engagement 2/24

Example passive aggressive note:

TO: messy eaters

As much as I LOVE cleaning up other people’s messes, and I do love it, because who doesn’t enjoy doing EXTRA work at their place of employment, it would be just great if certain individuals would stop leaving their trash and dishes around.

Please and thank you

Sincerely, Annoyed Coworker

Passive aggressive notes tend to call out a person or specific behavior in a way that enables some distance and indirect confrontation. In my above example I have used the workplace as the environment, since many squabbles occur regularly, and have included sarcasm and an underlying tone of annoyance that can be detected from written, rather than spoken word.

I would imagine this sort of note to be taped somewhere in an office break room or on the refrigerator so to address the behavior in the place where it occurs. In writing passive aggressive notes, it is important to consider everyone who will be reading it and not to go to far- if you wouldn’t want your boss to know that you’re the one who wrote it, then maybe you went a little too far. Passive aggressive notes should be used to address small events or instances, rather than overly problematic actions or comments, where a serious conversation would be a better response to improper behavior and to work towards a solution.