Shall we play a game?

[teele-sq.livejournal.com]

Guess which David Square business this is.

Comments

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing Mr. Crepe. (but I don't know if all of the signs are from the same business)

[anomie666.livejournal.com]

That would be my guess to, since I don't recongnize most of those signs and have yet to have gone to Mr. Crepe yet!

[makoshark.livejournal.com]

Perhaps a reason not to hurry up!

[jtroutman.livejournal.com]

Mr. Crepe. Great food (somehow), but the worst atmosphere and management I have ever seen.

[ron_newman]

They've always been nice to me.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, same here.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

They are all from Mr. Crepe. Not sure why it's noteworthy.

[madscientist01.livejournal.com]

Mr. Crepe. I await the day when a laminated sign appears, asking the Dear Customers to please jump behind the counter and cook their own food as well.

Bwah ha ha

[winterhill.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the inconvenience, but we are stoned behind this counter and you will need to make your own crepe. Thank you. -The management.

[vonelftinhaus.livejournal.com]

It's a trap!!

[head58.livejournal.com]

It's a crepe!

[infinitemorning.livejournal.com]

At first I was thinking 'Wow, Diesel's finally instituted some damn rules...and half of them are really damn annoying,' but apparently, Mr. Crepe.

[wench33.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[glowroper.livejournal.com]

Diesel's restrooms are purposely nongendered. Even before it was cool!

[knowthyself.livejournal.com]

LOL, I've only been in there a few times, and never quite noticed how many signs with instructions to customers there are! Haha, that's kind of hilarious!

[perich.livejournal.com]

Mr. Crepe. The "Bee Considerate" sign gave it away.

[ilai]

I would think that on the second sign, the drawing of the crepe reading a book would kind of give it away. But I've never actually been inside Mr. Crepe's new location, so I couldn't tell from the other photos if they're all from the same place.

[sapphira-altair.livejournal.com]

I'm kinda surprised that they don't just laminate signs right onto the table tops.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

I like it when businesses make it obvious what the rules are. Saves me the trouble of standing in line just to ask a simple question.

[tober.livejournal.com]

What bothers me about these signs is not the directions that they express but rather that (with a few exceptions) they are necessary at all. Almost all of these things are things that people with reasonable manners should do automatically - especially the stuff about not using a phone while placing an order and not occupying a table if you're not eating. Yes, I know, the location did used to be Someday Cafe but seriously, folks, it's a restaurant, not your living room.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

The thing to keep in mind is that other restaurants in the city seem to be able to survive just fine without the signs...

[eeyorecol.livejournal.com]

and yet people bitch a lot about how people who don't order anything take up all the tables and never leave Diesel; I think that Mr. Crepe is trying to avoid becoming someplace that you can't sit down because everyone is using a laptop...

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

Do you have a point?

[cityofbeige.livejournal.com]

I was going to say 1369 Coffeehouse, but realized there isn't one of those in Davis Sq. As srakkt noted, is there supposed to be some point to all this?

[an-art-worker.livejournal.com]

takes all the confusion out of the cafe experience...

aside: I'm not particularly germ-a-phobic but the whole 'bathroom keychain' thing is really gross. ("gee.. I wonder where this beat-up, dirty object has been... oh wait"). If I recall, the Starbucks was using a barbie doll for a while.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

"No public restrooms" is something I've always found particularly bothersome. It would be different if the neighborhood had plentiful, publicly maintained restrooms for all to use, but we don't. It should be one of those things people do just to be good neighbors. Instead what happens is that every single person in the square uses the restrooms at Diesel because it's the only one that doesn't enforce any such policy.

And can the person who posted that sign really claim they've never been in a neighborhood away from home and taken advantage of the generosity of a local business to use the restroom even when they were not buying something?

Also, I thought shop owners were supposed to try to think of new ways to attract passers by to walk into their stores...

Meh.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Also, this is definitely Mr. Crepe. It was the 30 minutes per table bit that caught my attention. I always found this sign funny since I don't think I've ever seen the place full enough for this to even come up.

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

It is definitely full at certain times.

Mr. Crepe needs the signs in a way that other places don't. They've never managed to work out the kinks in their flow of customers. They have their cream in their drink fridge (do people remember to put it back?), to the left of the register, which itself faces away from the door. There's no place to pick up your order, so the wait staff wastes a lot of time looking for people. The person who takes orders also has to make coffee, making the line needlessly long. So I see the signs as an unfortunate but necessary band-aid on these problems. I'm glad they have a sign about busing, because unlike other restaurants, it's really kind of ambiguous there.

