Scott saw this note posted to the refrigerator of his friends’ house in D.C. and surreptitiously snapped a photo. “I didn’t want to pry by pulling out the whole note,” he says. “I’m pretty sure Alex was a roommate in the house at some point, but it’s probably been years.”

The magnet’s a nice touch, though, right?

Just in case this site hasn’t given you enough reasons to think twice before leaving a passive-aggressive note, Tobjar in Oakland, California passes along this cautionary tale from worsethanfailure.com:

Not too long ago, there was a small furor in the local media about a major disaster at The State’s Technology Services Division.…When employees of The State came in to work following a three day weekend, they found their workstations overloaded with “cannot logon” and “Exchange communication” error messages. The Network Services folks had it even worse: the server room was a sweltering 109° Fahrenheit and filled with dead or dying servers….They worked day and night to order new equipment, build new servers, and restore everything from back-up. Countless overtime hours and nearly two hundred thousand dollars in equipment costs later, they managed to bring everything back online. When the Exchange servers were finally restored, the following email finally made its way to everyone’s inbox:

As for the employee who sent it, he decided to take an early retirement.

related: When Ph.d.s get frustrated

During his fourth year of college, Andrew from Waterloo says he lived with some seriously passive-aggressive roommates. The following three notes all went up within a 48-hour period:

Andrew couldn’t resist adding one of his own…

(It was promptly taken down.)

related: The post-it wars

Thanks to Elliette for passing this along for her friend in Manhattan.

And as a bonus, a classic passive-aggressive noise complaint from the fantastic Found magazine:

Tim is the night auditor at a hotel in Fort Smith, Arkansas and hardly ever sees his bosses. Instead, they communicate with him through charming memos like this one.

Smileys can be terrifying.

(Submitted by Simon in Richmond, Virginia.)

(Thanks to Jon for submitting!)

“My co-workers and I were in love with this note when we found it attached to the office refrigerator,” says Brian in Cleveland. “We wanted a copy, but the woman frightened us. So we came up with an elaborate scheme. One co-worker walked to the kitchen carrying a folder. She grabbed the note, stuffed it inside, and walked down the hallway. She handed it to another co-worker and stood watch. That co-worker raced to give it to me, who rapidly made a copy. Then we reversed the sequence. Within two minutes, the note was back on the fridge, and we were in heaven.”

So worth the effort though, right?

From Netherlands, the “killing you with kindness” approach: