The Annoying Passive Aggressive People I've Endured Thread

Excellent! I'll yank my example from there over here (and elaborate).

I had a college roommate who used to leave little passive-aggressive notes everywhere around our dorm suite (in which six people resided). She had a thing for yellow post-it notes, which I believe she kept solely for the purpose of leaving little notes for us. I don't think she ever once addressed any of us directly with regard to her grievances.

Funny thing was, the rest of us were pretty neat, quiet, and considerate as college girls go. You know, not perfect, but it's not like the place was buried in empty pizza boxes and toenail clippings. I'm fairly certain she had some kind of obsessive thing going on.

The notes often were clearly meant for one person, for a one-time incident, but nonetheless were addressed to everyone as though they happened every day. E.g., "I would appreciate it if people would not leave their leftover birthday cake in my fridge without discussing it with me first."

Or "Dishes don't wash themselves, and your mother doesn't live here. Please wash your coffee mug and put it back in your room." (When it was noon, and the coffee mug had been sitting there for maybe an hour.)

The place was littered with tiny yellow notes. I'm afraid after a while we started crumpling them up and throwing them away. And I'll admit a couple of times I borrowed her sticky notes and left some notes (clearly meant for her, but vaguely addressed to everyone) as a joke.

Which, of course, caused her to leave a sticky note over her sticky notes about not taking them without permission.

Annoying passive-aggressive people would pretty much be all of them. Tell me if I'm doing something that bugs you. I'll try to stop.

I comfort myself with thinking that being them is its own punishment.

9 out of 10 of my family members.

*Lock thread*

I had a passive-aggressive collegue in my last job. She drove me nuts. She would never talk to me if I'd done something she didn't like, she would wait for a team meeting and then say something like 'Miranda, I understand that this kind of thing can be difficult for you, I really do, but I'm sure that the team will agree with me that's it not really acceptable and if you need so much help you should just ask me'.

The amount the times I had to sit on my hands to stop me smacking her in the mouth.

And you know how when you hate a job you say 'the day I leave here I am going to tell (whoever) exactly what I think of them!' but you never do? Well... neither did I.

But I did tell her boss.

regdog said:

My mother is passive/aggressive queen.

Her favorite thing to do is whimper and quietly say "I'll be fine, don't worry about me."

She was kind of gobsmacked when I had had enough and said "I'm not."

Amazingly she lost her whimper, simper and snapped at me. Go figure.

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That's one of two effective ways to take on passive-aggressive types. Either (1) be absolutely direct yourself and confront whatever the issue is head-on. Or (2) take them exactly at their word and/or ignore them. E.g., they're fine, so why should you worry?

When possible, I like to do a one-two punch, actually. First, I confront them in a polite, sweet, slightly confused way that Miss Manners would fully approve and that no one could reasonably reproach. "You say you're fine, but I'm afraid I'm confused because you're frowning. Are you sure there isn't anything you'd like to discuss?" And if they insist they're fine and keep it up, you can feel free to cheerfully ignore them because hey, you gave them the opportunity to speak up.

ETA:

mirandashell said:

I had a passive-aggressive collegue in my last job. She drove me nuts. She would never talk to me if I'd done something she didn't like, she would wait for a team meeting and then say something like 'Miranda, I understand that this kind of thing can be difficult for you, I really do, but I'm sure that the team will agree with me that's it not really acceptable and if you need so much help you should just ask me'.

The amount the times I had to sit on my hands to stop me smacking her in the mouth.

And you know how when you hate a job you say 'the day I leave here I am going to tell (whoever) exactly what I think of them!' but you never do? Well... neither did I.

But I did tell her boss.

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Oh, oh, oh, I had one of those and how I hated it!

Grrrr. And the boss loved her because she was a world champion kiss-up, and he was the sort who loved that kind of thing.

I left the job, eventually -- it was too annoying to face every day. She's now a partner at that firm.

Grrrr. And the boss loved her because she was a world champion kiss-up, and he was the sort who loved that kind of thing.

I left the job, eventually -- it was too annoying to face every day. She's now a partner at that firm.

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Oh yeah. Mine is also on the ladder to the top. She got herself on the Mentor Programme so she's being pushed for promotion.

The fact she's actually crap at her job doesn't seem to matter.

ETA: And you know what made it worse? Me and her were the only women in the team.

I have long held the belief that, sadly, being an effective kiss-up will get you further on the promotion ladder at most places than talent or hard work.

It's not that I haven't seen talented, hard-working people do well. But it's astonishing how many useless kiss-ups make it far further than they should.

For a while, was forced to "team up" with my horrid colleague for a particular case. We were working together on the research and writing, and were supposed to report to the boss together. Frankly, I did most of the work, and I definitely came up with all of the big ideas. But I got in one morning to discover that she'd "informally" reported "our" results to the boss over coffee, of course taking credit for much of my work as well as hers. And the way it rolled out, it would have looked incredibly petty for me to say "hey, I did most of the work!" So I did nothing but seethe -- and did my best to avoid "teaming" with her on future projects. I found out later that she did this kind of thing. All. The. Time.

I have long held the belief that, sadly, being an effective kiss-up will get you further on the promotion ladder at most places than talent or hard work.

