The Slippery Slope

SLIPPING SEEMS TO BE A WIDESPREAD PROBLEM — so why don’t shops have better floors?

I saw a daft notice on a shop window today. It states:

‘PLEASE NOTE

During wet conditions, excess water from prams
and umbrellas can make this floor very slippy,
whist (sic) every effort is being made to keep this
as dry as possible please wipe your feet, leave
umbrellas in the container provided and

PROCEED WITH CARE

Thank You’

Apart from the bad grammar and the typo on ‘whilst’, I could not find an umbrella container! The floor was polished glossy shiny tiles and looked slippery when dry. They actually were ‘wet look’ tiles!

The question is: why? — and ‘why should we put up with this silliness?’

Leaving the shop, it didn’t take me long to come across a ‘CAUTION – WET FLOOR’ board, because — let’s face it — we live in a country with high rainfall!

Maybe I am slow on the uptake, or a “bit thick”, but is it good enough to simply put up a sign? Does that mean the responsibility for slipping is transferred onto the victim? Should a person who slips be responsible as a result of being told about the risk or hazard? Perhaps I am supposed to change my footwear to something suitable to the conditions posted in signs?

Why is the floor wet? If we are talking about cleaning, could that not be done out of hours? If it is cleaning up an incident, then would it not be better to rope off the area or to actually DRY IT?

Architects ought to be taken out and shot for specifying such insane floor surfaces anyway — and things are getting worse because every shopping mall is filled with hi-gloss tiled finishes and these caution boards (what an eyesore), yet not everyone wears rubber-soled trainers. The entire floor of the new Silverburn shopping centre mall and shops (for example) make it difficult and exhausting to walk about!