Yellow Peril

The Post It Note.

A small yellow rectangle of paper can surely not have played such a prominent role in modern life.

It was actually, or at least the low tactile adhesive, designed by accident before, eventually, much thought on a practical use led to its marketing as a product to ease the burden of commerce. Wholly unintentionally it has become the curse of the office environment. This is even where there may be a sweeping Mission Statement making various jargonistic allusions to a specific business running as a paperless operation.

I have always said that the paperless office and the promise of increased leisure time represent the biggest falsehoods in the late 20th and early 21st century workplace.

The Post It Note is more likely to be used as a tool for bullying by the stronger elements in the workforce against the weak. In fact, a critical, biting or just plain cruel comment circulated on the small slip with or without recourse to the self adhesive strip can be soul destroying for the hapless victim or target of the campaign.

Whatever it's intended use it is, at the same time, loved, feared, loathed and tolerated.

The office is of course the natural environment for the Post It Note although I have come across other and more unusual applications in the course of my own working life.

Take the large terraced house in the University District which was occupied by a group of First Year Students from overseas.

Many of the intake had arrived in the late summer, some weeks before the beginning of the academic year for the purpose of having a practical grounding in the English language and a working knowledge of the main customs and conventions.

The majority will have had no command of the language beyond their equivalent of secondary education and will have been heavily influenced by the lyrics of pop songs and videos posted on various social media sites. This gives them a slang based perception of English, perhaps not altogether a barrier to communicating with their peer group amongst UK and other overseas students but certainly in more formal surroundings where a sentence or trusted phrase is necessary and more appropriate.

The walls throughout the student house were littered with a rainbow arrangement of Post It Notes which I soon realised accorded with the different nationalities who resided there. The Chinese contingent, and I kid you not, were using the original and best known colour of the product, in canary. The Africans had adopted the green, a flamboyant nucleus of students from southern europe were pink and those from the nations of the former Soviet Union persisted with the red.

What had drawn me to the conclusion of the colour coded segregation was that each and every Post It Note was affixed to something and bore the name of that object in the respective native language and then the English.

This made for quite a welcome splash of colour to the otherwise and typical use of neutral and drab shades to the decor.

It seemed to be a good and practical system based on the rapid rise to fluency of the household by the first few weeks of the academic term.

The other application was, I found, sad and not a little bit disturbing.

It was a family house. Living there was a nuclear family unit of mum, dad and 2.6 kids which in reality can be rounded up to a full 3 offspring.

I am not sure of the back story of the family but my arrival was obviously at a time of a significant breakdown in relations between the parents and their children.

This was clearly illustrated by the proliferation of Post It Notes throughout all of the habitable rooms. They were written on in a grown up script and the bold text was intended to act as guidance, instruction and a warning to what must have been a mutinous, lethargic, sullen and downright useless group of children within those four walls.

The kitchen was most plastered in yellow slips bearing such orders as "Shut fridge door after use", "Wash up any plates and cutlery immediately", "Do not lick spoon after dipping in food", "Load and unload the washer if it is empty or full","Sweep the floor of crumbs", " Only boil enough water for use" and " Do not take food without asking", "Last person in to lock the door".

Hallway, main reception rooms, cloakroom, landing, bedrooms and bathroom were similarly festooned in almost military commands. One from each covered such disciplines as "Leave shoes in a neat pile", "No eating in the Lounge", "Set the dining table for meals as per rota", "Flush loo after use and WASH HANDS!", "No pushing on the stairs", "Make own beds in the morning", "Remove dirty plates to kitchen", "Do not leave towels on the floor". In fact the tone of intsructions was very much like those found commonly in a Guest House, Bed and Breakfast Establishment or a Remand Home.

The whole situation was quite oppressive and depressing.

This was compounded by actually meeting the three young members of the family, the beleagured element who, to me, seemed just like normal kids just demoralised and confused.

Their parents on the other hand had lost it and were resorting to desperate measures to, in their minds, regain a modicum of order and control in the house.

I was a bit mischeivous but felt it my moral responsibility to try to resolve a wholly unsatisfactory and unhealthy domestic situation.

So, out of sight, I scribbled on a blank Post It Note the contact details for Childline which I had Googled on my phone. I said a silent prayer that upon seeing such a cry for help, ostensibly from their youngsters the parents would come to their senses and just talk in a rational manner with perfectly rational children and return to what must have been, at one time, a happy home.