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!

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

This public service announcement is brought to us by Tully’s Coffee, courtesy of Megan in Seattle.

related: “If it wasn’t for the toilet, there’d be no books”

J.Star says he found this passive-aggressive twist on the old RSPCA campaign/Scottish band in a Cincinnati parking lot. (Pet-lovers: just to let you know, it was crumpled up on the ground, not on his windshield.)

related: I can has guilt trip?

“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 and Coke,” but I’m not quite buying it. I’d like to think this came from the EPA’s official Office of Water (Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator).

Here’s a trio of notes from California that each make me very uncomfortable…and not just because of the painful lack of irony.

First up: an excerpt from seating guidelines posted at the quaint little Mexican restaurant in Huntington Beach where Brynn used to waitress. So quaint, Brynn says, “They also posted a dress code rule that ladies must wear makeup and skirts could not be below the knee.”

Meanwhile, a little farther south, a construction worker left this note for James in San Diego…while he was parked in front of his own house.

And the last word goes to this bit of social commentary, which Jen spotted on the window of a soon-to-be-opened restaurant in San Francisco.

related: Je comprends…moi non plus

extra credit: ¡Ask a Mexican!® [ocweekly.com]

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.)

To quote Chris Anderson responding to Milton Friedman: “A free lunch doesn’t necessarily mean the food is being given away or that you’ll pay for it later — it could just mean someone else is picking up the tab.”

Indeed, Craig in New York offers this example of the negative externalities that can come along with free stuff. On one hand: free soda. On the other: notes like these. (You can still see the CliffsNotes version peeking out from underneath.)

related: everyone deserves a cold drink