texas, where Erin spotted this explanation (on a 100-degree July day).

Similar venting was on display at a store in Ironton, Ohio. (“For the record, I cannot validate whether or not the ‘oner’ was an in fact an asshole,” says submitter Meagan.)

And smetimes, of course, brutal honesty isn’t enough.

So really, why bother with an explanation at all?

related: Closed for good! Remember that the cheese loved you more than you loved it.

“Our department head thought we should be be bringing in doughnuts more often,” says our anonymous submitter in Illinois. One of the department’s “severely underpaid” underlings, meanwhile, thought otherwise.

UPDATE: For those of you asking “But where’s the ridiculous clip art?!” I bring you this rather dashing toreador/sheriff (as spotted by Mel in the break room of her Ithaca, New York office).

While Mel doesn’t disagree with the sentiment behind the note, “It’s a bit off-putting to be presumed guilty of theft before the fact,” she says. “Also, there seems to be a degree of randomness to the number of exclamation points at the end of each line.” (And of course, that dandy of a sheriff.)

related: Straight out of the Michael Scott Playbook

A parable of the state of the “hot dot-com” workplace in 2009: The story goes, according to our anonymous submitter in California, “that some executive-level person decided to put a pinball machine into our break area. After several months, someone must have complained about the noise, because a note went up telling us it was not to be played. When some employees decided to play the machine at 7 AM (assuming nobody in the building was in), the note was replaced by a new (more specific) note.”

After that, “the machine was unplugged and left to gather dust,” our submitter says…and to silently taunt all of the office’s embittered would-be pinball wizards. Until, one day…multiball!

related: “Popcorn Thursday”