The please-wait-to-be-seated sign

Six inches by four, wood grained laminate glued to a wire easel stand, the sign carries two faces: a formal request for patience on one side, and on the reverse a hand lettered instruction to seat yourself, added by a manager long departed from the payroll. We counted, on a single site visit, three flips of the sign within an hour, none of them explained to us and none of them consistent with any observable rule about party size, wait time, or staffing on the floor. The wire stand has bent slightly under years of handling by hosts working two jobs at once, and the sign now leans a few degrees off true no matter which face is shown, a tilt we noted for the record without reaching consensus on whether it should be considered a defect or a character mark. Our vote on the matter was, as is often the case, not unanimous. What is not in dispute is the sign's authority: parties of six wait behind it as readily as parties of one, and in eleven years of service, by staff account, no customer has simply walked past it uninvited, though several have been observed pausing to read both sides before deciding which instruction currently applies. We find this compliance remarkable given the sign's evident fragility, and we recommend, again without full agreement among us, that it continue to be trusted well beyond what its construction would seem to justify.

The Committee on Ordinary Objects