if you’ve ever tut-tutted over the consequences of big-box stores and online retailers overtaking small businesses, you’ll be heartened to hear that some folks have figured out how to bring those old-fashioned mom-n-pop ideas about customer service into the digital age…with the help of a big ol’ corporation called ebay!
while browsing the auction site for [...]

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writes an anonymous federal employee in colorado: “this morning we were reminded via an office-wide email that we must comply with the official timekeeping rules.”
that means recording the correct time on our time sheets, not being absent during core hours without submitting a leave slip, not being off campus except for lunch hour or approved [...]

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this masterpiece is a gift from the collection of zedral (morgantown, west virginia, 2008). the original installation also includes a trail of small arrows pointing customers toward the register, along with multiple post-it reiterations along the way.

related: ceci n’est pas une note passif-agressif

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what kind of objectionable trash do you suppose is being disposed of in these bins? (half-eaten curries? yesterday’s times?) how many hours of company time did the sign’s designer spend on this full-color laminated masterpiece? what is that comma doing there? and how, exactly, how are these bins to be monitored?

related: servicing over a half-billion [...]

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where do you suppose this “anomous” tampa, florida resident stands on the whole nature-vs.-nurture debate?

interested? here’s a free preview!

related: your to lazy

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eli says this sign has been hanging in the window of the local pizza place for several weeks now. (really, with that whole “talking and working” requirement, are you surprised they weren’t deluged with applications?)

related: bizarre pardoning accident

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i didn’t think i’d ever see a kitchen appliance more inappropriately anthropomorphized than this fridge, but i think this dishwasher note (from an anonymous submitter in england) dials the WTF-factor up to 11.

related: the passive-aggressive note has not been destroyed; it has been solved

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most drivers could easily identify these duct-tape wrapped shapes as the universal sign for “caution: crazy person ahead,” but our submitter in boston actually pulled over and parked in order to get a better look. up close, “the signs were even crazier than we thought,” she reports. “seriously, what happened to this guy?”

related: movin’ out [...]

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“this is from my shrink’s office,” explains our anonymous submitter in wisconsin. “ironically, I was going to them to help me resolve issues with my spouse’s passive-aggressive tendencies.”

can’t you just feel the repressed anger in the sudden drop-off in punctuation?  (after all, if you’re not gonna use three exclamation points, why bother?)
related: perhaps it’s time [...]

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writes an anonymous submitter in houston: “a neighbor in my building put up an obama yard sign on the door of her apartment around the time of the texas primary. when it disappeared, i assumed she took it down herself.” then up went this note — a cheerful bit of propaganda that oh-so-subtly disproves all [...]

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“working in a university library, you get used to a lot of ‘quirky’ personalities,” says our anonymous submitter in manhattan, kansas, “but so far, this is the only one that has decided to put pathology to paper.”

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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. the beloved runbarbara) says that’s the situation she’s found herself in at her job.
the offender, sandra, “has met me a total [...]

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“i work for a pretty awesome nonprofit, 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 [...]

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what’s employee morale like inside yahoo’s sunnyvale headquarters, you might ask, amid all the chatter about coming layoffs, the possible microsoft takeover, and everything else? well, according to one anonymous yahoo! employee, in the toilet would be one place to look.
says our yahoo! tipster: “first they took away our right to stand on the toilets. [...]

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like this phrase, there are a few irritating little pieces of clip art that keep popping up in submissions over and over again. hovering somewhere near the top of most-wanted list is this pouty little white-gloved dandy.
from the factories of pittsburgh…

…to the cube-farms of virginia, this perspiring misanthrope has been spreading his message of intolerance [...]

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alexa in texas works in a graduate lab of five students. one friday, she says, “our advisor came in around 9:30 a.m. looking for us. no dice: except for one poor guy, we were all out. when the hard-working crew finally rolled in around 1:30 (or, um, 3 p.m.), they were greeted by this inspirational [...]

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“my roommate thinks I took her dry erase board when I was 40 miles away the week it was taken,” says an anonymous college student in tampa, florida. “she has been leaving me notes like this ALL YEAR.”
god help our poor submitter, but i’m nominating this crazy rainbow of a note for the passive-aggressive hall [...]

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“it seems too many people have made love to the office water cooler,” says lizzy in new york. and some of them, it seems, are getting a little sloppy.

lizzy says the “office of water” thing refers to the fact that “our office is full of water. like, the fridge doesn’t have anything but bottled water [...]

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sure, those luxury condos going up all over downtown austin might look pretty, but if you’re like, “dude, enough of this corporate bullshit!” our anonymous austin submitter says her building offers plenty of exciting local color you won’t find in those glass-and-steel towers. perks include: 1) the building’s property manager, a character known for his [...]

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this note represents pretty much everything about office culture that makes me cringe. appropriately enough, i can’t even bring myself to call out the specifics — it’s just too overwhelming. (but the sign will always be there…every day, taunting me.)

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