Just this morning, as I stepped into the elevator at my building on the way to work, I read three different notices:

Responsible Pet Ownership, which reminds us to pick up after our dogs, and to keep them on leash at all times.

Reminder: Place a drip-tray under your flower pots and air conditioners on the balcony, so that water doesn't drip onto your neighbor below, and interfere with his/her peaceable enjoyment of their rental space.

Laundry Room Ettiquette, which reminds tenants to remove their laundry from machines in a timely manner so that the next person can use the machine. And please remember to clean the lint tray in the dryers!

Last week was the reminder pushed through the letter slot to make sure nobody throws cigarette buts off the balcony, and please don't feed the birds, because they make messes, and it can interfere with your neighbor's peaceable enjoyment of their rental space. We also received a note telling us to change the batteries on our smoke detector.

Enough already! I'm nearly 30 years old, I have lived in highrises all my life, and I don't need my hand held while I do my laundry! Is this what our building, our city, our country has come to? We need to be told every detail of how to function in daily life, because we're so accustomed to having big brother think for us, we've forgotten how to think for ourselves. It's common sense, people, and you shouldn't need to be reminded to clean the lint tray. No one should have to tell you that your A/C dripping on my balcony is going to piss me off.

I really don't know what annoys me more: the fact that we have all these reminders posted, or that there are people who actually need to be reminded.