I went to the movies yesterday, and in the restroom there was a sign that read “Water Maybe hot”.  It made me grit my teeth, but I didn’t say anything, because I know I’d be that girl, you know, the anal retentive one who always wants to speak to the manager about something.  Today I was at a grocery store and they’ve made their labels print out a little tag at the bottom that says “Thank’s from Fry’s” That one I couldn’t let go.  I wrote them an email telling them that they ought to have their signage written by the educated, native English speakers on the staff, because bad grammar sends a negative impression.  They’ll probably ignore it.  If it were important to them, it wouldn’t have gone all the way to the printer and onto hundreds of packages of meat without anyone seeing fit to correct it.

And that’s what really bothers me the most.  That using your language correctly is considered unimportant.  Now, I’m not one to snicker when someone says “ain’t”.  There’s a time and a place for that, and sometimes you need to use bad grammar to make a point.  When you’ve printed something for your customers, is not the right time.  At least they changed the sign in some stores to read “ten items or fewer” instead of “ten items or less” though that one doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the superfluous apostrophe.  At Bass Pro Shop last week, I saw a sign that read “Children should not play on Boat’s without parents.”  What this tells me that not only was someone who didn’t remember anything from school been put in charge of writing something, and that apparently everyone else on the staff has seen the mistake and either hasn’t noticed or hasn’t seen fit to change it.

The politicians like to bicker about why America does poorly in school compared to other countries.  I tell you, the answer is as close as your neighborhood store.  People just don’t care.  Smart, educated people are mocked as nerds in every media that doesn’t have “Public” as part of its acronym.  Employers don’t give a crap what your grades are. And with the exception of the ivy league (which is more about social class than intelligence anyway) no one really cares where you went to school.   The fact is, people who care about being educated are in the minority in this country.  If they weren’t, someone would have taken those signs down before I saw them.