Just spitballing. I really don’t understand it at all. Maybe they’re just all irresponsible instead of P-A.
I think of an boss I had one time. Very pleasant-acting on the surface. An utter ass beneath.
He’s the kind of guy who would say “you’re not wearing that to the party are you?”
I think of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Natives have told me that they think “Minnesota nice” is really just passive aggression, which I do encounter a lot of here. Admittedly, part of it may be that most of the people I encounter here are white middle class and upper-middle class types who are more prone to this. Nonetheless, I’ve witnessed some expert passive-aggressives here.
BTW, my definition of passive aggression is to find an indirect way to say something harsh or critical.
A couple examples would be a lady asking me about the service charge a restaurant charged on takeout orders. She said, “is that like an added tip?”, to which the employee responded, “Yes, it goes to the chefs and covers to cost of the packaging.” The lady signs her credit card slip and mutters quite audibly, “Interesting…” in a very catty tone. Nothing mean was said outright, but the lady was clearly trying to take a swipe at the employee[?] in a manner which makes her impervious to rebuttal.
Another was when I was working at my restaurant and taking a couple to their table. The woman hesitated at her chair and started commenting to her boyfriend about how small the table was. Then he told her to just put her bag here, and she insisted that she couldn’t put her bag there because the table was too small and she didn’t think that she would get such a small table and so on and so forth, clearly hoping I would offer her a bigger table. Though this is a huge pet peeve in the industry, I will always allow a guest to pick their table. On the other hand, complaining to her boyfriend in front of me as if I weren’t there, for some reason, didn’t compel me to offer her an upgrade.
Oh, and as far as pent-up hostility, I think I agree with that as well. It’s almost like they are waiting for someone to break their unspoken social code so that they can unleash the passive aggressivity and “correct” the violator.
To me, this is only passive aggressive if P2 has an answer in mind and is trying to force P1 into guessing it/getting it right.
Otherwise, it’s something else. It may be whining or lazy or thoughtless or selfish or only well and truly annoying, or some other negative adjective. But it isn’t passive aggressive, because there is no aggressiveness or agenda on P2’s side, just behavior that P1 hates. I think the term is overused and gets applied to people who are just passive (not all passiveness is an attempt to get the passive person’s way; sometimes, it really is just passive) and/or to people who annoy the speaker in a way that doesn’t involve yelling and fisticuffs.
P1: Do you want to get something delivered?
P2: Why would I want to eat liver? :rolleyes: I don’t even like liver.
P1: No, I said delivered.
P2: I heard you say liver.
P1: I should know what I said.
P2: WHATEVER! I just don’t want to eat liver! :mad:
Oh, and in answer to the OP:
Chinese office culture.
I agree that it is about trying to punish someone without explaining your problem. It’s closely related to pulling guilt trips, emotion-laden snark, and making yourself into a martyr.
Let’s say P2 is angry that P1 spent to much time with his old friend Brenda.
P1: What do you want for dinner?
P2: I’m surprised your asking.
P1: Huh? I just want to know if I should get a pizza or warm up the oven.
P2: Why don’t you go ask Brenda?
P1: What? What are you talking about?
P2: Nevermind, sorry.
P1: Wait, are you angry at me for hanging out with Brenda?
P2: No, it’s fine. I’m just being the clingy girlfriend.
P1: Huh? If you are angry let’s talk about this.
P2: No, it’s nothing. Get whatever you want for dinner. I’ve got a headache, I’m going to bed.
P1: what just happened?
Ha ha! My favorite move is when instead of saying “no” to a proposal, they send you to get permission from increasingly random people until at some point as you realize that what they meant was “No, but I’m not going to be the one to say it.”
"Don’t mind me, I’m used to suffering. I’ll just sit here and let you do everything your way. I’m sure you know best, and I can just deal with whatever happens to me. So go right ahead and pretend I’m not here.
I remember a psych class where we had an example similar to this. The prof (a female) added, “It’s not an entirely female ‘thing’, but because most females are raised to be nice and not rock the boat, many of them resort to this type of behavior, sometimes without even realizing it.”
I think we’ve all acted passive-aggressively at times. IMHO the less confident someone is about coming right out and saying “X bothers me”, the more s/he will resort to the passive aggression.
I’ve been described as a life-long passive-aggressivist. My mother was somewhat less than mentally stable, yet still functional, and ended up raising three boys alone for at least half of my growing years (0 to 18). I’ve been getting more clarity on my own unconscious thoughts and reactions for the past few years, but my youngest brother (by 8 years; I’m the oldest) recently said something that helped me put things further into perspective.
He said, in effect, “Mom didn’t deal well with other people’s anger.” I agree with that. Even now, my mind screams at me that it’s not okay, no, it’s forbidden to be angry at the ones I love, especially family. Apparently my childhood anger and frustration was met with (greater) anger from my mother towards me. My life-long depression (dysthymia is, I believe, the term applied to me, or rather my affliction) only added fuel to the fire. Given that I wasn’t allowed to express anger openly, I can see how I’d fall into acting passive-aggressively. My problem is recognizing, as I’m doing it, exactly when and in what way I am acting in this manner.
My psychotherapist has decent job security, I’d say. 
My ex-husband was the king of passive aggression.
One example: I was once listening to a CD while playing solitaire on the computer. The solitaire part was just giving my fingers something to do while listening. Ex comes home from something, and I say “Hi” but want to listen to the end of a song, so I say I’ll be tied up for a few minutes rather than stop what I was doing to interact with him immediately.
