Due to circumstances

The most-read thing an Egyptian food business writes all year is taped beside the till, in a plastic sleeve, in whatever font the printer had.

It apologises for circumstances. Conditions beyond our control. The current situation. Everyone has read a version of it, and everyone knows the reason before they start, because the reason is on the news, in the taxi and in their own rent.

So the sentence is not information. It is thirty seconds of somebody's attention, given standing up, while they wait for change, spent on a fact they brought in with them.

Here is what they wanted instead. The new number. Whether the thing they always order is the thing that moved. Whether the portion is the same. Whether this place, which they have come to twice a week for four years, still wants them at the counter.

The vague notice answers none of it. It is a paragraph about the owner's difficulty, written for the owner, and it leaves the arithmetic to be done at the till with a queue behind, which is the worst place in the world to be surprised by a number.

The honest one is shorter and much harder to write. It names what went up and by how much. It says what did not change: the size, the recipe, the beans. Then it stops, without the paragraph about how much your loyalty means.

Nobody in this city needs a price rise explained to them. They need to know where they stand, in one reading, so they can order the same thing as always and not feel foolish for it.

A notice that explains itself is for the person who wrote it. A notice that answers is for the person reading it.