I worked in the compliance department of a brokerage firm and sent out a zillion F*ck You! letters and they were always signed "Very truly yours" by the head honcho. EEEEvil!

In fact, so eeevil that it made me laugh. It was Dr. Evil quality evil.

Yeah, I got a "best of luck" when I lost my job.

yeah, fuck that, sweetkid!

Sounds like those business letters when they are changing something which will provide no benefit whatsoever to you.

"Megacorp's first priority is you. For your convenience, starting Friday we'll be hitting you continuously with a baseball bat whenever you enter our stores. Thank you and have a nice day."

*s_r favorites qvantamon's comment 4 times.*

"We're going to simplify our pricing structure to make it more convenient for customers."

Translation: we're raising our prices.

"Your call is important to us. Please continue to hold .."

whatever

Ha! qvantamon's comment made me laugh out loud. I HATE that crap.

I hate the "Best Wishes" emails. They're always, "Please make this 100x harder than it has to be, and spend all weekend doing it. Best Wishes, Mr. A-Hole"

Why won't they shaddup about how important my call is? Everytime they repeat that bullshit, I subconsciously get my hopes up thinking that the voice may be a living human. Let's all just agree that we KNOW that ALL of our calls are important to them and they agree to shaddup about it?

Hmm, I often sign off semi-formal emails with 'Best wishes'. 'Regards' is too bland, 'Sincerely' is too pompous, 'Best' is too curt, etc. Maybe I need to think of a better sign-off.

Gah, I used to have to *write* those "Dear Customer: We are doing something that will make your life much harder, and we're really excited about it because it will increase our profits at your expense! We're so glad we're going to be offering you this chance to pay us more money!" letters. It was the absolute worst part of my job, because I *hate* lying to people. I'd much rather write something that said, "Sorry, we have to make this change, it's going to affect you negatively, we're sorry" than to try to turn into a turn-that-frown-upside-down insincere Pollyanna crap.

ARGH.

I hate passive aggressive people

I can do one better. I hate people.

"I hate people" is a song. I love it. confusing

There could be a cultural-divide thing going on here, btgog - 'sincerely' is used much more in the US in my experience. In the UK it's mostly used to people you really don't know. If I'm writing to someone I know it's 'best wishes' regardless of the content. If I'm introducing myself or want to sound extra-formal it's 'yours sincerely'. (and if I don't have a particular name to write to it's 'yours faithfully', of course... why?)

Perhaps I should re-think my writing strategy, though, if people are taking it as passive aggressive. I don't often include negative content in my emails, but I'm pretty sure I signed a recent one (to a client, saying 'why do you keep paying me so late? are you going bankrupt?') with 'best wishes' without even thinking about it.

I was kind of hoping this was a passive-aggressive post (written as a barb against a specific person), and someone else was gonna come in here all mad, and there would be a huge explosion. Le sigh. I'm a bad person.

Dear Valued Taxpayer,

We are sorry to inform you that due to an earlier computer error, your pension is no longer valid for payout, and that you are now in arrears in the amount of €3,110,789.05, and we will therefore be forced to confiscate your home, your vehicle, and all other real property and possessions, including your yellow fuzzy bunny that you've kept from childhood (our assessor of vintage and antique items tells us it's worth at least €15.00).

Cheers,

Pane R. Sade,
The Department of The Treasury

I put "sincerely" in quotes, for added insincerity.

"Sincerely,"

kirkaracha

ha! hahaha!

I swear I'm going to use that sometime - maybe just once, one time, when it's just the perfect and ever so well-earned, final sandpaper-thong coup de grâce to a deserving party.

That time will probably never come, but I could have used this about 20 years ago, yeah.