Reply #32: Everyone gets angry,

[SOteric]

passive/aggressive behaviour is about how one handles the anger.

A passive aggressive individual doesn't like conflict on confrontation and goes to great lengths to avoid it. If you ask a passive/aggressive person to do some little errand or task that they'd rather not, they'll smile and go along with it and then just not do it; or do it and fuck it up so you won't be tempted to ask again.

I used to have a coworker who was the poster child for passive aggressive behaviour. She often left big copy/collation projects have sorted on the copier. If we came to her an hour or so later and asked if she was done, or if she could move her work aside so the rest of us could use it, she be the soul of graciousness. Sure she would, no problem, sorry to be in the way. Then she'd walk into her office, close the door and not come out for another 3 hours without having touched the project in the copier.

If anyone called her on it, or confronted her, she'd be again, the soul of gracious apology. It just slipped out of her mind. So sorry. Then she'd go back into the office and close the door for the rest of the day.

Sometimes a passive/aggressive person has 'accidents' instead of getting angry. For example Todd will get peeved at people and maybe tell one or two of us who he's known for a long time but never admit to even the slightest irritation with the individual in question. However there is a disconcerting tendency he has then to 'accidently' break that persons computer, prang his or her car in the parking lot, lose their data at the last minute making them repeat an odious project...or something.

Those are some of the ways passive aggressives behave. To a great extent they're people who cannot or will not acknowledge their own aggressive behaviours (including anger, jealousy, ambition and a host of others) and reflect them in less constructive ways.