Academia

That’s just not good enough.

A sign telling someone not to do something is not a good enough control measure. It should be locked and access restricted. If this is business critical as they claim they could have done >100 things to prevent this.

I work a lot in safety. If you had a safety critical system just ‘guarded’ by a sign and someone got hurt when the sign was ignored you would be extremely liable for the damages. That sign would be no defence in court. In general nobody reads signs, ever. And that’s if indeed they even can read the signs. Was the cleaner literate? did they speak the language? Do they have comprehension of the sign’s instructions?

To give a vaguely topical example, imagine a submarine with a switch that could open the doors even underwater, that just had a sign saying “don’t press button when submerged”. That would be a truly dreadful design. A better design would have actual control measures e.g. the door motors cannot overcome the pressure from the depth of water preventing opening, depth sensors that lock out the control, the button behind a locked switch cover that only trained, competent staff members have the key for etc. A sign is not a control measure, ever.