Nowadays, it’s rare find your inbox in a state other than bursting. Be it emails from clubs, classes or living communities, my inbox is nearly always full. While most emails are of the mundane "be at x place at y time" variety, sometimes you do find slightly more frustrating demands in your inbox. These require a special response: a finely tuned passive-aggressive email.
Over the past few years, I’ve found two foolproof formulas for sending emails with aggression so craftily veiled, the recipient will barely even notice it’s there.
Method 1:
Step 1: Find something to get angry about
This should be easy. Your inbox is so full that you have several options a day. Pick something that you can spin as a personal injustice. For an example, let’s look at an email I get a lot:
"Hey Carrie,
I know we have been planning on this for a while, but I’m really busy and can’t do the thing I know you’re depending on me to do.
Cheers,
Inconsiderate jerk"
Step 2: Think about it for way too long
This is an important step; don’t skip it. Instead of thinking about anything productive—say, your problem set due tonight, or the other 222 emails you need to read—dive down into the rabbit hole and ask yourself questions like, "How could she do this to me?" and "Does he think he’s any more busy than anyone else?".
Step 3: Write down your thoughts
By now, you should be just about ready to explode. Write down everything you’ve been thinking for the past 20 minutes. Use every expletive your mother told you not to use. Perhaps open up your copy of "Shakespeare’s Collected Works" to borrow a few insults from the master. Go wild—though perhaps leave the "to" line empty to avoid accidental disaster.
Step 4: Dust some sugar on it
As much as you would like to, you can’t send your email as is—unless, of course, your goal is to get fired/hated/etc. Go through your email and pull out the politest language you can muster. Replace expletives with words clearly pulled from a thesaurus. The more emotionally restrained your insults are, the more passive your aggression will appear. Consider polysyllabic words to be emotional straitjackets, and use them with reckless abandon.
Step 5: Add some humor
This is what will set your email apart from the average passive aggressive email. It will make your reader ask himself, "maybe she didn’t mean to sound so passive aggressive?" This doesn’t need to be a sidesplitting joke, it just needs to make them crack a bit of a smile.
Step 6: Send it to your roommate (or someone else who will think it’s funny)
Wow. That is one impressive email you’ve got there. Share it with someone close to you who will be proud of you for writing such an underhanded reply. Just forward the whole thread to a friend, so someone can appreciate the work you’ve put in.
Step 7: Take a nap
Writing such beautiful emails takes a lot of energy. You deserve a bit of a break. Close your eyes for 20 minutes (or longer, but who has that kind of time?) and think about how you are about to get even with that inconsiderate jerk who is cancelling on you.
Step 8: Revise
Now that you’re well rested, reread the original email and your response. Wait — your email now feels uncalled for? Good. Erase your response. Write another email to tell the person that while you are frustrated with them, you understand where they are coming from.
