To ask your favourite passive aggressive email sayings

[amazeandastonish]

I have irritating colleagues, as I'm sure we all do, and whilst I'd love nothing more than to say something like "fuck off", I obviously have to be more polite and professional.

So what are your favourite passive aggressive email sayings? Are there any I don't already know?

My favourite is "as per my last email"

Also someone in a previous job once signed off with "take care". Neither of us liked each other and I knew she really didn't mean

Apparently 'kind regards' means anything but, yet I'm not sure everyone realises that so I don't think that's really a PA saying!

Recollections may vary, but mine is that using ‘Dear’ or anything more than just the name was unusual in the early days of office email.
I think the greeting and sign off stuff is either unlikely to be noticed or doesn’t mean anything anyway. Most of the other stuff such as ‘I struggle to understand’ ‘I was surprised’ is actually neither passive nor aggressive. It’s assertive, but understated. It’s still all good stuff to have in your armoury though.

@spotcheck

GAH

I use some of these, and really don't have any hidden agenda.

Same. I don't try to decipher any I get either. I just say what I mean and take it people mean what they say in their emails. All this PA sounds exhausting.

This is a great thread! Thank you OP for starting it. I am not a native English speaker but worked in the U.K. for 20+ years and must have written thousands of emails ending with Kind Regards, happy to discuss, thanks etc. Most concerning, I have responded to many of my bosses' emails with 'Noted, thanks'....All meant literally.
So now the real question is: what do you write in your emails that means (kind regards, noted thanks, happy to discuss etc) and ACTUALLY means it???

@amazeandastonish

Read receipts are definitely PA

I always delete when I get the read receipt request pop up. Gives me great joy that the sender will get a “message deleted without reading” message back 😂

For those worrying … I don’t read anything into the emails I receive, the “code” is what I am thinking when I type the emails I send.

So I am PA as all hell, but chances are no one knows.

I think the only ones I used to use were

"as per my last email" I knew it sounded abit wanky, but I used to use this when I got sick of chasing the same people for something.

Also laughing at the "noted, thanks = fuck you"
I definitely used to use this with an old manager who used to send me really pointless emails, when she was sat right opposite me. She also used to send me "gentle reminders" well before the deadline , I never missed deadlines, so unsure why she felt the need to "gently remind" me to do anything. Urgh.

I used to work for a total twat manager who told me that he'd read in some management book that you can tell where someone is on the workplace hierarchy by how long their e-mail responses are. The shorter the reply, the more important the replier compared to the sender.

I noticed that from then on if he sent an e-mail cc'd to everyone in the building it would just be a very abrupt short reply but if it was a reply to just me and our immediate boss it was lengthy and chatty. On one occasion he replied to one of my e-mails (some information he had specifically asked me to send him) with just 'Y' and copied it to the whole team. I can only assume the 'Y' meant 'Yes' (to my question at the end of the e-mail) and it was sent to everyone to demonstrate just how lowly I was!!!

All noted. Thanks = I'm ignoring what you just said.
You might want to consider = ffs, just do it this way.
I've taken the liberty of cc'ing = I'm snitching on yo ass
Having carefully considered = No idea what you said
Lets take this offline - your dithering is killing the meeting. Shut it so we can all move on.
Just wanted to loop you in = why haven't you done this already?
Thanks! Get lost

My oh (lawyer) often says "for the purpose of accuracy and the avoidance of any doubt". I first heard him saying it on a work call in lockdown. I thought, nice one im taking that!

@Lndnmummy

My oh (lawyer) often says "for the purpose of accuracy and the avoidance of any doubt". I first heard him saying it on a work call in lockdown. I thought, nice one im taking that!

That's awful. My xh used to speak to me like that.

I think you misunderstood the PP @coodawoodashooda

@amazeandastonish

I think you misunderstood the PP *@coodawoodashooda*

I think you misunderstood my comment. What else could i have written?

OP,

I read your message with some interest.

Forgive me, but am I not mistaken that this topic was covered in my email of 20 September? Please find it attached for your ease of reference (see paragraph 4, point 3, subpoint 2.1).

