Courthouse ‘Wet Floor’ Sign Dies at 22; Floor Was Never Wet

ELLSWORTH, Maine — A yellow “Caution: Wet Floor” sign that stood outside Room 212 of the county courthouse for 22 years died peacefully Sunday when a new custodian folded it up and put it in a closet. The floor beneath it was never wet.

The sign was placed in the second-floor hallway in 2003, after a single drop of coffee was reported near the water fountain. The coffee dried within the hour. It stayed, coworkers said, “because nobody was ever sure they were allowed to move it.”

“In 22 years, it prevented every single slip that was never going to happen,” said retired custodian Bernadette Squeegee, 71, who worked beside the sign for 19 of them. “People would ask me when the floor got wet. I’d tell them the sign doesn’t deal in ‘when.’”

The sign outlasted four judges, three renovations and a 2014 flood that soaked the entire first floor but, records show, never reached Room 212. Visitors routinely stepped around it in a wide, respectful arc, a path now worn visibly into the linoleum.

County clerk Walt Docket said removing the sign would have required Form 77-B, “Request to Declare Floor Dry,” which has never been approved in county history. “Dry is a big claim,” Docket said. “You don’t say that about a floor lightly.”

The sign is survived by a “Caution: Step” sign in the annex, two orange traffic cones from a 2011 road project that also never ended, and a “Back in 5 Minutes” note taped to the tax office door since 2017.

A memorial service will be held Friday in the second-floor hallway. Mourners are asked to walk around the spot where the sign used to stand, which, Squeegee said, “everybody was going to do anyway.”