20 comments

Dollarama — Thank you for your collaboration

Posted by & filed under Other / Canada.

Jim Squires posted this at fjet­sam :-)

Dollarama

Every morn­ing I take a lit­tle walk over to the block of stores not fif­teen min­utes from my house. In this lit­tle plaza is a dol­lar store, Dol­larama. They’re quite the big chain around here — any­one from South­ern Ontario will know what I’m talk­ing about. And yet despite my vis­it­ing this store on a near daily basis, every morn­ing I’m still con­founded by this sign.

What did I col­lab­o­rate on, and why are they thank­ing me? Was it the sign? Did I make it? I don’t remem­ber mak­ing it. Maybe I was drugged and forced to work in their Tai­wanese fac­tory where every­thing in this store gets made. Or maybe I have a split per­son­al­ity and I’m the mas­ter­mind behind their devi­ous schemes. What­ever it is, my col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dol­larama remains a mys­tery just wait­ing to be exposed.

This sign wouldn’t bother me so much if the store was run by ESL stu­dents, but these peo­ple are born anglo­phones, so there’s no excuse.

So that’s your lit­tle look into my local wack­i­ness for the day. What have you got?

20 Responses to “Dollarama — Thank you for your collaboration”

  1. noodles

    My apart­ment man­ager, who only knows Eng­lish, writes the the worst notices and annouce­ments. The one at the sauna room reads, “Sprin­kle Only Exces­sive Water Will Dam­age Heater”(missing full­stops). The notice at the ele­va­tor today is “Hot and Cold Water Interruption”.

    She also uses “what” for all ques­tions. e.g. “What is the apart­ment with the leak?” (“Which”!) “What is the best use paint for hall­ways?” (she meant, “Which is the most pop­u­lar type of paint used for hallways?”)

    I found that a large per­cent­age of “born anglo­phones” don’t take Eng­lish lan­guage advice from Asians, so I had stopped cor­rect­ing peo­ple. Nice to know that some peo­ple do notice these things! Some­times I doubt if I were wrong myself.

    I’ll send you guys pho­tos the next time I see a good one.

  2. Heartroad

    haha!
    It seems to be Ching­lish, which means “cooperation”.:)

  3. Stephanie

    I am quite offended that all forms of ‘bad Eng­lish’ are referred to be ‘Ching­lish’. Is the main source of bad Eng­lish from the Chi­nese com­mu­nity? I beg to differ.

    Peo­ple who have French accent and use some Eng­lish words in the wrong con­text are regarded as ‘cul­tured’ and even sexy some­times, but indi­vid­u­als from an eth­nic­ity that has ‘less of a pres­ti­gious polit­i­cal blood­line’ are regarded to be ill edu­cated when their lan­guage use is challenged.

    I know these posts are ment to be light hearted and nobody wants to offened oth­ers, but I thought it was impor­tant to point this out.

  4. NetChick

    Hey, Stephanie, you have a point to a degree, but really… lighten up. I could say the same thing about blonde jokes, but I don’t because it’s not meant to be mean.

    Just my two cents worth.

  5. bobby carter

    hello,
    dol­larama is owned by 2 broth­ers in que­bec (rossy brothers)

    all the paper­work and signs appear to not be writ­ten in eng­lish, but rather writ­ten in french and then trans­lated to english.

    i used to man­age a cou­ple in nova sco­tia and alot of the signs and paper­work are just a bit ‘off’

    Bobby

  6. roocraw4d

    I also see that sign all the time. It dri­ves me crazy!

  7. Roxy

    Before you eat, pay for the food.
    Thank you for your co-operation (lis­ten­ing to them and their rules).

    Have the Eng­lish peo­ple sunk this low? This is such an easy sign to under­stand.. but noooo, you gotta laugh at everyoe who’s not perfect..

  8. nis

    ching­lish? well it’s true chi­nese eng­lish is real­l­l­lly bad, even pro­fes­sion­als have the worst written/spoken eng­lish.
    I have a boss, Born in Eng­land, of totally and utterly Brrrrri­tish par­ents. His eng­lish is soooo bad, he makes the worst gram­mat­i­cal errors, it’s painful just to lllis­ten to him and hear him write. funny thing is he thinks he’s very elo­quent.
    He’s a nice guy, but man, it hurts to hear him talk.

  9. andy

    Dear Sir:
    We write to intro­duce our­selves as one of sup­plier from China, spe­cial­iz­ing in var­i­ous types of plas­tic prod­ucts, house­hold prod­ucts.
    We enclose a cat­a­logue of prod­ucts cov­er­ing the details of all the items and trust some of these items you will be inter­ested in. or you could know more about our prod­ucts by our web­site:
    http://www.peace-plastic.com.
    We could have plea­sure to receive your inquires for any of the items and we will send you our low­est quo­ta­tions,
    We are look­ing for­ward to your favor­able and prompt reply.

    Yours sin­cerely,
    Andy Liang
    Sales man­ager
    Please add my sky: andy_liang214
    Msn: andy_liang214@126.com
    E-mail: info@peace-plastic.com

  10. homeofhappycats

    you have to take off the comma or you get the Chi­nese page

  11. joanne

    This sign is up in all of the dollarama’s. We are in Saska­toon and we have them.

  12. Rebecca

    I think it’s funny how every­one says, “Every­thing at Dol­larama is made in China.” No kid­ding. So is every­thing in every other retail store.

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