A few years ago, I ran into the following sign posted on the glass door of the steam room at my former gym (I’m no longer a member there, but I made a note of it at the time):  “No Shoes.  No Paddle Boards.  No Gym Equipment.  DO NOT pour water on the thermostat!!”  Yes, capital letters and two exclamation points on that last one.

That got me thinking

of something from back in my early days of facilitating workshops.  When I started presenting years ago, a mentor of mine gave me a little tip:  At the beginning of the day, when you’re going through the administrative details, say something like, “And I invite you to check your emails during the break.”  This, he said, put a subtly positive spin on the typical admonition to “Please don’t check email during the session.”  Clearly people understood both proclamations to be the same thing in spirit:  Leave your email for the breaks.  And surely nobody didn’t get the idea.  It wasn’t intended to be a super clever way of saying the same thing, but it was intended to gently promote an idea about the class:  We’re here to learn and we should do so with a positive perspective; and I’m not here to boss you around, but rather to help you learn.

Back to the gym, I actually appreciate the rules being set here:  I like to enjoy a clean and operational environment after working out and it’s incumbent on all club members to play their part.  Bringing equipment into the steam (or sauna, where hung the same sign) wears them down in a way that they’re not designed, shoes track in dirt and detritus, and pouring water on the thermostat messes up the proper function of the mechanisms we count on to be working.

But…How about a “Please”?

I wrote recently about some brands using their front-line support employees as taskmasters instead of, well, support.  Signs like this (or at least, signs written like this) give the impression that the gym staff is there to keep us all in line, rather than to help maintain the equipment and facilities while providing us with a good experience.  Yes, that maintenance and experience actually do rely on all of us doing the right thing.  So, these rules being posted are helpful to ensure we’re all aware of what we can be doing to further the goal.

But again, it’s more about how the signs come across than it is about conveying the message, isn’t it?  Maybe even a small explanation appended to the beginning?  “To help us keep them in proper condition, we ask that you not bring gym equipment into the steam as these conditions can damage them.”  (Okay, I may not be the right person to actually craft these messages as I tend to go on.  But you get the idea.)

Now, a gym is, shall we say, a specific place, that attracts a certain crowd.  So maybe there’s not much lost in messaging in this particular instance.  But everywhere you go, you’ll see signs like these, and I don’t even literally mean “signs.”

Brands are always telling us how to do things according to their terms and the ways they want us to comply.  While it’s often to our own benefit, why are they so often written in such stark, officious terms?

From “DoNotReply” to forcing formatting in an online form (9 June, 2026, or 6/9/26?), brands have a way of seemingly bossing their Customers around in the spirit, one supposes, of trying to help them.  And yes, a lot of times, that’s actually helpful.

But often it’s not really what you’re saying as much as how you say it.  These minor incivilities aren’t the end of the world, and Customers aren’t likely to bail on you simply because they deem your communications indelicate or domineering.  But imagine how you’d stand out if you took a gentler approach.  After all, your Customers are your guests.