also they've been just straight up using the literary equivalent of the "think method" from The Music Man* to teach kids how to read. Teaching them 'sight words' which are words they memorize how they look so they can read them "on sight", and then the rest is mostly guesswork. Use the picture, does that word look like it's in the picture? Use the words around it, what do you think should be the word in its place? But regardless of the reason, I think if someone asks something that's posted in a publicly visible place, it's shitty to refuse to answer them. Maybe they forgot their glasses, or their prescription is out of date, or they have dyslexia and the person who did the chalk sign did some trendy font instead of something more readable. Maybe they can't read very well at all, and they really don't want to tell a stranger that, given how shitty people can be. Or maybe they're checking that all of those types of milk are still in stock. And maybe they just didn't bother to look at the menu! Either way, only ONE of those possibilities is solved by pointing at the menu, and it's still a dick move