Writes an anonymous submitter in Peterborough, Ontario: “This past year, my roommates and I had a stranger rent the extra room in our house, and he turned out to be a socially oblivious slob we spent the entire year picking up after.” As frustrating as the situation was, his roommate Andrew can’t seem to fully distance himself from his inborn Canadian niceness, even in this final send-off.

related: 2 good 2 be 4gotten

“My friend Katelyn’s roommate left her this note before she went away for Memorial Day weekend last year,” says Monica in Boston. “I love how it starts off so BFF-like…then takes a sharp left into passive-aggressive territory.”

Adds Monica: “While Katelyn normally likes to avoid confrontation, I think this note pushed her over the edge. She didn’t empty the trash or rinse a dish the entire weekend, and they spent the next three months before their lease ended in a passive-aggressive standoff (purposely being loud when they knew the other had to study…’accidentally’ breaking the other’s belongings, etc.) Good times!”

related: (They match the plastic slipcover on the futon)

An anonymous submitter in Portland, Maine is currently chafing under one of the most common irritants of communal living: a roommate “who has never once bought toilet paper.”

She and her other roommate tried some of the more subtle manuevers in the passive-aggressive playbook — up to and including the ol’ hide-and-carry — to no avail. (“When we run out, he uses our paper towels instead,” she says.) That is, until her roommate, who’d “had enough of plunging his shit,” decided to up the ante with this note.

related: oh, she said it

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

Writes Bibs in Tacoma, Washington: “My sophomore year in college, I was placed in a campus house with six other girls I didn’t know.  To say the least, we did not really get along, but we made a chore chart so we would all at least have a semi-clean house to live in.” At least, that was the idea.

Things broke down when one of the housemates, Cindy, was confronted with the reality of seven girls sharing one bathroom. After this little display, Bibs says, the chore wheel pretty much went to hell.

related: Landmine in my bloodline

Our anonymous submitter lives in what she says is a typical college apartment, one that is “not decorated according to any theme.” And yet, in a transformation a college freshman taking Lit 101 might describe as “Kafkaesque,” one of her roommates has been replaced by your [fill-in-your-own-ethnic-stereotype-here] grandmother.

Adds our submitter: “These weird towels wouldn’t dry two fingers, much less two hands, so we don’t use them anyway! (Maybe if they weren’t so ugly…)”

related: Text me at work if you want to talk!!

Ellen in San Francisco says this note is but the latest development in what has become a toilet paper-thin relationship with her passive-aggressive roommate. It started two months ago, she says, when her roommate “decided after six months of sharing that I was no longer allowed to use her toilet paper. I should mention that she never once asked me to chip in for toilet paper, and I never really had an opportunity to buy more because she bought it in bulk and we always had a huge supply.”

Ellen obliged “until this morning, when nature called and I had just run out.” When Ellen got home, this work of art (my favorite line: “now that we’ve settled this”) was waiting for her.

Adds Ellen: “Funnier still is that this roommate freaked out on another roommate for leaving a note. She yelled at her, ‘If you have a problem with me, talk to me, don’t leave me a note. Be an adult about it!’ Nice to see she followed her own advice.”

related: it always comes down to the toilet paper