Friday 30 July 2010

The ones that end "Love you! XOXO" are the worst

 You know when you complain about your housemates to your friends and they say “Why don’t you write them a note asking them to stop eating your food / taking all the toilet roll / making unearthly noises at 3am?” Don’t. It will end up on passiveaggressivenotes.com, a hilarious website which contains every carefully barbed email and pointed post-it. I really should send them the note below (complete with the obligatory multiple exclamation marks) from Maletti’s, the pizza / pasta cafe where all the trendy media people buy their (rationed) carbs.

There is a funnier one by the till (it threatens being “humiliated by staff” if you dare brandish a phone), but I’m too scared to take a picture in case they throw me out. The day I manage to get a sneaky snap, I will mount it on the wall like a 10ft swordfish. 

A while ago I decided to close down a bank account I no longer needed, unfortunately on a day when the printer was misbehaving. Being loath to waste paper (I’m a big fan of trees) I sent the letter despite the smudgy ink stains along one side. I have no desire to impress a bank, after all. (And I am the kind of lazy person who can’t see the point of messing about with different fonts, lining things up and printing out numerous copies of something that could just as easily be scribbled with marker pen.) 

It took them a while to get their little butts in gear – when I called them to ask why the account was still open, the young man in the call centre suggested it would be “much easier” if I went into a branch to deal with it. What, easier than sitting around in my PJs and picking up the telephone? But many weeks later, they wrote to confirm that the account was no more. The HILARIOUS thing was, the letter was decorated with smudges, making it remarkably similar to the one I sent them. (And no, they weren’t recycling.) 



Passive aggressive? Or did somebody there just have a great sense of humour? It must have taken them ages to get those ink marks just right! 

However it came to be, it made my day. Thanks, Santander! 

I leave you with this slightly fatalistic sign I happened upon in an office; I like the matter of fact attitude. Who needs change when you can have acceptance, hmm?


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