the Tupperware lawn party, the parking commandment, and other stories of passive-aggressive notes at work

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager .
Earlier this month we talked about passive-aggressive notes at work — or, more accurately for many of them, notes that are just plain aggressive, weirdly dramatic, or just funny. Here are 15 of my favorite stories you shared.
1. The motivational signs
Morale is a bit low. So management is trying to do things about it and in typical fashion is not addressing the actual causes of said morale issues.
Someone decided to hang motivational signs. In the bathroom. Including the stalls. So now when you use the toilet you can chose which encouragement you want to stare at while doing your business: “Just don’t quit,” “Do your best,” or “Mistakes help us grow.”
It did improve morale briefly by hysterical laughter but that probably wasn’t the intent.
Infantilization at work is the best.
2. The party
My department head (high school) made herself a martyr about cleaning out the teacher’s lounge fridge and trying to get everyone to reclaim their old, dirty tupperwares. She hosted an end of the school year party at her house. We arrived to find all the unclaimed tupperware containers spread across her lawn with a poster (!) hanging on the front door telling us to claim our containers or they would be thrown in the trash.
3. “Sorry you missed it”
My coworker Jane and I have recently switched to remote work. It has not gone over well with our other coworker Susan, who believes remote workers sleep on the couch all day. But she doesn’t speak of it directly, just drops hints and does stuff like below:
This past Valentine’s Day, Susan emailed Jane and me a picture of the break room which was full of sweets, with the following: “Bob brought in candy for everyone, and Sharon baked cupcakes. They were delicious, sorry you missed it. Have a nice day.”
4. The sign explosion
Traditionally, mail to a university campus comes through USPS and gets routed through the campus mail system, where longtime employees know where every little weird building is and where the safe places to leave packages are. COVID, and vast cuts to campus staff and reduction in mail delivery, coincided with a big uptick in ordering things online that are delivered by different services, like Amazon and Grubhub. I’m sure it’s frustrating if you’re the person in the office who gets interrupted by different delivery workers, or, worse, yelled at when someone’s package went awry or was delivered to the wrong place and you had nothing to do with it.
However … I came into work one day and there were literally *40* different signs posted all around our maybe 200 square foot lobby, with colored font, highlights, capitals, etc. DO NOT LEAVE PACKAGES HERE. THIS IS NOT THE LLAMA DEPARTMENT. FOR THE LLAMA DEPARTMENT, PROCEED DOWN THE HALL (series of arrows.) Small furniture had been deployed to post signs in the middle of the hallway, where people would traditionally walk. I could just imagine harried deliverers coming in, seeing this Dr. Bronner’s label style art installation, putting their package down and backing away slowly.
5. The fancy coffee
Fresh out of college, I worked a very strange job as a front desk girl at a law firm. The managing partner’s wife was the head of admin and was very incapable. She had no idea how to manage people and would manage staff by passive aggressive notes. I was only there for a month, but my favorite note of hers went like this:
” I AND ONLY MYSELF IS ALLOWED TO USE * FANCY * BRAND OF COFFEE. I KEEP IT IN THE KITCHEN BECASUE THE SMELL GIVES ME A HEADACHE. IF YOU TOUCH THIS BAG, I WILL FINGERPRINT IT AND YOU WILL BE FIRED FOR INSUBORDINATION.”
6. The fish drama
We had a collage of pictures of fish that are acceptable to microwave (Swedish fish) and fish that are not acceptable to microwave (so many pictures of random fish) taped to the microwave. It was violently ripped down by someone within 15 minutes of its appearance (most of the office only knows about it because the first person who saw it took a picture with their phone because it was funny) and the chick that I am pretty sure is our office secret fish microwaver STILL BRINGS IT UP to this day, over two years later. And gets visibly choked up with angry emotion. Over how rude she felt the fish sign was.
7. The threat
An apartment building where I lived once posted signs alerting residents to upcoming pest-remediation work. Unfortunately the signs read:
THE THIRD FLOOR WILL BE EXTERMINATED ON TUESDAY.
8. The epic seriousness
I once had a staff member ask me to post a reminder to check that you weren’t taking someone else’s printing with your own. I did, and then came back to find it reworked with the same wording, but much, MUCH bigger font size, CAPITAL LETTERS, underlining, and many exclamation points. Obviously she didn’t think I had reflected the Epic Seriousness of the problem.
I was very glad I hadn’t signed it because it looked totally crazed.
9. The animals
A client had this on their outside doors: “Do NOT under ANY circumstance let any wild animals into the building to include but not limited to raccoons, possums, chipmunks, squirrels, badgers, prairie dogs, geese, ducks, birds of any brand (yes it said brand), rats, feral cats, unaccompanied dogs, etc. Anything with a tail is forbidden.
