I have a coworker who is often rude and insubordinate, and as it happens he also does many passive aggressive things.

If he is unhappy with you for whatever reason, he will do things like leave his used latex gloves laying around in our shared work space, essentially forcing other people to clean up after him or ignore the litter.

One day he had a confrontation with a woman who works in another department. He subsequently decided to leave a very large piece of cardboard on top of one of her display cases at work. It looked stupid and trashy. It was certainly unprofessional.

Rather than confronting him, I just waited until he wasn’t looking and disposed of the cardboard.

He walked around smugly for hours, surely thinking the lady in the other department had to clean up after him.

At the end of the day, after I had already clocked out, grabbed my bag and was leaving for the day I told him, “When you leave cardboard on top of Lady’s display, you make our entire department look bad. Stop being a child.”

And then I left and enjoyed my two days off.

When I came back to work THREE DAYS LATER the first thing he said to me was: “You cleaned up that watermelon bin lid that I left on top the case?!!?!?!”

Me: Yes.

Him: “I left that for LADY to clean up. Why would you do that?! You know I was mad at her.”

Me: “I don’t care. If you want to do things that make YOU look bad and unprofessional, go right ahead. But don’t do things that make the rest of the department look like morons.”

Him: “I can’t believe you. You have no loyalty. I’m not talking to you anymore.”

And I got to enjoy 10 whole days of peace and quiet before he got bored of not subjecting me to his narcissistic tendencies.