A certain Facebook friend of our anonymous submitter seems to have been going through a rough couple of weeks. but, hey, at least she seems to be confronting her issues!

(Confidential to Facebook friend: I’m no shrink, but I have a feeling this strategy might be more effective if the method of confrontation was something other than a status-update blind item on Facebook. just a thought!)

related: So obsessed that I’m becoming a bore

Dealing with the rantings of your crazy boss or overzealous receptionist is one thing, but what do you do when your office’s resident passive-aggressive note-leaver doesn’t even work there? Casey in San Diego (a.k.a. RunBarbara) says that’s the situation she’s found herself in at her job.

The offender, Sandra, “has met me a total of twice, both times for less than a minute,” Casey says. Yet for some reason, when Sandra (the aunt of the owner) stops by the office once a week to water the plants and drop off supplies, “she leaves these strange notes EVERYWHERE — and she almost always directs questions about said notes to me,” Casey says. “I often have no idea she posts these notes until someone asks me about the odd directions in them.”

Below, a small sampling of Sandra’s delightfully bizarrre directives. (Just click on the photos to enlarge.)

I’d like to think this note was posted immediately following the “potluck”…

related: The return of Thx Sandra!

Spotted by Anna on the wall of an apartment complex in Phoenix…

Meanwhile, in Ottawa…it’s comforting to know that even when Mom isn’t there to do your laundry, she can still help you guilt-trip your neighbors.

related: I wiped between my legs with those towels!

“I work for a pretty awesome non-profit, where people are amazingly laidback, accepting and non-OCD,” says our anonymous submitter in San Francisco — so this note came as something of a surprise.

Adds our submitter: “I have to admit, seeing the newspaper on top of the toilet tank the previous week had kinda gotten on my nerves too.”

related: oh dear

The word “newsflash,” like the phrase “no offense,” is an early indicator that what follows is probably going to be something pretty bitchy. Unless, of course, you’re watching TV news, in which case the word “newsflash” more likely heralds the announcement of a hard-hitting segment about the household product in your kitchen that could be killing your children. Either way: proceed with caution.

Exhibit a) from roommate to roommate, Chicago

Exhibit b) from mother to daughter, Irving, Texas

Exhibit c) the pointed use of song lyrics in a Facebook status update

Exhibit d) stating the obvious

related: No offense! (just kidding) No worries! (just kidding)

Sure, it’d be easier and quicker to just clean it up. But the modern passive-aggressive (like Katey in Berkeley’s ex-roommate) can’t pass up the opportunity to make a point.

A common variation on the Van der Rohe approach, as documented below by Sam in Dallas, is the so-called “Reverse Magritte.”

Meanwhile, post-modern passive-aggressives (like this New York office-worker below) can’t resist throwing some irony into the mix, intentional or not.

More recently, passive-aggressives have begun to show the influence of the burgeoning neo-pop movement. Our anonymous submitter in Houston, for example, designed the original stamp below for use in his work. “I am an engineer and we have to mark up technical drawings for manufacture,” he explains, in his artist’s statement. “It gets used at least twice a day.”

The bleeding-edge of passive-aggressive note-writing, however, lies on the west coast, where Rebecca in San Francisco says that in the past, “We’ve had an ongoing series of notes left in the office kitchen — usually of the ‘your mother doesn’t work here’ or ‘there is no such thing as the coffee fairy’ variety.” The Koons-inspired piece currently on display in the office breakroom, however, makes its point with no words at all.

related: Why-fi

“On our sorority dorm floor, the girls decorate their doors with pictures and various sorority decorations,” explains Kimberly in Knoxville, Tennessee. But when one of Kimberly’s sorority sisters noticed a few of her pictures were missing, she was like, really not happy. So, over the course of several days, she made her feelings known.

Reports Kimberly: “No worries though — the pictures were finally returned.”

related: How hazing rituals are born

This lovely little exchange from Seattle comes to us via the ever-brilliant Dan Savage at The Stranger. It reads a bit like a “SAHM vs. WOHM” face-off on Urbanbaby, with blessedly fewer acronyms.

(More backstory and larger versions of the photos over at the slog.)

related: There’s Hertz…and there’s “not exactly”