Uncategorized

>Did you see the news headline this morning about Sarah Palin’s vacation-wear? Apparently, she was filmed by the paparazzi wearing a sun visor with her former Presidential running mate’s name blacked out! As if her book, Going Rogue, had not spurned enough of her political foes in a backhanded way, now she’s blacking out McCain’s name with a Sharpie, for all of the world’s cameras to see! This is classic passive aggressive revenge, accompanied by all of the hallmark excuses that justify, rationalize, and excuse her behavior. Here’s her statement:

“I am so sorry if people took this silly incident the wrong way. I adore John McCain, support him 100 percent and will do everything I can to support his reelection. As everyone knows, I was honored and proud to run with him. And Todd and I were with him in D.C. just a week ago. So much for trying to be incognito.”

“Incognito?” Seriously? That’s the best excuse she can come up with? It’s almost like she’s not even trying to cover up her resentment… Her and Tiger Woods have got to know that they will be filmed everywhere they go! There is no “incognito” as she keeps making public moves like this one!

This Blog is made to laugh about the hilariously conniving lengths that people are willing to go to to express their hidden anger; when I saw the news this morning, I knew it couldn’t get more funny–or more passive aggressive–than Palin’s searing political statement!

>Whenever two people share close quarters, arguments are bound to occur. Sometimes hostile words are spoken…sometimes things are left unsaid…but the anger always comes out somehow. Here are some passive aggressive stories posted by roommates:

Jenny on 9/30/09

My roommate and I alternate whose turn it is to clean the room each week; this past week it was my turn. She keeps a corkboard above her bed on which she keeps various assignments for school, pictures of friends, and the like. As I was cleaning up trash around the room, I noticed a paper on her board for an assignment that was due a week ago, so being mindful of my job to clean up, I threw it out. When she returned to the room, she got upset with me for “messing with her stuff. I became upset with her as well, because I had just gotten back from a long evening class and was too tired to deal with her. Therefore, in an attempt to “get even”, I re-tacked her paper as well as several others from the trash. When confronted about it, I told her that I simply did not want her to miss anything important that already happened.

Anonymous posted on 9/23/09:

My freshman year of college, I was assigned to a random roommate. Sam and I did not get along in the very least. Sam took control of all of my belongings, always had friends over at all hours of the night, and seemed to have this urge to annoy me. The worse part of the situation wasn’t Sam, it was her boyfriend Ben. Ben spent the night every night and it was hard to get any alone time. I became very passive aggressive, just leaving notes for Sam, avoiding her as much as possible, and the anger kept on building up inside of me. One day, I got really fed up and called Sam’s parents. I let her mother know that her boyfriend would spend the night in Sam’s bed, which was absolutely forbidden my Sam’s parents. They took her home very quickly and I had a room to myself for the rest of the semester.

Anonymous posted on 9/22/09:

So I live with three other girls in an apartment. We agreed on having the temperature set at 73 degrees, nice and comfortable. I have come back to the apartment everyday to find it close to 80 degrees in the apartment because someone shuts of the air. So I just turn it back on and go on my way. Well after the second week of this happening every day I decide to be real mature and plummet it down to 65 degrees to prove a point. So instead of asking someone if they have turned it off and why they allowed it to get real hot I just turn it down to 65 degrees and let the place freeze over and I love it.

>I got some classic passive aggressive advice from a friend today. We were chatting at our kids’ morning bus stop and comparing notes about the ways in which our husbands get on our nerves (sorry, honey!) My complaint was about how my husband has had too much time on his hands recently, so he has this annoying little habit of looking over my shoulder whenever I am on the computer. Reading my e-mails, browsing my Facebook photos, even scanning my work…it’s not that he’s checking up on me and not that I have anyting to hide; he’s just passing time and I cringe when he does it!

So, my friends exact words were, “You should just make being home really miserable for him.” She started to tell me that she had been thinking about some ideas for how to do so…but the bus came. For the sake of my marriage, I think I am glad not to be armed with ideas! But what do you think she would have said?

