This site makes me laugh. I know more than a few passive-aggressive people — maybe you do, too.
It’s probably the comments more than the actual posts that I find funny, especially regarding situations involving roommates. If you’ve ever lived with people other than your family, I’m sure you can relate to some of these notes submitted to the site. Or, maybe it IS your family.
What people will do to avoid confrontation — i.e., write long, elaborate messages on paper or by email — is amazing. Sometimes it’s necessary to write a note, because meeting face-to-face for a frank discussion isn’t easy to arrange or downright impossible. But I’ve witnessed all sorts of behaviour in lieu, such as door-slamming, hogging the telephone, and righteous indignation played out with stomping feet. Yes, by adults! One person even withheld a $25 reimbursement from me, money I completely forgot about, thereby rendering the act of withholding all the more ridiculous. (Because oh man, not having that $25 was keeping me awake at night.)
The classic example of a passive-aggressive note is where a skewer of words is followed by a smiley face. Or two. The classic work example is, as I overhead one office person say, prefacing the sentence with “Kindly”, as in “Kindly provide details as to how you arrived at these figures.” A euphemism for “WTF were you thinking?!?!” I overheard another person say whenever he sees the word ‘kindly’ he knows he’d better get his arse in gear and get it done asap.
Wording letters just right is an art form, I suppose. And nobody does it better than the legal community as far as articulating hostility in as many shades as possible, the “cease and desist” letter at the far end of the spectrum of aggressiveness. However, most people aren’t bankrolling a legal team to do their dirty work for them, so the end result is often a hastily scribbled letter, maybe a Post-it note. At the moment I can’t recall ever writing a note to get someone’s behaviour or actions to change. I figure, if I did and by some miracle someone kept it and sent it to this website, I’d get busted instantly because I gave the internet a handwriting sample!
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