The Happy Moron

Seen on an elevator door…

And practically nowhere else. It’s a weird phrase. What does it even mean?

I can understand it’s meaning for a deck of cards. I can envision an elderly English gentleman using it as a synonym for ‘naughty’.

“You are out of order, lad. That’s not cricket.”

Oh, naughty, naughty elevator. Such impudence. Don’t even get me started on the toilet and its impropriety. Or the payphone. Or the ATM. Will no device maintain decorum?

We put this thing on our signs, but it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t even have the redemptive quality of being personal, or warm and fuzzy. It lacks the simplicity of ‘Doesn’t work’, the irreverent humour of ‘kaputski’, and the clarity of ‘Don’t use this’.

It’s utterly generic, completely inoffensive and absolutely lifeless. It’s a weasel phrase. Oh, and it doesn’t mean anything.

Now I could, had it any small scrap of soul, forgive it. I could even attach a noble meaning to it. But no. It’s a phrase we use because we’re scared. We know that our machine doesn’t work and we don’t want people to be angry at us. We want to deflect their wrath.

So we turn impersonal. We dissociate the brokenness from anything human, anything familiar. We try and make it abstract, distant and conceptual.

Well… Being impersonal won’t stop people from being angry, it will just add some frustration to their anger. If you want to console people, you have to treat them like people. You need to appeal to their humanity.

Won’t someone write a beautiful “Out of Order” message?

“This humble porcelain bowl, having endured a life of heroic suffering, has finally bowed to the entropic forces which, with unceasing vigour, have assailed it. But friend… Oh friend! Let the words never pass your lips that it fought in vain!

“For if it be worn down, its handle rusted and its seat askew… count this only testament to the loving labour of a thousand flushes, a lifetime of selfless service, willingly dedicated. Count it victory. It has drunk deep of life and passes on without shame.

“Though its tank and bowl are drained of liquid, it is drained of something still greater. The entropy which conquered it has left it void, depleted, dry… out of order.”