8 Random Signs That Don’t Really Serve Their Purpose

Signs are very important for communicating information, but they’re largely unappreciated. If they’re doing their job correctly—by which I mean they’re quietly communicating useful information—you don’t really think about them; you process the information on them and move on. What this means is that you only really think about signs when they make you scratch your head. If you want to see what we mean, join us as we check out some of the strangest signs people have spotted that left them asking for answers.

#1: A Frustrated Greeting

Another popular subgenre of signs is welcoming someone to your home. Whether it’s a cheerful “Welcome” on a doormat, a door decoration on which is painted “Friends welcome here,” or just a big wooden sign that says “Hello,” many people want to make sure the front of their house gives off a welcoming vibe.

But this welcoming vibe can quickly become angry if you’re not careful about the placement of your sign. “Hello” is one of those words that can quickly become something else if you remove the last letter. I have to say that “Oh” at the top of the sign is just the cherry on this bad sign cake.

These days, it seems like people are always trying to one-up each other with their knowledge about something. Friendly discussions are always a good time, especially when they are done respectfully. But lately, it feels like people just want you to know that they’re right, and that’s all that matters.

But let’s just be clear about one thing, OK? If you happen to be offended by someone else’s opinion, that doesn’t mean you are right. Being offended by people is just part and parcel of what it means to be a citizen of the world.

I imagine that the advent of online reviews has been both a blessing and a curse for businesses. If you have a lot of good reviews, that’s great free advertising for your company. But if you have bad reviews, that can drive prospective customers away.

Unfortunately, sometimes there’s nothing you can do to avoid bad reviews; you might deserve them, or you might have caught an unreasonable customer on a bad day and now they’re dragging you through no fault of your own. You can try to ignore these reviews, or you can do what this bar did, and wear your bad reviews with pride.

Sometimes, it’s the layout of a sign, not the content, that causes the problem. We, English speakers, are all accustomed to reading left to right, then top to bottom, but if you disrupt the expected format, our brains can adjust and assume that we’re meant to read in a different order.

Unfortunately, if your sign is advertising sodas and liquids needed for your car, that can result in some nasty potential soda flavors. Antifreeze Pepsi sounds refreshing, if slightly poisonous, but Motor Oil Coke just doesn’t like it’s going to taste that great.

Has any hairstyle ever caused more contention, discussion, and bemusement than the mullet? This classic style, sometimes described as “business in the front, party in the back,” has been around for ages but makes a reappearance every so often, to the delight of some and the horror of everyone else.

This business found a great way to capitalize on the cultural cachet of the mullet. If you’re lucky, you’ll get tips from people who think the sign is funny… and from people who are trying to do a good turn and keep children from getting mullets. I just hope those photos are from shop employees. That would make this even better.

Many places have those signs that you can change out the letters on to write messages, and many of those places have realized that something funny and eye-catching tends to be better advertising than a simple sign that says “Hamburgers $2.” And it seems that no sort of place does the funny messaging better than Christian churches.

Whoever changes the sign at this church is clearly sick of the heat and saw the advantages of making their message pithy and to the point. And really, it works! You get the basics at a glance—sin bad, Jesus good—and you know where to get more information if this is something you’re interested in. I’d call this an absolute sign win.

One of the most common signs out there is “Keep off the grass.” It seems like many places you go take their lawns very seriously, and they don’t want you walking on them. That begs the question of why they planted grass, which is famously very tolerant to being walked on, if they didn’t want you walking on it. But I digress.

This sign goes in the exact opposite direction. These people don’t just want you on their grass, they want you to enjoy being on their grass. They want you to just flop down there and really enjoy their lovely lawn. It’s a sentiment I like, but I also wonder when they felt the need to make a sign about it. Maybe they’re just trying to sell ice cream.

Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with the sign itself, at least not in its original form. Sometimes a sign is perfectly normal when it’s put up, and it’s someone else coming along with a marker or a can of spray paint that turns it into a funny (or stupid) sign.

This sign used to contain the very normal and useful information that when you are driving down this road, you need to look out for big horn sheep. But thanks to a Sharpie and a judiciously placed letter “Y,” the meaning of this changed drastically. Do people really fund this funny?