Comments (41)

1. There used to be a group of Vietnamese ladies at my place of employment who trashed the breakroom constantly. they left garbage on the counters, poured fish soup into the garbade can, and put meat kabobs into the toaster. there were all sorts of passive agressive notes all over the room (bread only in toaster please!) but when you approached them, they pretended to not speak English. (even when you had just heard them speaking it as you approached) I was seriously considering learning Vietnamese to leave notes in their language, but they moved their department to another building.

   posted by bbg1129 on 6-11-2008 at 10:33 am

2. I would accidentally drop a jar of peanut butter in that puppy’s window!

   posted by Scotty A on 6-11-2008 at 10:44 am

3. A few days after I bought a new car, I came home late at night after my shift at a restaurant and some of my neighbors were having a party and their guests were using all the parking spots in the parking lot my house shares with the apartments behind it. While mildly annoyed, I let it go and just parked in the parking lot next door. The parking next door was for the owners of that house and the owner’s holistic medicine practice that he ran out of the house on weekdays. I’d been neighbors with the owner of the house next door for a decade. I never used their parking ever, and since the medical office was closed for the weekend, didn’t think parking there over night would be a big deal. I went to move my car the next morning first thing in the morning, and there was already a rude note on it explaining that I couldn’t park there and would be towed. I went back in the house and wrote a note in response explaining that I had no idea that a neighbor for ten years taking up a parking space in their lot overnight while their business was closed would be such an inconvenience and that I would have expected a little neighborly courtesy, but must have been mistaken in my idea that we had that kind of friendly relationship and would be sure to never accidently treat them like neighbors in any way again. I taped it to their front door. But before they could come out and see it, I realized I was too angry for even a note. I knocked on the door and took it up with them in person. I let them know exactly whey I parked there and that they should figure out exactly what the situation is before they jump to posting rude notes on neighbors cars. They apologized profusely, explained they didn’t recognize my new car, and I haven’t had a problem with them since.

   Notes work, but actually talking to people works better, and makes you feel better,too.

   posted by Melissa on 6-11-2008 at 11:02 am

4. Does this count?

   In college I had a guy in my dorm who regularly left notes on my door explaining that in Christian Love he had annointed my door with oil and prayed for the salvation of my eternal soul and that the demons who obviously possessed me would be exorcised by his attem[ts on my behalf.

   I should point out that it was a Christian College, that I had been a Christian since I was 4, that he had been a Christian a few months, and that he decision that I was demon possessed was based on the fact that in high school I had played Dungeons and Dragons.

   posted by Patrick B on 6-11-2008 at 11:18 am

5. While living with a group of people, a few of us came downstairs one morning after a dinner party to find that someone had taped post-it notes to everything in the kitchen. Our favorite note? “A clean microwave is a happy microwave.” That would have been more than enough to stir the pot, but we soon discovered that the roommate had only cleaned her utensils, plate, and glass from the night before. She woke up to find this note taped to her clean dishes – “Maybe I licked all of your stuff, and maybe I didn’t.”

   posted by Megan on 6-11-2008 at 11:21 am

6. “This one may hold the record for being the note addressed to the most people at once — everyone who’s not American.”

   You say that, and then the picture right below it addresses anyone who is not the kid in the picture…

   posted by Witty Nickname on 6-11-2008 at 11:26 am

7. An over-the-fence neighbor had a yard size Texas windmill that squeaked horribly and was particularly annoying at night. My bedroom window was very close to it and when day sounds calmed down it sounded even louder. I wrote an anonymous note on a nice note card requesting that the windmill be oiled and how much the neighbors would appreciate the maintainance. It worked. A year later I had to repeat the process. The windmill was removed. I can’t believe giving the thing a few drops of oil now and then was that much of a pain.
   When a neighbor’s barking dog began a regular nightly concert under my bedroom window I got out of bed at 3:00am, threw on a robe and rang the neighbor’s doorbell til it was answered. I explained the problem. No more barking dog.
   The solution should fit the problem.

   posted by Alice on 6-11-2008 at 11:35 am

8. I left a cooler, ONE cooler in the fridge i share with my roomate and her boyfriend. They drink beer. So the friday i decided to pop it open (TGIF) it was gone. I searched high and low before i called her.
   -hi. if you are gonna drink my @#* at least leave some for me or say “by the way, i drank your @#$”
   -i didnt drink it
   -did he(boyfriend) drink it?
   (asks him)
   -no he didnt
   -well tell the invisible leprecaun to stop doing that @#$

   That brought home and angry rommie, more coolers which i payed for, because her righteous backside is irritating. so much for passive.

   posted by Laffy_Taffy on 6-11-2008 at 11:44 am

9. I used to live in an apartment building with a parking lot that lacked lines delineating the spaces. One Christmas morning I walked down to find that someone had parked between my car and the one next to me. They were so close to both cars that they must have crawled out through the sunroof. I left a note expressing my displeasure of having to climb in the passenger side to pull out. As an added touch, I wrote the note on wrapping paper.

   posted by Mike on 6-11-2008 at 11:53 am

10. First, don’t blame the dog because his stupid owners don’t have time for him.

    I found a note on my car asking me not to park in front of a person’s house. Unsigned.
    I was in a bad mood. Banged on the door and verbally thrashed him. “Do you own the street? All your party freinds take up all the spaces on the street most of the time.” Etc.

    When I had my old car if someone parked obnoxiously close I’d just slam my door into theirs.

    posted by BassMan on 6-11-2008 at 12:12 pm

11. In the same line as the puppy and espresso sign, a tattoo parlor I went in once had a note that said “Children left unattended will receive a nose piercing and a 666 tattoo.”

    posted by scoobnut on 6-11-2008 at 12:32 pm

12. We used to live in an apartment where our bedroom window faced an enclosed breezeway and opened directly out onto a planter. Keep in mind that there was a courtyard with a dog run area not 100 yards away.

    Our neighbors found that the 100 yards was wayy too far to walk at night so they would let their dog do his business in the planter – directly outside our bedroom window. That was bad enough, but was compounded with the fact that their dog would jump into the planter with his tail wagging and smack our window.

    At 3am it sounded like someone knocking. I woke up multiple times out of a dead sleep screaming, thinking someone was breaking in.

    I left them a note basically saying that while I enjoyed waking up the building with my night terrors, I would enjoy it more if they could not allow their dog to pee outside my bedroom window at night. I also stated that if I had mis-accused their dog than to let me know as the only other explanation was that someone was actually knocking on my window at 3am and I needed to get a dog of my own to fend off the midnight window knocker.

    I never saw the dog in the planter again, and my neighbors never made eye contact with me again.

    posted by Jen on 6-11-2008 at 12:35 pm

13. Notes are for people who either are cowards or don’t have the social skills to communicate face to face.

    posted by Russ on 6-11-2008 at 1:11 pm

14. Guilty!!

    In my last cubicle farm, many people were too lazy to properly walk 10 or 20 yards to dispose of their food waste, but couldn’t be bothered to deal with the smell of their own trash.

    My cubicle was pretty small, thus with limited space under the desk, so I kept my own waste bin by the entrance to my space, making it an easy target for coffee cups, banana peels, and everything else.

    So, I move it out of my office, next to a designated food waste bin. Within a few days, it’s next to my office in the printer bay next to my office.

    I move it again, it’s back again.

    I post a note above it thanking them for the smell, the attraction to rodents, and hoping that their legs heal soon enough to walk the extra 20 feet to a covered bin.

    posted by Joe on 6-11-2008 at 1:32 pm

15. I will preface this by saying we are VERY good tippers… usually….

    We once left a frowny face in pennies as a tip for a horrible waitress.

    posted by Jess on 6-11-2008 at 1:36 pm

16. yeah, I’m a coward too, an angry, parental coward…

    At a recent children’s event, some dork had parked their tank style SUV on two spaces – 2 spaces! – in the parking closest to the hall doors. They didn’t even have childseats in the car. This meant that at least one other party had to walk their small ones in the rain from a farther lot. I made good use of the free diaper samples – the diaper wedged into the SUV handle read:
    “I hope you crash, you selfish jerk!”. If only I had been more creative that day, and utilized that lovely yellow apple juice in the car…

    I also routinely leave nasty notes on non-handicap stickered cars in handicapped spaces. “I hope God makes it so that you can park here legally!” BTW, Kudos to the plate licker, that is BRILL!

    posted by Mary on 6-11-2008 at 1:47 pm

17. Ah, good old hypercorrection!

    posted by Lelah on 6-11-2008 at 3:50 pm

18. One semester, I had a literature professor that was 15-20 minutes late everyday and insisted on making up for it by holding us over 15-20 extra minutes at the end of class. All the students in the class finally got sick of it. So one day when 10 minutes had gone by past the start of class and said professor had still not arrived, we wrote this note on the chalkboard:

    “In honor of today’s lecture on the collective conscious, we have collectively and consciously decided that as our time is obviously of no value to you we will be spending it elsewhere today.” We signed it simply “Class.”

    posted by Amy on 6-11-2008 at 5:24 pm

19. In college I lived in one of the smaller language-themed houses, with only two other roommates and the native speaker. One of the roommates and the native speaker were my good friends, and the other roommate had poor social skills and no consideration of others. One weekend it was just me and the native speaker who were home, while my friend was on a trip and the other girl was at her boyfriend’s. That Monday was the native speaker’s birthday, so my friend and I rushed home in the middle of our packed morning schedules to make her cupcakes, and we came home to find a note on the counter from our inconsiderate roommate (who had no daytime classes) saying: “Girls: At the beginning of the weekend, I had ten eggs. Now I have none. I have therefore taken three eggs from each of your cartons, and will return them when whoever took my eggs either gives them back, or replaces my carton. Thank you.” It should be noted that none of us had taken her eggs.

    I noticed the eggs she had taken from me were hard-boiled, so I replaced them with raw eggs, not wanting to argue over eggs. A month (!) later, she came into the room holding an egg with a confused look on her face, and asked: “One of my eggs seems to be hard-boiled. Can I borrow one from you?”

    Apparently I missed one. Good thing she took our eggs; she clearly needed them right away.

    posted by Al on 6-11-2008 at 6:08 pm

20. I have to admit I have resorted to snippy note posting at times. It is easier than directly confronting. One year I sent anonymous notes on Valentine’s Day to several people on my street asking neighbors with Christmas lights still up to at least stop plugging them in until November. All but one had their lights down by the following weekend.

    posted by Cynthia on 6-11-2008 at 7:43 pm

21. Guilty…

    1. In a biology (optional )final review lecture two girls next to my friend and I were talking the entire time. So I wrote “DO YOU MIND???” on a piece of paper and shoved it their way. They got the message and quieted down.

    2. My crazy slob of a roommate freshman year was just nasty. So one night my other roommate and I took bright pink post-it notes and outlined all the areas that were covered in her mess. We then put one of the post-its on the door reading “Please clean up the marked areas. Thanks!” She was pretty pissed off when she got home.

    3. Away messages are also classic areas to leave massive aggressive messages.

    posted by Amy on 6-11-2008 at 8:08 pm

22. I once left a passive-aggressive note stating:

    Reminder: Kitchen sheers are for kitchen items. I find it unsettling that the same pair of scissors is used to open packages of lawn chemicals and bags of pizza rolls.

    The next time we went to the store, we bought a new pair of kitchen sheers and the old ones were retired to the garage.

    posted by S on 6-11-2008 at 10:28 pm

23. I always send notes like this via email to my boyfriend. It almost always includes phrases like “dirty dishes belong in the dishwasher, not as insect fodder” or “take out the trash or else it gets placed under your computer desk”. I’m a nag, yes.

    There was one time I was buying a new house. When I got there, I realized there was no parking except in front of three cars parked in a driveway (this is a private street, so the driveway was kind of in the street, you know?). I took that spot and left a nice note on my car reading: “I’m in (insert address here). There is no parking left. If you need me to move, come knock on that door and I may or may not hear you, since I may be downstairs and I’m sure the sound doesn’t carry. If I don’t hear, wait outside until I see you, and I may or may not come out. You see, I may be talking with someone, or busy, so I may be in there awhile. XOXOX” Luckily, no one needed me to move. That was also Boston, so that was probably considered funny by their standards (I miss that city).

    In some cities that have metered parking, they don’t require people with handicapped placards or plates to pay the meter. Boston is one of those cities. I had no problem during the day, but at night I would always get an unpaid meter ticket. That was when I not only printed out the actual law, but also wrote this note: “Please be advised that, according to law (insert law number here), people with disabilities with either a plate or a placard do not have to pay the meter. If you bother to look at the front of my vehicle, you will see a placard hanging. If you wish to wait until 10pm, when I get out of work, I will gladly confirm that that is, in fact, my placard. Please stop ticketing me, because court dates are time consuming for all parties.” Whenever I parked at a meter, I put that up in my rear window. I never got another ticket. Funny how they’d read that, but not bother to check for my placard.

    posted by Nicole on 6-11-2008 at 10:29 pm

24. I’m super passive-aggressive. You kinda have to be because people around here frown on direct confrontation.

    Anyhow, I’ve never had to write a note. One time back in college, some crazy market or something was blaring all this horrid music at 6 in the morning. I was so mad I called the police. 5 minutes later – silence.

    Ever since then, everytime there’s an annoyance, it’s been cops all the way. Works like a charm.

    posted by Anna on 6-11-2008 at 10:52 pm

25. Not sure if this counts but we used to live in an apartment building where we had one assigned spot in the underground garage. We had two cars and a blizzard hit. There had been an empty spot behind ours for many months. I parked my car in the spot overnight with a note on the dash that stated basically what unit I was in, and to please let me know if my car needed to be moved and I would be more than happy to do so.

    About an hour later an angry little man knocked on my door. He bawled me out for taking his spot and abusing the building rules.

    I rushed down and moved my car thinking I was in his way.

    No car ever appeared in that spot, ever. It remained empty until that angry little man moved.

    I guess he just liked knowing it was there.

    posted by Jen on 6-11-2008 at 11:51 pm

26. @Joe, and all the others who love Milton:

    “I could set the building on fire.”

    heh, great recaptcha: complex therefor

    posted by johnny cat on 6-12-2008 at 12:07 am

27. My favorite tactic whenever I encounter a passive aggressive sign is to take a marker and write, “Do not write on this sign.” It’s very deconstructionist and therapeutic.

    When I was in Iraq, a buddy of mine put up a sign over his coffee pot about being making a new pot if you take the last cup. Within a few days, someone tore down his sign. So we reprinted the sign, but put up another sign with a big arrow pointing to the first sign saying, “Do not remove this sign.” Hilarity ensued.

    posted by Ed on 6-12-2008 at 12:34 am

28. During my freshman year in college I contracted Mono. Because of this I didnt leave my dorm for meals very often and started keeping lots of food in the community kitchen, all clearly labeled. But, my food and drinks kept disappearing in the middle of the night, lots of it left-overs from take out. Finally, I got so fed up I left the following note on the fridge.

    “To whom it my concern: I have Mono and the jerk/s that have been stealing my food probably now have it too. Congrats! Sincerely, the sick girl in room….”

    Needless to say my food never left the fridge after that. And anytime I would have a problem with food theft afterward I would just put the note back up.

    posted by Elise on 6-12-2008 at 4:18 am

29. I’m a pretty forthright person, so usually, if people have an issue with me, they tell me about it, I try to provide people with the same courtesy.

    However, I did, once have a roomate that didn’t understand the concept of rinsing dishes and putting them in the dishwasher (She has moved out and is now married and her husband does the dishes — sometimes…). In her honor, there is a note hung over the sink that says, “This is either a shiny, empty sink or a textbook example in wishful thinking.”

    My favorite passive agressive note, though, has got to be the following: My Sophomore year of college four of our guy friends lived in the same apartment, and their apartment was our usual hang out place, as a result a lot of their food was eaten by other people. They started to keep a “community” drawer of cheaper food in their house for hungry guests. The main culprits were these two international students, who were brothers from Africa.

    The “community” label was taken off the drawer and replaced with, “Food for Africans”

    posted by Ashley on 6-12-2008 at 9:10 am

30. During this past year I lived in a co-ed dorm at my college. One guy kept leaving a dirty wash cloth on the only shelf in the shower. Despite repeatedly throwing it on the floor, it kept reappearing.

    Our school newspaper has a section for anonymous shout outs, so I wrote one along the lines of, “To the person that leaves his washrag in the public shower: I don’t want to bathe next to the piece of cloth you probably use to wash your genitals.”

    I never saw it again.

    posted by Jodi on 6-12-2008 at 10:09 am

31. Oh I LOVE passive aggressive notes. They give me a way to be anonymously snarky. When a drunk guy threw my pumpkin down 3 flights of stairs the night before Halloween my freshman year at college, I put up notes asking people to find the “pumpkin murder” with photos of my pumpkin. I then moved to an all-girls dorm, where someone threw up in the SHOWER daily, and left it there. I put up notes with pictures of a toilet asking those who would throw up to please use a toilet, in some funny phrasing, but it was years ago so I forget. I also hated my roommate after college and partially moved out, leaving notes for her to get out of my stuff, etc. I just really enjoy it :)

    posted by Kelly J on 6-12-2008 at 12:53 pm

32. JODI: Mine is more or less along the lines of yours…

    i used to share a bathroom with 8 people on my floor and unfortunately, not one of those girls cared that their hair acumulated in the drain. Therefore, I was treated to a HUGE ball of hair in the drain every morning before my shower. After a couple of weeks of throwing the offending hairball in the trash while trying not to throw up, I decided to leave a pleasant little note in the bathroom: “Please remember to clean up after yourself.” Sounds nice, right?

    Well, obviously it did not do the trick. A month later I was still enjoying the morning hairball. One morning (after encountering an especially nausea-inducing specimin) I decided to leave the following note:

    I AM TIRED OF SHOWERING WITH YOUR HAIR SWIMMING ABOUT MY ANKLES.

    Not too bad except I had taped the offending hairball to the paper.

    I never saw another hairball again.

    posted by GTT on 6-12-2008 at 3:22 pm

33. I have two stories, though I admit they are of the “I heard it from a guy who talked to the original guy” type.

    In some rural neighborhood, there was a real problem with cats wandering around instead of being kept in their own home/yard, getting into garbage, mewling all night, etc… One memeber of the community began to shoot the cats with paintballs. The meaning of this passive-aggressive note became clear when a paintballed cat turned up shot with something heavier and more leaden! From then on, if a cat showed up with a paintball hit, it was kept inside the owner’s home!

    A fellow historical reenactor has done a lot of movie work, and he told me about a Native American stuntman that he had worked with. The stuntman made enough money to move into an upscale neighborhood, but he needed to do some remodeling. Since he didn’t have room inside his home for all his belongings, he put up a tipi in the backyard to serve as temporary storage. One day he found a note pinned to the tipi from a neighbor complaining about the “poor view” from the neighbor’s backyard, lower property values, etc… The Native American typed a reply, the contents of which I will not repeat in a public forum, tied it to an arrow, and shot the arrow into the neighbor’s yard! When the neighborhood kids (who would hang around when he practiced archery, tomahawk and spear throwing, etc..) found out that he was a stuntman, ergo part of Hollywood, everything was forgiven!

    posted by R.G. on 6-13-2008 at 7:57 am

34. Re: “I also routinely leave nasty notes on non-handicap stickered cars in handicapped spaces.”

    It takes quite awhile to get a handicapped card or sticker in my state. For about six weeks after I was injured I had no card.

    Also, I have seen people be aggressive towards individuals with cards but who “seemed well,” and so the aggressor thought they were misusing a card, not realizing that these people may have heart conditions or other non-visible problems, and Lord knows what being shouted at did to someone with a heart condition.

    If you think someone is misusing a handicapped space, call the police. Otherwise, leave them alone.

    posted by ellie on 6-13-2008 at 9:57 am

35. For what it is worth, during an unusually hot summer we conducted factory overhaul. A worker came to the break room to find the water bottle in the water cooler empty. He replaced the bottle and left a fairly poisonous note addressed to all the people in the world that leave empty water bottles in the water cooler.

    He also made a syntax error and a couple of spelling errors which I fixed with a red pen, and then assigned his note a grade of 94%.

    Goodness! We only though he was angry when he left the note about the water bottle.

    posted by $$$$ on 6-13-2008 at 11:17 am

36. I had a new neighbor at the apt. complex. She had a small dog and didn’t believe in the rules about cleaning up after, so I always had to negotiate a minefield to get to my car. Complaints to the landlord didn’t work. So I ended up putting a stick in the ground at each crime scene with a sign taped to it “Scoop Your Poop”. I put up dozens of signs. It would work for awhile and then start up again. Eventually she moved out.

    posted by Johnny E. on 6-14-2008 at 12:19 pm

37. I had a new neighbor at the apt. complex. She had a small dog and didn’t believe in the rules about cleaning up after, so I always had to negotiate a minefield to get to my car. Complaints to the landlord didn’t work. So I ended up putting a stick in the ground at each crime scene with a sign taped to it “Scoop Your Poop”. I put up dozens of signs. It would work for awhile and then start up again. Eventually she moved out.

    p.s. here’s a passive-aggressive note for you. Those two security words at the bottom of you comments form are barely legible to humans even, especially when you have the lines going through them.

    posted by Johnny E on 6-14-2008 at 12:27 pm

38. In our old apartment building we had assigned lockers in the laundry room where you could keep soap, etc…

    It was a small town, and a teeny building and no one really kept locks on their lockers. I didn’t either. I started to notice, however, that someone was using my laundry detergent.

    I replaced the detergent one day with a bottle of liquid laundry bleach. I guess my thief couldn’t read either. I found a pile of bleach-stained clothes on top of the washer and no one ever touched our locker again.

    It wasn’t even meant to be malevolent on my part, it just turned out that way.

    posted by Jennie on 6-14-2008 at 12:45 pm

39. I have left notes on car windshields when the drivers did obnoxious things like take up two parking spaces just so their precious BMW didn’t get a ding in it.

    I also despise people who park in handicapped parking and who are not handicapped (it’s not difficult to get a hang-tag where I live). One day a couple of years ago, I was waiting outside a supermarket for my husband to pick me up because he had dropped me off while he shopped at a different store. This store had a couple of handicapped slots right in the front, about 5 feet from where I was waiting on a sort of covered patio. A 60-ish woman in expensive designer clothes pulled up in her top-down convertible and started to get out of the car. I saw that she (a) had no tag and (b) seemed remarkably spry for a handicapped person. I mean, folks with MS or heart trouble or emphysema often move slowly, you know? I looked her straight in the eye and smiled my nicest smile. I was wearing sunglasses, so I tilted my head a little to make it obvious that I was looking at her (non-handicapped) license plate, and I smiled some more.

    She looked daggers at me, but immediately started rummaging around in her glove box, then in her purse, theb in the back seat, shooting me venomous glances. I continued to do nothing at all but smile broadly at her—and it wasn’t faked because I was getting genuine pleasure out of the fact that she was obviously squirming.

    Finally, with a wordless huff, she plopped back into the driver’s seat, turned on the car and jerked it into reverse. She drove about 10 feet away to a very close parking space which had been open when she first pulled up. She got out of the convertible, slammed the door, and ran (yes, ran!) into the store without looking at me again.

    I never stopped smiling. I loved every minute of it.

    posted by ansav on 7-2-2008 at 3:35 pm

40. When I was younger, my neighbor (who was a jerk) bought a new car which he thought was the cats pajamas. He went to the airport one day, and took up two spots to protect his baby. When he came out, someone had keyed both sides of his new car. Priceless. No words, but the message was clear.

    posted by delbar on 11-4-2008 at 12:33 am

41. To the person who took my lunch for the third time this month, I really hope you enjoyed it. I also hope you enjoy the trips to the bathroom, as it contained Ex-Lax.

    posted by Ken Steen on 11-24-2008 at 6:43 am

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