Emily in Richmond, Virginia says this note was recently posted in her apartment building, “right next to a note complaining about a) the tenants in the building that have parties and don’t clean up the beer that gets left in the hallways and b) the laziness of the dog owners in the building that don’t pick up their dogs’ poop.”

related: Wanna touch the baby?

Before you embark on this visual road trip through from rural North America, remember: guns don’t kill ’possums. CELL PHONES KILL ’POSSUMS. (And potentially one-thumbed former sea captains.)

related: The right to bear fruit
extra credit: Playing ’possum [awkwardfamilyphotos.com]

When dealing with anonymous strangers, there’s no point in playing coy about your hopes and dreams. Tell us, kids, what do you REALLY want?

related: i hope your cat chokes

Juan in Brampton, Ontario wasn’t persuasive enough to convince his girlfriend, Kat, to skip work and go to her own surprise party. His friends were…not so happy.

Meanwhile, Sam’s best friend baked this for her husband after he re-arranged the living room early in the morning without telling her, resulting in some seriously bruised shins. “What’s even meaner,” Sam says? “She can’t cook. The cake probably tastes, well…bitter.”

Still hungry for more? Sharrin in San Diego, Sam in Daytona Beach, and of course, Cakewrecks have documented plenty more examples of sugar-coated hostility floating around the interwebs.

And then there’s my personal favorite (again, straight out of the michael scott playbook):

related: “I don’t need a birthday cake,” I said.
extra credit: passive aggressive cakes [cakewrecks.blogspot.com]

Our anonymous submitter reports that a certain less-than-collegial colleague had the gall to dash off this note while the perfume-wearer in question was standing at the photocopier less than five feet away. And, our submitter adds: “She did not attempt at all to disguise her handwriting.”

related: Fight or flight

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 some new shades, my pal Josh stumbled across one such example — a listing from a Florida-based eBayer who goes by the name of whiteblizzard70.

This goes on for several more paragraphs (see for yourself), but I’ll skip to my favorite part — the postscript.

(Josh decided not to bid.)

related: Top five musical crimes perpetrated by record store customers
extra credit: How do you get out of an ebay auction? [consumerist.com]

P.S. This post reminded me of another note my friend Josh told me about a few months back — a piece of reader mail he’d received as an editor at the music mag Blender. Granted, most readers who take the time to write in to magazines like Blender are at least a little bit…off, to say the least. But the last part of this letter — a response to an “Ask Blender” column about the urban legend that Debbie Harry of Blondie was once abducted by Ted Bundy — is genuinely spine-chilling. (Passive-aggressive? Not so much. Creepy? Um, yes.)

As our submitter Peter points out, the residents of Berlin — with their trademark Berliner schnauze — are not known for mincing words. But this sign, found at a coffee shop of sorts in the U-bahn station Kottbusser Tor, takes that characteristic Berliner directness one step further.

Peter’s rough translation: “Anyone who doesn’t buy anything PLEASE leave the store!!! Thanks.” (That’s at least one request we haven’t seen at a Starbucks…yet.)

related: Danke!!! [for the sarcasm]

Here, a break-up note too long for a text message…though that might have a been more (fucking) appropriate.

related: you oughta know