I'm so sorry you're going through that. I admit that passive-aggression is one of my worst traits. But I have to caveat that by saying I am very direct at first, but only get that way as plan b when someone is bulls right through my attempts at a direct solution and only towards people who are being overly aggressive towards me. One example was I was asked to submit a meaningless and redundant report by an entity I'd never heard of. I explained, in detail, that the report had already been completed very thoroughly by another entity, but I was steamrolled into doing it. I generated a concise, 12 page report, detailing the important issues, using the other report as a guide. I was chewed out for not including "everything." So, I threw in everything, every email, every sub report, every casual correspondence. I took out paragraph headers and chapter titles and created three page runon sentences for 174 pages of drivel. I sent them frequent emails requesting feedback on page 118, line 29 or such. I never heard from them again.

But, I always start out to be direct and helpful.