Entries Tagged as 'You call that punctuation?'
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!
Tags: bathroom · battle of the sexes · blitzkrieg approach · California · CAPS LOCK · clip art catastrophe · crazypants · dubious scientific claims · exclamation-point happy!!!! · gloriously redundant · most popular notes of 2008 · office cop · party planning committee · San Diego · spelling and grammar police · thx · toilet · unnecessary "quotation marks" · vomit · You call that punctuation?
With finals and thesis deadlines coming up, stress levels among grad students at UC-Berkeley have been running high (which means attention to the finer points of, say, apostrophe use, are running low). And now there’s a lunch thief on the loose!

Sadly, says our submitter, the note’s multi-pronged approach (guilt, threats, helpful advice) seems to have had no effect; the lunch thief remains at large. The next course of action? “We’re considering planting laxative-laced desserts.”
related: It must have been a pretty big bite
Tags: apostrophe abuse · Berkeley · California · college life · food · fridge · kitchen · preggers · stealing · the homeless · warning
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 with impunity.

But, once again, it’s a note from a church bathroom (this one spotted by Jess in Boston) that really pushes things to a whole new level of divine didacticism.

Can I get a witness?!
related: clip art crimes
Tags: bathroom · Boston · CAPS LOCK · clip art catastrophe · exclamation-point happy!!!! · gloriously redundant · most popular notes of 2008 · neighbors · office fridge · Pittsburgh
“Not long before I left my previous job writing reviews of video games, I got this little gem from someone involved in the production of a game I didn’t exactly care for,” Alex says. “Game-makers bitching about reviews is nothing new, but rarely do they do it with as much sarcastic flair as this one does.”

related: An occasion that Blue Mountain Arts has yet to animate
Tags: apostrophe abuse · e-mail · holiday spirit · sarcasm · thanks (but not really)
“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 of fame. (Prize: a year’s worth of anger-management therapy?)

related: Which one of these is not like the other?
Tags: CAPS LOCK · crazypants · ellipses-crazed · exclamation-point happy!!!! · gloriously redundant · more aggressive than passive · most popular notes of 2008 · not-so-veiled threats · oh the irony · rainbow-colored · roommates · smiley · stealing · whiteboard
Finding funny-haha Engrish signs in Japan is almost too easy, but Biella from New York didn’t settle for cheap laughs during her trip. “Your English is good,” one might say, but this club’s “advisory” about the Tokyo police is pure paranoiac gold.

extra credit: Uniformed vigilantes patrol tokyo streets to intimidate slackers [boingboing.net]
Tags: Clearly a non-native English speaker · exclamation-point happy!!!! · high on highlighter · Tokyo
Cameron in Hyde Park, New York brings us this “maybe not-so-classic dorm dispute: girl meets boy, girl likes boy, boy has girlfriend, girl obsesses over boy, boy’s female neighbors post rejection note from boy to girl, girl…threatens neighbors, artistically.”

Tags: college life · danger · disturbingly detailed · exclamation-point happy!!!! · MYOB · spurned lover
Amanda in Fairhaven, Mass. recently took her sister-in-law in for an ultrasound appointment, and was a little frightened by this sign. (It was posted in three places, both inside and outside the restroom.)

related: Bun — er, pizza in the oven
Tags: bathroom · exclamation-point happy!!!! · Massachusetts · piss · preggers