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Hell yeah. It's amazing how many bosses don't recognise a kiss up. It's one of my criteria for a good boss.

mirandashell said:

Hell yeah. It's amazing how many bosses don't recognise a kiss up. It's one of my criteria for a good boss.

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+1. And how.

Lavern08 said:

9 out of 10 of my family members.

*Lock thread*

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I'm the tenth one.

CassandraW said:

I have long held the belief that, sadly, being an effective kiss-up will get you further on the promotion ladder at most places than talent or hard work.

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Cause if you work hard and show talent, they don't want to lose that! They have to have talent they can depend on.

A kiss up on the other hand... They're not useful down there, so maybe they can use their brown nose to push around the talent...

I work in the land known as Passive-Aggressiva. I think every, obnoxious person in the universe works at my company. I have a coworker (a manager in a different department) who has made an art form of insulting you via compliment. "Oh you look really pretty today, did you do something different than usual?" It's fascinating, really.

And then one of my direct supervisors has an inability to say anything critical directly to you. She'll come into the office in the morning and make small talk with us and proceed to go upstairs and send us an email on dress code or proper phone etiquette. She even recently fired someone via email - just completely refused to do it in person.

regdog said:

My mother is passive/aggressive queen.

Her favorite thing to do is whimper and quietly say "I'll be fine, don't worry about me."

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Mine does the same thing. Alarmingly I think it's a trait I've inherited. I caught myself doing it a few times and added a doubly annoying move in which I Columbo-turn on whoever I'm annoyed with and begin, 'Well, actually...' and just yell at them anyway. I try biting tongue before the first stage these days.

Six Alaric said:

Alarmingly I think it's a trait I've inherited.

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I think it's incredibly easy to inherit our parents' worst traits -- or get involved with people who have them -- if we don't keep constant vigilance.

Your double-take is much, much better than the kind of prolonged thing Reg is describing!

I keep a ferocious watch on myself for p/a tendencies. I think I've become the reverse -- the person who says directly the thing most people would hint around. I think that's good, overall, but some don't agree!

And I've booted more than a couple of significant others and friends who got repeatedly passive-aggressive on me.

There is one area where I get deliberately passive-aggressive. And that is when I'm stuck next to a blatantly rude person on an airplane. I give a polite request or two to stop the behavior, and then go straight to passive aggressive.

Sadly, I've learned from long experience that passive aggressive is often more effective than polite in these circumstances. E.g., repeatedly "accidentally" dropping a heavy book on the thigh of someone who has aggressively stuck his leg under my seat and obstructed half of my leg room disturbs him a lot more than my nice request to remove it.

P/A is the one trait I find really hard to deal with. I tend to go into aggressive/aggressive. More than once I've looked someone straight in the face, paused for a few seconds, then said 'Fuck off'.

'What?'

'If you want to start that P/A shit on me, fuck off.'

Sometimes it works, sometimes it gets me into trouble. Although I don't do that at work. In that situation, I usually say 'Uhuh' and walk away.

regdog said:

Fortunately for her, I liked the cat and didn't want him to go without, or my response would have been "The dead need no orange juice."

I still kind of regret not having the opportunity to use that line.

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I must steal that line and use it somewhere. It's beautiful.

Haggis said:

I must steal that line and use it somewhere. It's beautiful.

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it would make a good avie title.

CassandraW said:

I think it's incredibly easy to inherit our parents' worst traits -- or get involved with people who have them -- if we don't keep constant vigilance.

Your double-take is much, much better than the kind of prolonged thing Reg is describing!

I keep a ferocious watch on myself for p/a tendencies. I think I've become the reverse -- the person who says directly the thing most people would hint around. I think that's good, overall, but some don't agree!

And I've booted more than a couple of significant others and friends who got repeatedly passive-aggressive on me.

There is one area where I get deliberately passive-aggressive. And that is when I'm stuck next to a blatantly rude person on an airplane. I give a polite request or two to stop the behavior, and then go straight to passive aggressive.

Sadly, I've learned from long experience that passive aggressive is often more effective than polite in these circumstances. E.g., repeatedly "accidentally" dropping a heavy book on the thigh of someone who has aggressively stuck his leg under my seat and obstructed half of my leg room disturbs him a lot more than my nice request to remove it.

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Very true. It's hard to find the middle-ground; I don't want to inherit undue aggression but I don't want to be a quivering milquetoast either. Certainly don't want a partner who does either of those things... not quite passive-aggressive but they're not good attitudes either way. Oh, and the trouble is it's so easy to grow up hating one extreme and doing such a 180 that you become just as bad in the opposite way, either in a relationship or when raising a kid. :{

CassandraW said:

it would make a good avie title.

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Also would make a good title for a poem.

*clears throat*

The Dead Need No Orange Juice

Mom, be not thirsty, although some have called thee
Passive and aggressive, and indeed thou art so,
For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
heed not, dear mum, nor yet canst thou dupe me.
Cat food and OJ, which but thy pretense bee,
if purchased, then from thee, more abuse must flow,
And sooner my patience with thee doe goe.


I'll finish it later, but that's a fair start, I think.

It would make a good Mother's Day card, don't you think?