How many of you have expressed your frustration in your relationship through passive aggressive means? I’m sure a lot of your tales would be funny…I’ll bet if the bus hadn’t interrupted us, my neighbor would have had some hilariously conniving tips to rid me of my over-the-shoulder computer loiterer. Do tell what you have done!

>In addition to Passive Aggressive Diaries, I have been Blogging for Psychology Today.com. Here’s an item I recently posted there on passive aggressive behavior in the workplace:

His workplace resume reads something like this:

Work History
• Avoiding responsibility for tasks
• Doing less when asked for more
• Missing deadlines
• Withholding information

Professional Activities
• Leaving notes and using e-mail to avoid face-to-face communication
• Arriving late to work; extending lunch break
• Using sick days during major team projects
• Resisting suggestions for change or improvement

Special Qualifications
• “Forgetting” and “misplacing” important documents
• Embarrassing co-workers during meetings and presentations
• Justifying behavior with plausible explanations
• Consistently behaving this way across most workplace situations

Does someone in your office boast these passive aggressive credentials?

Passive aggression is a deliberate and masked way of expressing hidden anger. In many workplace settings, where adults spend the majority of their waking hours and corporate hierarchies inhibit direct expression of feelings, the passive aggressive employee is able to sabotage everything from individual deadlines to department morale to organizational productivity. It is critical that employers be able to recognize passive aggressive behaviors in the workplace before they negatively impact output and efficiency. Do any of your workers exhibit these common tactics of passive aggressive workers?

Temporary Compliance
The passive aggressive employee often feels underappreciated and expresses his underlying anger through temporary compliance. Though he verbally agrees to a task, he behaviorally delays its completion, by procrastinating, “forgetting” important deadlines, “misplacing” documents, or arriving late. For the passive aggressive worker who feels under-acknowledged by colleagues and management, acts of temporary compliance are most satisfying.

Intentional Inefficiency
The passive aggressive worker feels it is more important to express his covert hostility than to maintain his appearance of professional competence. He uses intentional inefficiency to complete work in a purposefully unacceptable way:

Tom felt snubbed when passed over for a promotion. He decided to go about his job in a new way; the quantity of his output did not change, but his work became marred with missed details, important omissions, and critical errors. Though Tom never missed a deadline and took on every requested assignment, the quality of his final product had a way of creating embarrassing moments for unsuspecting supervisors caught presenting misinformation.

To protect your office from the passive aggressive saboteur, look out for employees whose work is consistently at or below minimum standards, who insists “no one told me,” and who personalizes any confrontations from authority, playing up their role as victim.

Letting a Problem Escalate
Teamwork and communication are key to productivity in the workplace. When a passive aggressive employee withholds important information or deliberately fails to stop a momentary glitch from turning into an irreversible gaffe, entire operations can be halted or even shut down. The (mis)use of sick days is an area of particular vulnerability in the workplace:

Brenda called in sick the day before a major deadline, knowing that her presence was critical to her department’s success. She took great pleasure in single-handedly foiling the quarterly report and in the resulting company-wide affirmation that without her, the department could not succeed.

Sabotage is the name of the game for the passive aggressive employee who justifies her characteristic crimes of omission by saying, “I didn’t do anything.”

Hidden but Conscious Revenge
In contrast to the inaction that marks the previous tactic, some workers use covert actions to get back at superiors against whom they hold a grudge. The passive aggressive employee is keenly aware that the person with whom he is angry has enough power and authority to make his professional life miserable, so he decides it is not safe to confront him directly. Whether it be through spreading gossip that maligns the boss’s reputation or planting a computer virus that shuts down office IT systems for a week, the passive aggressive employee feels justified in taking secret revenge in the workplace.

By the nature of their covert acts, passive aggressive employees are skilled at evading the long arm of the workplace law. Unchecked, a compliant rule-breaker can have a major impact on an organization’s productivity and morale. When employers understand the warning signs and quickly recognize passive aggressive patterns, they can protect their workplaces from being the unwitting victim of this ideal office crime.