Okay, so recently, I stumbled on this online discussion of grammar-snobbery, and how it’s closely tied to classism and even racism.  And the argument was fairly compelling, and I was feeling bad about mocking non-standard English.  I mean, “We closed we out of meet” makes me giggle, but I also feel a tiny bit bad about giggling, because some hard-working burger employee made that sign, and I am fully aware of the socioeconomic differences likely to be found between myself and that person.  I’ve made burgers in a commercial establishment, and it sucks.  You earn a little forgiveness doing that stuff.

But I really do draw a line at printed things.  It is my belief that if one is a business — large or small — and one is going to make a sign, it behooves one to check the sign.  Really.  And if one is a huge-ass business with franchises all over the place, and one is, say, producing t-shirts, even if they are for dogs, I would argue that it’s worth taking five minutes and running spell-check on the things before you send them to the printer and then distribute them to a gazillion stores.  Really.  COME ON.

I saw this at PetSmart this weekend.  Frustrated, I googled the thing, and was pleased to see it pop up as “Definitely Up to Something.”  Aha, I thought — someone caught it, and it’s just that my local store got a shipment of the bad ones.  But then I clicked through and discovered that in fact the text of the product description is spelled correctly (presumably because of the squiggly red line that appeared under “definately” when the text was being edited), but the t-shirt displayed is still wrong.

*headdesk*