Chances are, if you’ve ever worked in an office or school, you’ve come across a motivational poster or two. Maybe it featured a serene-looking cabana located on some distant South Pacific island with the word “Destiny” under it — as if to suggest that your future didn’t hold another 20 years fixing paper jams and stuck in traffic during your morning commute.
Or, maybe it showed a kitten dangling from a tree under the words “hang in there” — like maybe if you waited just a few more desperate minutes, a firefighter would come rescue you from another endless budget meeting and whisk you off to the aforementioned cabana in the South Pacific.
Believe it or not, studies have found that these inspirational wall hangings, when hung in the right spot, can actually change a person’s behavior. Researchers from the University of Glasgow and the Greater Glasgow Health Board found that stair use doubled when a motivational poster was placed near an escalator and a flight of stairs.
Not everyone is sold on the usefulness of this inspirational art.
Meet the the motivational poster’s oft-talked about evil twin: The Demotivational Poster.
The Demotivational Poster can be found hanging in the cubicles and on the computer desktops of your more cynical co-workers.
Here are 9 posters that are sure to make you laugh while bringing you down.
1. For as many little kittens “hanging in there,” there are twice as many cats in much less optimistic situations. Case in point:
2. Nobody is safe from being the subject of a Demotivational Poster, including characters from one of the top films of all time:
3. And sometimes it’s better to trudge — because as this poster reminds us, taking risks can often result in disaster:
4. There are plenty of demotivational posters commemorating the over-confident skiiers of the world, including this one in defense of Darwin:
5. And this one, which serves as a reminder that not just anyone should be working in the warehouse:
6. Cleverness is key when it comes to creating the perfect poster — even if the subject isn’t the brightest crayon in the box:
7. Animals — especially sad-looking animals — are frequent subjects of your standard demotivator (10 points to the kid for ingenuity in choice of canvas — at least he’s not coloring on walls, right mom and dad?):
8. Remember your college graduation, when the person giving the commencement address told you the world was your oyster? Remember when you believed him?
9. But don’t worry, after 40 or so odd years of gulping down battery acid your company calls free coffee, you get to retire:
