Thanks, Ken, for the link to some of the best passive aggressive notes ever written. I laughed very hard when reading through them because I never imagined that every office has its Refrigerator Nazi or Dishes In The Sink Nazi. That is some good reading:
newpopehat/kindly-dont-eat-my-food-please-asshole
I think I laughed so hard because I used to rage against the Food Thief at a major nonprofit known to every single one of you. At the time--and this was years ago--I would buy Stonyfield Farm yogurts because they were organic. As you can imagine, they were not cheap back in the day--and I was not even breaking the $20K mark in salary. And damn if some a-wipe didn't swipe it at least once a week. And s/he would swipe half a sandwich in one of those white take-out styrofoam square boxes. I was always so incredulous, like, DUDE!! My mouth was ON that sandwich! I could have picked my butt and then touched the bread! WHY would you take those kind of chances for a three-hour old/day old turkey on toasted wheat?! Why would ANYONE eat something for which they couldn't establish some reasonable chain of custody? Even before I was immune-suppressed I would not eat stuff sent home with me from a dinner party or from an office party. I just would not do it, based on the fact that it sat on a table for x number of hours with x number of people reaching over it, breathing near it, scooping into it. Something about not knowing precisely who had been in the Israeli couscous salad made me unable to eat it later. And here comes this dude to eat a sandwich of whose provenance he knew nothing! It boggled my mind as well as pissed me off no end. To my credit I never did write a fridge note. I saved the note writing for another job in a small campus townhouse. The townhouse had three bathrooms, two on the ground floor and one on the second floor, where my and my three coworkers sat. One guy from the third floor would come downstairs at 2pm every day, newspaper in hand, and take a monster dump in that bathroom, thereby rendering the toilet and surrounding hallway fit for neither man nor beast for about 35 minutes. It was nauseating and, we thought, rather aggressive for a little one person bathroom. So we wrote The Note: "PLEASE! Number One ONLY in this toilet. All Numbers greater than One to be dispensed with in the larger air-purified bathrooms on the first floor."
Total lack of compliance from the man we all now deemed The Mad Crapper. Which led to this sign, the most passive-aggressive such a note can get: "ABSOLUTELY *NO CRAPPING* IN THIS TOILET. THE STENCH IMPEDES THE WORK OF THOSE ON THIS FLOOR. YES, WE'RE TALKING ABOUT *YOU*"
Passive aggressive? No doubt. But effective? You bet.
2 comments:
The use of the term "provenance" to refer to a half-sandwich made me feel all warm and tingly.
Based on my meeting at work this morning, I would like to add "Please use the mute button if you plan on peeing during this conference call," No, I'm not lying, as E already knows, someone was clearly going to the bathroom. Gotta love government consulting!
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