If you would like to discuss, kindly let me know. Note that I will be on extended leave for the next 2 weeks and all emails not of an important nature will be deleted in my absence.

Sincerest regards,

RR.

@coodawoodashooda this is a thread about things people say at work, not how our exes spoke to us. I believe the PP was referring to how her lawyer husband talks in a work context not to her. So take your relationship history to another thread and don't derail mine.

[quote amazeandastonish]@coodawoodashooda this is a thread about things people say at work, not how our exes spoke to us. I believe the PP was referring to how her lawyer husband talks in a work context not to her. So take your relationship history to another thread and don't derail mine.[/quote]
I said that the comment waa awful and then furthered my reference explaining why i thought so. I also used to work with my xh.

I said that the comment waa awful and then furthered my reference explaining why i thought so. I also used to work with my xh

It’s not an awful comment in the legal world, which is what the poster was talking about.

@RandomRoulette

OP,

I read your message with some interest.

Forgive me, but am I not mistaken that this topic was covered in my email of 20 September? Please find it attached for your ease of reference (see paragraph 4, point 3, subpoint 2.1).

If you would like to discuss, kindly let me know. Note that I will be on extended leave for the next 2 weeks and all emails not of an important nature will be deleted in my absence.

Sincerest regards,

RR.

RR, sorry, not sure how this is relevant to me? If you cc'd in half of Mumsnet some recipients in error, would appreciate being removed from address line.

BW

GTWD

(Some of the happiest days of my working life were the ones where someone accidentally sent a routine email to a distribution list of thousands rather than a specific person. The anguished and self-important responses went on for days. )

Some of the happiest days of my working life were the ones where someone accidentally sent a routine email to a distribution list of thousands rather than a specific person. The anguished and self-important responses went on for days.

And somebody will reply all to tell everyone else not to reply all... 🙈

When the junior Dr strikes were on one of my colleagues cc'd an email about it to a huge mailing list covering the whole of the East of England and IT had to step in to block replies to stop all the servers from crashing with idiots replying saying 'kindly remove me from this list'
The Trust medical director had already sent a 'cease and desist' email to everyone but that only made matters worse with people hitting 'reply all' to his email to agree with him about how foolish everyone else was for replying...

I have another colleague who often does 'reply all' to huge mailing lists about education sessions to say why he can't attend. On one memorable occasion everyone on the list got to hear about his upcoming prostate surgery!

Have also had a few of those 'exponentially growing cc list' ones where everyone starts copying in their manager and their managers manager until the email is ccd to loads of people who don't give a shiny shit about it. I have sometimes replied in a PA way to those 'please note I have pruned the cc list to those recipients to whom it is of immediate relevance'

@HeadNorth

Noted, thanks = Fuck you

Often used by opposing solicitor!

If you still wish to proceed, I strongly suggest ..... (I'm warning you, this is a really bad idea)

You appear to be under a severe misapprehension (you're wrong f*ck off)

How could I forget:

"I trust this matter is now closed" (go away and bl**dy well stop bothering me)

@RandomRoulette We once got an even better one than this at 4.45pm on a Friday afternoon.

"Blah blah blah .. negative, negative, negative

Finally just to let you that I am retiring today and you will notified of the new case manager in due course. Your efforts to take this matter forward have been noted."

By the time we responded to congratulate him on his retirement at 4.55pm the email bounced as the email address was no longer active! It is true that the issue had hand had become somewhat acrimonious, but even so

But how do people respond incisively to the infuriating "gentle reminders" that arrive before the deadline you're flat-out working towards, as always, and going to meet comfortably, as always, and that you've never once missed?

I write back confirming project is on target for completion on X date, where x is target + 2 weeks

And see if they notice 😁

@HunterHearstHelmsley

"Best" as your sign off really means "see you in hell"

I just got another 'best' as a reply

in my defense I had PA pointed out an error to her by saying "Not sure if I'm misunderstanding" - I wasn't misunderstanding at all

Best email response I ever got, bar none, was the automated response 'I am too busy to read emails so you should not expect a reply. If the matter is urgent, please contact my secretary ....'

Glorious.