There are about seventy-five people staying in this dorm; all of us keep our groceries in one fridge, all of us use the same stove, oven, microwave, counter-top, dishes. And we keep pissing the higher-ups off by not leaving the kitchen clean, so they're locking it for a few days to teach us a lesson. I mean, it is annoying when people don't clean up after themselves. That said, the signage that has been posted over this whole kitchen ordeal is mucho passive-aggressive. I wish I had taken photos of the signs that came before this one. One featured a picture of Mr. T. and read something along the lines of "I pity the fool who does not clean up his or her dishes!" Anyway, by Tuesday afternoon, the dorm-powers-that-be decided that they had had enough of our slovenly ways. We came home from work to find Mr. T. gone. A smiley-face on a new sign exclaiming, "Well, you've done it!" seemed to take pleasure in the pain that we will inevitably feel at our exclusion from la cocina. In quite cliche fashion, the text on the sign ended with, "Have a nice day!"
What gets me about the sign above is the grammatical structure of the last sentence. "These belong to your neighbors and were removed without permission!" Really, it should probably read, "These belong to your neighbors and you removed them without permission!" Make that passive tense active, you know? Be direct about it. To be fair, passive tense is not technically wrong, but the sign's creator may have expressed a stronger message if s/he had more clearly identified the subject of that passive verb. Something like, "These belong to your neighbors and were removed without permission [by you inconsiderate assholes]!"
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