If I find myself sitting in a long meeting that - how shall I put this? - is not exactly holding my attention, I know that I might resort to filling in all the spaces within letters on the agenda or other paperwork in front of me. A colleague of mine often takes several coloured pens to meetings and quite unashamedly sits there producing very artistic doodles while everyone around him is talking.

But these are situations where there are often many minutes to fill.

What surprised me about the sign in this photograph is that it is, as you’ve probably guessed, in a lift (an elevator, for those who aren’t familiar with British English!), in a building that only has 5 floors. The longest anyone is likely to be in the lift is perhaps 45 seconds. Can it really be possible to get so bored in such a short time that you have to resort to filling in the gaps?!

I do realise though that it’s not only boredom that drives some people to get out a pen and start scribbling. Perhaps someone in this building has ‘a thing’ about spaces and feels an overwhelming urge to fill them all in. I know someone who can’t stand seeing power switches turned on when nothing is plugged into the socket, so even in restaurants and other public places she has to turn them off. Perhaps it’s something like that - an inner force compels them to fill in these gaps, as if the empty spaces are signs of being incomplete?

Or perhaps there’s just a frustrated but very timid graffiti artist here, and this is as brave as (s)he gets?!