Signage

I work at UC Santa Cruz. Like all large institutions, UCSC has developed 40 years of procedures and policies. Policies and Procedures tend to expand, and never contract. They tend to be applied to more and more situations, toward the goal for homogeneity and standardization. Sometimes, this makes sense, although it may appear silly out of context. Take, for example, the signage on the Bee Shed at the UCSC Farm.

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Here is the Bee Shed:

Here's a photo a little closer. See the name plate there, telling us that it is, indeed, the Bee Shed?

Can't see it? Here's a closer view of the name plate:

Note it gives the name, Bee Shed, and its Building number. The "7" indicates that this structure is at the seventh University of California Campus to be established. All of our building numbers begin with "7" in case one of them wanders off to say, Irvine or Santa Barbara, they will know which campus to return it to.

Note that the same information is repeated in Braille, per Federal Law.

In the pentultimate photo, note that there is a locked door on the right, and a large opening on the left. This opening is never closed, and the locked door is never opened. Like all doors to interior rooms, this permanently locked door has a room label.

Room labels are very useful to us. For example, we might go down into a basement and find there four or five identical doors, one of which is the communications closet, but behind the others might be custodial closets, furnances, fire alarms. If we know the door label of our closet, we don't have to try the key in every lock. (Although we may have to try several keys in the lock of the communications closet because one of six keys may be required, but there is a seldom applicable rule set to determine which one.)

With this Bee Shed, the room is always open to the outside, and the shed "contains" only one room. Yet, it is numbered, and it is numbered above the "door" to the room, and not the permanently opened wall.

On this room label, the "7" denoting the Santa Cruz campus in the building number is omitted, but the building number itself is repeated as a prefix to the room number so that each room ends up with a unique identifying number. The "1" in Room "100" indicates that this room is on ground level, and the "00" indicates that this is the first room to be numbered on this floor. If this shed had a basement, those rooms would be numbered 1 through 99.

Yes, it seems excessive. The signs on the Bee Shed probably cost $200. But how perfect in the execution of procedure, policy, and standardization, no?