Without saying a word to me, he took all the games off the computer. I encountered that fact a few weeks later when I was again listening to something and wanted to pass the time. That was a year or so before we separated, and to this day it has not been discussed.
Second example: We were flying to Europe on a jumbo jet. On our row was my ex-husband, me, an empty seat, then more people. A woman came in and asked me if I wouldn’t move over a seat so that she could sit next to her husband who was across the aisle. I told her it was OK with me, but maybe my husband wouldn’t want to switch. Ex didn’t say anything, just moved over.
A few years later we went back to Europe. On 4 separate flights we were booked on seats on opposite sides of an aisle. On the fourth flight I remarked to my husband that it was an odd seating arrangement, and usually couples are booked to sit together. He told me that he requested that those seat assignments so that I couldn’t make him move away from the aisle seat again like I had the last time we went to Europe. Until that point in time, he hadn’t breathed a word about being pissed about moving over during the first flight or that he had made this odd request to the travel agent booking the flight.
I refuse to play the
“How about Italian”
“I hate Italian, suggest something else”
game. After the second iteration I say, “Don’t say what you don’t want to do, tell me something you do want to do.” I just repeat that like a broken record until the other person comes up with something.
Quite familiar with MSP and WI natives and completely agree.
A very deep, very elaborate, very fake, patient sigh.
Going to visit my grandmother. She answers my “hello, Grandma, how are you?” with a huff and meets my attempt at kissing her with her nape (ok, I’m not kissing you there). Knowing her, I talk pleasantly about my week, asking questions that don’t get answered; after two hours, I take my leave and she finally asks the question that’s bugging her… which comes from some piece of gossip from Grandpa’s network of informers and is absolute crap. Stuff like “[thunder]why haven’t you told me you have a boyfriend?[/thunder]” “I do? gosh, it would be nice to meet him, may I get a description or something so I can figure out what and who are you talking about?”
My mother.
My former mother-in-law. (x infinity)
My grandmother.
My aunts.
Me.
No, really, Southern (US) mothers can be a lot like the stereotypes of Catholic or Jewish mothers, right down to the passive-aggressiveness. There IS something to that “women are expected to be nice/cooperative/non-aggressive, so they often get their ways via a circuitous route.” In the south, where good manners are second only to “doesn’t kick puppies and kittens” as traits that parents try to instill, that may be especially true. “Ladies” in particular aren’t supposed to be demanding or aggressive.
And I’m trying to be more aware of my own PA tendencies. I told my husband the other day that, if I ever really felt the need to let my mother know that I’m pissed off at her without a big confrontation, I’d go to her house and push all of her hanging pictures and artwork a half-centimeter out of level. (That would show her!) Not productive, classically passive-agressive, but there are some battles not worth fighting - my mother will always “butt in,” I will often think that she has overstepped her boundaries, but I’m not likely to confront her, since I doubt it would do any good. So driving her nuts by way of irritating her and her OCD tendencies would work as well as anything! 
This:
Sister-in-law, upon entering the house while we’re cooking brunch: Oh, you’re cooking bacon? Billy [her son] may not want to come in if he smells it.
Billy: Yum! Bacon!
A few minutes later, bacon still cooking:
Sister-in-law: Wow, that vent fan sure is quiet.
Me, to wife: That’s her way of saying, “Turn on the vent fan.”
She could have said, “The smell of bacon bothers me,” and we would have accommodated her somehow, but she went with passive-agressivity so we just went on cooking the bacon.
You’re seriously asking this question? That’s rich.
I think of late people as the ultimate in passive-aggressive behavior. They are always the most important person any time everyone has to arrive before the event starts. Leaving the house and getting into a car to go somewhere for example. They get to screw with people by doing absolutely nothing and then they can jump in the car and say “Who’s holding us up now?” I’m sitting here gnashing my teeth just thinking about a certain late person.
The only time I really want to punch Tony Stark in the teeth in the first Iron Man movie is when he does this to Rhodes.
A recent ex-employee straight-up baffled me. She had issues with the way management was, well, managing, but she refused to address those issues constructively, because she hated and distrusted management. So instead she just ground away at her work, sitting and stewing and hating everyone around her until it exploded into an incident that caused the “recent ex-” part. The truly amazing part is that in the exact same conversation where all of that came out, she firmly insisted that she was the only honest person in the office and that everyone else was passive-aggressive and manipulative.
This is much how I am and it frustrates me because some people mistake that behavior for passive-aggressiveness when it’s really an exercise in restraint. That is, when I feel myself getting close to a point where I might blow up, I will generally withdraw and allow myself to cool down before continuing.
The real question about passive-aggressive behavior isn’t what they’re doing but why they’re doing it. For instance, if one person is being quiet and giving short answers, are they being passive-aggressive? Maybe they’re just tired or maybe they just had a bad day. It’s only really passive-aggressive when it becomes a sustained pattern.
I will say, however, that the “if you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you” thing is pretty much always passive-aggressive in my eyes because it’s deliberately obstructive, as is the silent treatment.
This was actually something I was going to say. That situation absolutely can be passive-aggressive, but it may be a situation of the second person not really having a strong idea of what they want but more an idea of what they don’t want. I’m sometimes this way, but having learned that this sort of behavior is often interpretted as passive-aggressive, I usually try to be more specific about my opinion, or rather, the non-specificity of my opinion, and it also seems that people closer to me have, in time, learned that my lack of specificity isn’t passive-aggressive, just a lack of an ability to effectively articulate my opinion.