The story of the sticker „Take a seat please“

Take a seat please! Meaning: „Sit down to pee“

A few months ago I have moved together with my wife and her daughter. It was very exciting. Before the moving together I was living 6 years in an apartment for a single. I did not have to take care of anything nor anyone other then myself. And that is what I did by all means. I did my homework and arranged everything so that things were very simple and easy for me. That was great.

The refrigerator was almost (always) empty. The number of furnitures got reduced to a minimum and dirt collectors had been eliminated. Everything that I didn’t need necessarily I sold or I simply gave away. My clothes had also to be unified, like e.g. I only have one type of sox. Washing had to be very easy. Last but not least I had a sticker on my toilett-cover. It said „Please don’t pee while standing!“ (or whatever the translation is for „Bitte nicht im Stehen pinkeln!“). I wanted to be on the save side when I had to clean my own toilett room. The sticker was in German, English („Take a seat please“) and French („Celui qui s’assied ne se moulle pas les pieds!“). I was confident the sticker works because it was in red and it clearly indicated what is not to be done.

The time of me living by my own was over now and the moving together with my wife was quite a change. However I think we both enjoy very much to have moved together and to share things. But one thing was missing. The missing piece was the sticker „Please take a seat!“. We have two toilettes now so it had to be two things (ähmm stickers). So my wife was very happy when I told her that I will get stickers for our toilettes. I did a research on the internet but really I didn’t find a sticker that spoke to me. I liked some of them. And there were very funny stickers too. But then the funny stickers had the chance to be misinterpreted and I wanted to be sure the business is taken serious :-).

So I sat down with my good old-school graphic design skills and draw a new sticker in Adobe Illustrator. I wanted the sticker to become really nice and professional. And then the idea was born. I will produce this sticker in very good print quality and in post card format so that it can be send very easily via post mail. What was very important to me is that the sticker says something nice like instead of „Please do not stand up while you pee“ that it says something like „Take a seat please!“ („Bitte im Sitzen pinkeln“). Of course I wanted it in English too because I have a lot of international friends.

So now I sell the sticker via eBay. It seems people really really like it. The sticker is sold very inexpensive and I have minimal postal charges. Since then I have also created another sticker which says „No advertisements“. It is a sticker for the mail box and is asking the mailmen to not send me any advertisements or free of cost newspapers. This is quite common in Germany but I have created a variety of different stickers and sell them together as a pack. So people can choose their own. On eBay people rate me with the best marks. I always make sure to mail the stickers on the very same day they are ordered and also I respond to every mail from clients very polite.

It’s a lot of fun to have this small business. It’s not a lot yet but it grows by the day.

Looking forward to hear from you. I also mail to US. In fact I already had my first customer from Seattle.