Do not touch out of curiosity or without intention to buy.

 

Do not touch out of curiosity or without intention to buy.

                       - the Staff

This handmade sign is a bit of vernacular culture but it is not a Polite Paper Sign. I've collected Polite Paper Signs for a long time now, both to celebrate vernacular culture but also to just pay attention to the ways that people use politeness as a part of their persuasion strategies when operating in public places which do not allow them to mandate their preferences.  Even though this sign employs a tone that relies on authority rather than kindness or an ethic of politeness, its remarkable demands do put my head into a tailspin. 

Under what conditions, precisely, am I allowed to touch one of the baked goods on this counter?

What if, for instance, curiosity is not my primary motive in touching one of these pastries, but it is a slight small motive? Does that hint of a secondary or tertiary motive undo the other more acceptable motives?

And how will staff know if I touch one of these pastries without any curiosity and with intention to buy, but upon touching I decide not to buy? 

How will they know that they should not prosecute me?

I'm having a bit of a cackle right now, having invented a punishment and that is that behind the counter, the workers have old rolls that hurt like heck if they are thrown at you, because if you touch these recently baked rolls and they perceived that you are breaking the rules written on this sign, they gather in glee to pelt you , the old hard rolls whacking you as you race out of the bakery in hot-faced shame.

On a personal level, this sign makes me remember that when we were going to take Fundamentalist Baptist communion out of tiny plastic cups that had been passed down the aisles by the ushers in the same manner that offerings were collected, we were first coached to privately make a prayer of confession of ALL THE SIN in our lives before we lifted the cup.  To drink unworthy might be punishable by sudden supernatural death, and to drink worthily was to obey one of Jesus' final commandments.  So you REALLY wanted to get it right. One of the trickiest sins to clean out of your head though was if the motives that you had were, in any way, to seem a certain way to the other believers around you.  This too was a sin and maybe one of the worst because of the hypocrisy and manipulation you indulged in.  It seems to me that this kind of deep-cleaning motive-examination is also required before you touch the bakery fare on this counter and honestly just the thought of going through all that cognitive and emotional work again convinces me not to buy any bread at this bakery.