11/11 (2.01) 'No Stone Unturned'

Dry Paint



I had to put something here and "This screen intentionally left blank" was too obvious. So I'll share something which you might like.

It's probably been 25 years since I first tried it; it made for a good experiment to see how people process information. I took a "Wet Paint" sign (the ones where a bucket of paint has been toppled and there's a spill with words "Wet Paint" in the middle of the puddle), changed "wet" to "dry", then replaced the original sign.

I had a good cross-section of victims as there were 3,500+ employees of various functions and many people entering the hospital as visitors, meaning this would be interesting.

I perched in a waiting area where I could hold an open magazine on my lap and basically stare off into space, fully aware of what was going on in the hallway.

A substantial number of people would walk by and at least look baffled by it - they knew something was wrong, but didn't seem to figure it out.

A lot of people stopped, looked at the sign, then reached out to the wall and touched the wet paint to see if it was really dry. This includes people who would see someone else test the paint, yet seemed determined to find out for themselves.

Even those who walked away with a blue finger still wondered what just happened.