Memos & Snackeating Scofflaws.

(That word looks kind of weird when it's by itself, doesn't it? Memos. Memos.)

I've been visiting my company's headquarters for a couple of days. They have a few floors in a commercial office building. In the little kitchen on the floor where I was, a couple of memos from building management claimed their space on the equally little bulletin board.

They reminded me of the segment on Whad'Ya Know? where listeners submitted memos to read for comic effect. I was never sure if they were real or not. Maybe some of them are fake. But after seeing these two, I'm sure at least some of them are real, authored by those in building supervision caught in a netherworld between true authority and effective writing, just able to touch both but grasp neither. Here's one:

Will whomever is chewing sunflower seeds on the elevator and spitting the shells on the floor before exiting the elevator please refrain from doing it.

This errant "whomever" reminds me of the compose/comprise riptide that catches so many people. We all know "composed of," and yet some yearn to elevate their speech, and so they say, "comprised of." Except that the correct alternative to "is composed of" is "comprises." So, this particular situation comprises three possible choices. People have a 67% chance of being correct in navigating the moment. However, in a case of having just enough knowledge to be dangerous, many of us manage to get caught in the 33% chance to sound stupid.

But back to the problem at hand. This is not a tall building. You can't be on the elevator for more than a minute. Who would bring in seeds to chew only on the elevator, not en route in the lobby or upstairs on his floor? Isn't that odd? Should building staff try a memo like this, or should they maybe walk around one morning and try to find the car with these shells in the floorboard?

More importantly, do you think the request would work? I imagine the sunflower seed spitter to have a kind of serial killer mentality; the attention will probably fuel him to keep chewing and discarding at will, now driven by the thrill of getting away with it as well as the desire for a little pre-workday salty/crunchy snack. He's probably chewing the seeds because he's trying to quit smoking. Approach with caution -- suspect may be exceptionally irritable and armed with small oral projectiles.

Speaking of smoking, that steers us toward the other memo, coming soon. 

tags: language  

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