My 70-year-old mother and 76-year-old stepfather are “Workampers”, and are currently working at a KOA campground in Montana.
My mom just posted this on her Facebook page:
“Reading the Camper Rating section on our KOA website:
‘Nice clean friendly ladies up front.’
I’m glad we all had our showers before going to work!
Oh, the value of punctuation!”
Naturally, I had to share the panda joke:
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
“Why?” asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“Well, I’m a panda,” he says. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
Uuuummmm … what was the sign meant to communicate?
Nice, clean, friendly (Campground?) Ladies (Restroom?) up front
Nice Clean (as in “as clean as the city of Nice”) Friendly ladies ('nuff said) Up Front (we’re honest and straightforward here)
Nice! Clean friendly, ladies! (in response to previous problems of camping ladies getting into fights while cleaning) Up front (“And be honest about it!” OR “And please do the cleaning at the front of the campgrounds.”)
Nice (this is a nice place to visit) Clean friendly ladies (we provide temporary companionship, now disease-free!) Up front (don’t even THINK about taking the back entrance!)
I think there should have been commas there, but how do they change the meaning of the sign? Either way, referring to the ladies as clean is a little odd.
The review meant to say that the campsite was nice and clean, and that the ladies up front (presumably including the OP’s mom) were friendly. Instead, it said that the ladies up front were nice, clean, and friendly.
I think you’re reading too far into it to get ‘restroom’.
“Ladies upfront” would be the receptionist or whomever greets you at the door, they were nice and clean ladies. (Whether they meant physically clean as in it didn’t look like they had been out hiking all day or it was just a euphemism for ‘little old ladies’, I don’t know).
IOW, “Nice, clean, friendly ladies at the front desk”.
I think it’s this meaning. In every campground I’ve ever been, registration/check in is always at the entrance. So the ladies up front were friendly, the campground nice and clean.
Hmmm, I think Joey P is onto something with the whole “Ladies at the front reception” thing, but I think “Nice Clean” refers to the campground.
Nice Clean (grounds)
Friendly ladies up front (staffed at the entrance) Mister Rik seems to think it was supposed to be obvious. Hopefully he’ll return and critique our guesses.
Well, I’ll never hear that the same again.
Reminds me of a joke on Home Improvement. There was some character named Kandi or Carmen or something like that and Tim said “Don’t you hear stripper music when you hear that name?” and the (older) kid said “I will from now on”.
Wish I could find the exact quote or a clip.
That makes sense as well. Either way, I don’t know where people are getting bathroom out of it.
In the UK "the Ladies’ "(loos/toilets/lavatories) is a polite way of referring to the “women’s bogs” or the “female bathroom” as I believe Americans say.
Wouldn’t one of the purposes of punctuation precisely be to clarify the meaning, in such a case? The unpunctuated version is bad, not because [clutches pearls]oh my gawd that’s a contraction and not a posessive![/cp], but because it’s unclear.
The clean might refer to the ladies if the reviewer expected campers to be whiffy and was pleasantly surprised to find that they were not. Also, some people (RIP Dad) just see ‘clean’ as the highest accolade that can be given in any review in reference to anything and anyone.
I’m not sure if you’re looking including both “women’s bogs” and “female bathroom” as the American term(s), or just the last one. Regardless, I’ve never heard either of these and they honestly sound really weird to me.
If the gender is specified, “ladies’ room” seems most common to me. Some women (generally older, I think?) say “little girls’ room” WHICH I CAN’T FREAKING STAND (either insultingly infantilizing OR skeevy gross sounding). Rarely, I’ve heard “powder room” but that sounds super super old fashioned; I might have only come across it in older movies, tv shows or books, come to think of it.
More and more, though, people are just saying, “restroom”. It makes the most sense to me.
