my husband has often laughed with me about / listened to me talk about how i want to go ballistic on my boss because of his unbelievably passive aggressive communication style.
for example, if there is a mistake in my data entry, he will say something like this: "it's the weirdest thing... this line was entered as 'tkj' several times in this sheet but it's supposed to be 'tkh' so it's causing an error in the report i'm doing. i don't know what could have happened, but i just thought i'd point it out to you."
ok... i am the only one who creates this report. OBVIOUSLY i just made a typo. could you please just say, 'megan, you entered this as 'tkj', could you be careful to enter it as 'tkh' in the future?' i mean, if you're really going to even go that anal in the first place, when it was obviously just an oversight that happened one time?
today there was a lunch meeting that i did not attend. a few hours later he came up to me and said, "did you get a chance to grab something to eat?" no, i did not, i had already eaten. "oh, ok. well, we'll probably have to clean that up...................." then he stares in to space as though he is having an epiphany about our responsibility in cleaning up the food, and then walks away abruptly. (this is not an exaggeration.)
i knew then that he was possibly asking me to clean it up, but i knew for sure when he came up another few hours later and said, "i think i am just going to have the custodians take care of it... would that be ok?" sure, that'd be great. because it's their job. and you never actually asked me to do it so i'm not sure why you're asking my permission.
i once overheard him talking with his boss about a difficult situation. my boss suggested that "perhaps you could just make an innocuous comment!" as if this would solve everything and he wouldn't risk stepping on anyone's toes. at that moment, it was the hardest thing of my life not to run over and shout NOOOO.
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