Today I happened across a website all about passive-aggressive notes, and it made me think of Danielle, my former back-room dominatrix. Danielle is the source of all of the super irritating, purple highlighter notes around my former place of employment, the ones with the huge exclamation points and thirteen-year-old girl handwriting (you can all properly envision them now, can't you?). My personal favorite, once I figured them out, was one that she had taped to the mini-fridge that sat underneath a desk in the back room. No one would ever have had any occasion to notice this fridge, in fact I would never even have known that it was there, as it was completely hidden by a cloth draped over the table (used as a picture backdrop). One night I was vacuuming (HA! and she thought I never did this!) and in an effort to be thorough, I lifted the drop cloth to get under the table. And there was the previously invisible fridge, with a very large and inflammatory note attached to it. The note said something like...

...And there, there was the purple highlighter! And the nauseating penmanship! With the upside-down acute triangle and large hollow dot exclamation point! Suddenly it occurred to me, AH-HA! These hideous little things that I have been seeing all over the office and wondering about for the past 8 months, they come from Danielle!

You see, if you wander around my place of former employment looking at things, you'll come across several of these highlighter notes in any given room. They always have exclamation points. With the exception of the one she placed on her personal fridge, they are always excruciatingly passive-aggressive (the one on the fridge was a little scary, to tell you the truth). Other notes include:


That one pissed me off for months. Who the fuck? Why in the hell don't you just empty the vacuum bag when it's full? When the vacuum bag is full and I go to use it, I empty it. I've done it several times. You don't need to put a bitchy little note on the vacuum, unless, pardon me, you are too good to empty the vacuum bag yourself when you discover it full. It wasn't my manager's handwriting, it wasn't our CEO's handwriting. It wasn't my pseudo-manager's handwriting either. So, I reasoned, if management wasn't responsible, and had indeed never even mentioned the apparently dire issue of the over-full vacuum bags, then who the hell wrote the damn note? Why didn't that despicable coward sign their handiwork?

You can see, I stewed. Every single time I vacuumed, I silently cursed that anal-retentive person. Then I removed the offending note and felt much better.

Months later, I started working in the back and discovered the fridge. I learned a few things about Danielle's personality. And I put it all together. (Also, she left me some personal notes, so the handwriting was seared into my brain.)

My favorite thing about the fridge note, though, is that there are only 2 people working in that office...only two people could ever be tempted by the hallowed contents of that hidden fridge. One of them was Danielle, the other was her partner and helpmate Sara. I think that Sara is fabulously cool. She and Danielle seem to get on pretty well, so I assume that the "STAY THE FUCK AWARE FROM MY DAMN FRIDGE" bit wasn't directed at her. All of the other employees at our company use another fridge, in a completely different part of the office. That note was put there for fridge phantoms.

Which brings me to my much-beleaguered point: passive-aggressive notes are hilarious.

To Each His Own Microwave