We do not care how hard it’s raining, how hot it is, how cute they are, how aggressive/insistent they were, or what their eyes said to you. We CANNOT have wild animals in the building.”
* Jerome and Lisa we have installed cameras on the doors this is your last warning.”
I had SO many questions and wanted to meet Lisa and Jerome immediately. Unfortunately my boss at the time looked at the sign, looked at my amazed face, and then forbid me to ask the client any questions. I still want to know what that badger said to Jerome with their eyes.
10. The parking commandment
I was a church secretary. When there was a funeral we’d put “Funeral -No Parking” signs on little stands where the hearse and car with the family needed to pull up in front. People ignored the signs. We changed the signs to “Funeral -Thou Shalt Not Park”. After the wording change the spaces in front of the church were always left clear.
11. “Please read the signs”
Many moons ago I worked in a place that ran professional exams. We’d have big venues with lots of different course exams on weekends. We would post the locations and details of where to go all over the venue. Inevitably stressed exam takers would arrive in droves and walk up to our staff and say they didn’t know where to go and there were no signs. The staff would patiently walk them to the signs, ask them for their course/exam details and tell them where to go. It always caused a bit of stress but we all thought this was inevitable when you’re running exams
Until one day, some genius had the foresight to include a sign that said “Please read the signs.” And somehow ignoring the possibility that you’d have to read the sign that directed you to read the signs, before you actually read the signs, it worked. People actually started reading the signs that directed them where to go, and not individually asking staff. Staff still helped people, but at least it was no longer all the people all at once!
12. The lab
I did my PhD in computational biology. We had a very sensitive instrument that was making the data that we all needed to graduate. Its room was strictly off-limits while a run was in progress, because any light, vibration, or dust would spoil the whole experiment. There was a polite sign on the door when it was in use. That was good enough, until the lab down the hall needed some renovations, and the construction crew found the shortest path between their work area and the toilet…just go through that room. So, they were barging in several times a day, turning on lights, slamming doors, etc.
We tried talking to them, but they blew us off. We weren’t allowed to lock the doors; fire hazard. So, one of my lab-mates made a new sign.
“Warning! Genetically modified HIV and Herpes Viruses! Trained personnel ONLY. Full BSL2 PPE is required. In the event of exposure, contact the EH&S emergency line at 555-555-5555.”
(This was all true, however these viruses had been “genetically modified” to make them safe to handle on the benchtop…)
Another lab-mate was working in that room shortly thereafter. He reported hearing footprints approach the door, then a pause, then some incredulous expletives and a hasty retreat. Success!
Worked a bit too well. That crew had to be persuaded to come back to work, with assurances from on high that those nasties were strictly confined to our area. But they never came near us again.
13. The catastrophic misunderstanding
I can’t find the picture I took of it, so I’m working off of memory, but I had a former toxic boss who disagreed with edits I made to a publication she’d washed her hands of multiple times, and included a post-it that said something akin to, “The lack of hyphens throughout this document will lead to CATASTROPHIC misunderstandings of the content.”
While there were certainly areas that the text was using nouns as adjectives and would warrant hyphens, there was not CATASTROPHIC misunderstandings caused by their omission.
This same boss didn’t know how to properly use semicolons, so I wasn’t too fussed about her inconsistent applications of grammar.
14. Another misunderstanding
My coworker who I share a printer with (but not an office) is convinced that anytime something happens in her office, another of our coworkers intentionally did it and needs to be informed not to do so via note. Most recent example was that a small canvas print she hung up fell off of the wall (command hook gave out) and she insisted that someone pulled it off! She replaced it with a note that said to “Do NOT remove from wall!” With multiple underlines.
15. The Poo-Pourri
Recently worked in an office building with several businesses and only one set of bathrooms on each floor. One day, someone put a bottle of Poo-Pourri in the ladies room, with a note that they didn’t want to smell other peoples s&*t and we all needed to use it every time.
Added to that note was someone asking if they’d put Poo-Pourri in the men’s room as well, or if only ladies were supposed to have rose-scented s*&t.
Added to that was a note from the original poster saying that it was rude to keep saying s*&t, and people just needed to use the Poo-Pourri.
Someone dumped out the Poo-Pourri, all over the floor.
Another note criticized someone for making and unnecessary mess and being childish about using the Poo-Pourri.
Another note claimed it was all the fault of the patriarchy that we were so delicate that we couldn’t handle a bathroom smelling like a bathroom.
Someone printed out an article and taped it up about how much fecal matter sprays out of toilets when you flush them.
Another asked if she didn’t flush her toilet at home, and told her she was disgusting.
It was easily one of the most entertaining weeks at work.
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