How to deal with passive aggression?

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Treat passive aggressive people the same as liars. Go along with curiosity knowing that they are wrong. They may…… be right. But probably not.

I think people resort to passive aggressive behavior because explicit aggression can get them in trouble easily. In this "civilized" world of the 21 century, aggression takes more subtle/implicit forms.

If you try to confront passive aggressive people about it, they will most certainly deny it. After all, that's exactly why they are using the passive form of aggression. They are just trying to make it hard to prove that they are being aggressive. That way, they can get away with it.

Dealing with it takes some effort. You can collect and record the details of their behavior with date and time. When you have accumulated enough instances, then they will serve as serious evidence. If you can add some more obvious example, that will help even more.

Another way of dealing with it is to return the favor and make them taste the same. However, this could escalate the tension and make the situation very stressful. I've successfully done that before. I did something pretty nasty in return for the long-term passive aggressive bullying, without getting caught but the "victim" knew it was my revenge. They simply couldn't prove it.

I was dealing with passive aggression daily for years till two years ago. It was full-on bullying. I have lots of examples. A few below.

-Being very friendly to my face, yet circulating lies about me behind my back
-Hiding my stuff (as childish as it sounds, they do such low things at my work)
-Deleting records of my work from a file to make it look as if I didn't do anything
-"Forgetting" to include me in the work-related email list, which affected my work
-"Forgetting" to include my order when ordering food
-Silent treatment

"Plausible Deniability" is the key concept.  You never want to be caught in an act of passive-aggression; you want to be able to truthfully say you were just doing your job, following orders, or adhering to corporate policy.

Like when a junior engineer commutes by bicycle, and his boss tells him to deliver a package across town by the end of the day.  A thirty-minute errand by car turns into a four-hour errand by bicycle.

"Where the hell were you?"

"Delivering your package, just like you said."

"What did you do, walk?"

"No, I used my bicycle."

"Where is your car?"

"I do not have one."

"Why did you not tell me?"

"You never asked."

"You took too damn long!"

"You said, 'By the end of the day', and the day is not yet over."

Everything comes back to the boss's orders, which were made without regard to how they were to be carried out.