If there’s one thing I’ve learned from over a decade of writing a workplace advice column, it’s that people will do anything to avoid having an awkward conversation with their colleagues. Sometimes that means that they don’t bring up important topics at all, instead just letting problems go unaddressed while their frustration festers. Other times, it means they hint and sugarcoat rather than speak directly. And in other cases, well, they decide to leave notes.
You’re likely to find at least one in any office kitchen—often, someone has taped it above the kitchen sink, reminding you that your mother doesn’t work here and you’ll need to wash your own dishes. Or it might be a note on the fridge chastising people about their moldy leftovers.
But they crop up in other places too: the snarky note on the copier about refilling the paper tray instead of leaving it for the next person to do, or the outraged missive taped to the bathroom stall with graphic complaints about cleanliness (which I’ll spare you from having to read here).
Obviously, some communication by note can be efficient and even unavoidable in an office. If you need to warn people that the kitchen is cleaned out every Friday and leftovers will be tossed, a polite note on the fridge is a good way to convey that. But what’s interesting about the notes littering so many offices is how irritated—nay, outraged—they are. “Please wash and put away dishes after using them” is reasonable. “This kitchen is disgusting and you are adults who shouldn’t need to be told to clean up after yourselves” is … something else.
It’s the obvious underlying anger that makes these sorts of notes passive-aggressive (or sometimes just aggressive-aggressive). Here are some doozies readers have shared with me:
Man, there is wartime going on in my office concerning dishes/sink/break room etiquette. One to two notes, I get. But we have at least six or seven notes taped up behind the break room sink right now, some of which disagree with one another, a few of which go on for paragraphs. The gist of the majority of them is “Wash your dishes, you animal” or “Clean the sink when you’re done washing dishes, you animal,” with one “Don’t dump your coffee grounds down the sink, you animal.” Where it gets interesting is the fate of the cleaned dishes/containers. Our break room counter area is large and has tons of space—but some people apparently get really irked if you just leave your containers sitting on the counter after washing them, to the extent of taking/hiding containers they see sitting out. So there are some dueling notes about “PLEASE don’t leave your dishes sitting on the counter—everyone has to use it!” versus “But if you DO see dishes on the counter, please leave them alone and don’t hide them in random places!” The array of notes truly is a sight to behold. It’s clearly quite an emotional topic.
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.
My co-worker, whom I share a printer with, is convinced that anytime something happens in her office, another of our co-workers intentionally did it and needs to be informed not to do so via note. The most recent example was that a small canvas print she hung up fell off of the wall (the hook gave out), and she insisted that someone had pulled it off! She replaced it with a note that said “Do NOT remove from wall!” with multiple underlines.
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 knows about it only because the first person who saw it took a picture with their phone because it was funny), and the person who I am pretty sure is our office’s 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.
We’ve got a lab manager who leaves passive-aggressive Minion memes about cleaning up after yourself everywhere. Also, she sometimes emails poems to the whole company about how to properly use equipment. Seasonal too: The last one was a riff on “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” On the other hand, the lab has never been as well managed. So, you know, shrug emoji, I guess?
The terrible irony is that—despite their bountiful use of all caps, bolding, and underlining to grab attention—these passive-aggressive notes often don’t work! In fact, if anything, an inverse relationship appears to exist between emotion and effectiveness: The more anger that radiates from the page, the more likely the message is to be dismissed rather than change anyone’s behavior.
Why, then, do so many office notes seem to emanate from the most aggravated portions of our colleagues’ brains? I suspect that it’s due to the unique dynamics of work: Someone frustrated with their co-workers’ rude or inconsiderate behavior won’t always know who the offenders are and, even if they do, probably isn’t in a position where they’re empowered to impose any real rules or consequences on them. They’re simply stuck sharing space with these apparent savages, and when that feeling of frustrated helplessness builds over time, passive-aggressive notes start to feel like a reasonable—or even the only—option.
So, wash your dishes, you animals! Your co-workers’ blood pressure depends on it.