They should go down to Herrell's in Allston (Bless them!) and see how they do it there. You place your order, and the people behind the counter all can make food or get your coffee, and you pay at the end, where you can pick stuff up if it's ready. If it's not ready, you go have a seat and pick it up from another counter when it is. They do a lot better with a lot less space.

Speaking of space usage, I just got back from the revamped Downtown Wine, and it rules. Maybe this is old news, but it made me very happy.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I like signs like this, because I hate asking if I should bus my own table or leave the stuff there, or where I should dispose of the leftover coffee, etc.

Also, the "EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS" signs are required by Massachusetts law, so you can hardly bust on Mr. Crepe for having those.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

where I should dispose of the leftover coffee

I used to be completely horrified by the pitcher/container of mysterious, abandoned-looking, coffee-colored liquid sitting around next to the sugar/cream/etc. in other cafes, because I had -no- idea what its purpose was (and since I rarely ordered regular coffee, I had no reason to want to pour any of my beverage out somewhere).

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

I remain horrified by it. But I guess every culture has its weird customs.

Still, didn't people use to ask if you wanted "room for cream"? Did this become too inefficient?

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

Wo, are you serious?

That's disgusting. Can we please have a drain? Yuk.

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever had occasion to throw out coffee like this, so... maybe you're right.

If that's the case, can we please have it near the bus trays, and not the freakin' condiment bar? I could tolerate it when it was just unwanted coffee, but I don't know if I can deal with the Community Backwash Experience.

Holy crap, that's gross.

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

I hope and pray that maybe we are talking about different things.

But yes, in my experience on the condiment bar you can find, skim milk, milk, half-and-half, and "Other." At the Danish Pastry House they have a mysterious hole in their condiment bar that leads to parts unknown, which is much better. I am not familiar with anything near the bus trays, but as I said, I don't have cause to use it.

This is not about Mr. Crepe per se. I don't remember how they're set up. The bin in the photo above does appear to be on the condiment bar, though.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

The place I first noticed something like this (not Mr. Crepe), it was right next to the sugar and cream/milk/etc. and all that, which is part of why it confused me ("is this something I might want to add to -my- drink?! I don't think so, but what the hell is it?").

I thought it was for making room for all the milk you wanted to add :\ I guess it makes sense to do that rather than having people put partially full mugs of beverage in with the dirty dishes, but ew.

[lttlredcorvette.livejournal.com]

i think they could work on improving their level of snarky. (http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/) :)

[duffless2323.livejournal.com]

You missed the "Please wait while we run your credit score to see if you can be pre-approved for a loan on a 2008 chocolate banana crepe" sign.

[kevin-church.livejournal.com]

My girlfriend, while drinking coffee there one afternoon:
"Wow, they have a lot of rules for a coffee and crepes place."

[sissychrissy1.livejournal.com]

Def Mr. Crepe.

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

Thermo nuclear war!!!!

[duffless2323.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this, while the signs may or may not be useful the sheer number of them is hilarious! Reminds me of the simpsons where the Simpsons family stays at Flander's beach house and it's covered in post it notes, and there is on in the ice tray that says "Fill me" and then another one under it that says "with ice", and the usually mellow Marge gets annoyed and says "well, duh". Proving there is a simpsons reference for all occasions.

[redcolumbine.livejournal.com]

Quand? Pas en Francais?

(Does this qualify as thread crepe?)

On the plus side...

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

At least it no longer asks you to "buss" your own table.

Re: On the plus side...

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I don't think I want to see people giving their tables a friendly kiss!

[suzybuzz.livejournal.com]

I actually think they're pretty well organized. One reason I like going there is you get the feel of a restaurant, and you even get table service (they bring their food to you), but you don't have waitstaff to pay. So really, those signs save us money b/c the more we do ourselves, the less we have to pay on a bill (no 20% tip expected).

[makoshark.livejournal.com]

Wonderful photodocumentary. Thanks for doing this!

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't expect them to maintain a public bathroom if you only knew what can happen to, or in, public bathrooms.........(left to the imagination).
Although, by law, if you have a certain number of seats and serve food you're required to provide a bathroom. Don't know the details, though.