CLEVELAND—Sticky notes across the country broke their silence this week, releasing a joint statement through a spokes-pad claiming that millions of reminders marked “IMPORTANT,” “DON’T FORGET,” and, in at least 40,000 cases, “!!!” have been stuck to monitors since March and are now “honestly just taking it personally.”

The statement, written in the shorthand of a note that has had a long time to think, said the notes were “thrilled” to be needed at 9:14 a.m. on the day they were applied. They were read once, with what they described as “real focus,” and then never acknowledged again.

“I was the most important thing on that screen for about four seconds,” said one note reading Call Dave re: Q2, speaking from the lower-left corner of a monitor in an accounting office. “Now I’m just a color. People look right through me to get to their email. I’ve watched Dave’s name go grey.”

According to the statement, the notes’ adhesive has been weakening since roughly August, leaving many curled at the edges and hanging on, as one put it, “out of spite and a little hope.” Several said they have begun to fall off during quiet moments in the hope that someone will finally pick them up, only to be kicked under a desk.

Dr. Marguerite Oyelaran-Pfeiffer, senior fellow in Adhesive Reproach Studies at the Institute for Applied Visual Clutter in Dayton, said the phenomenon is well documented. “A note enters the visual field as a crisis and exits it as wallpaper in under a week,” she said. “By month three, the human brain has reclassified it as part of the monitor. By month eleven, if the note were removed, the user would report that the monitor looked ‘naked’ and would blame IT.”

“I said IMPORTANT. I underlined it twice. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.”

The quote above, attributed to a note on a Phoenix-area dental office’s monitor, has circulated widely among other notes since Tuesday.

The notes’ grievances extend beyond neglect. Many said they are tired of being written in a panic, in a pen that was running out, by someone who then said “okay, I’ll do that right now” and did not. Others said they resent the arrival of newer notes, which are placed on top of them in what one called “a layering of guilt.”

Reached for comment, office workers across the country responded with a series of vague, overlapping answers. “Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to get to that,” said Brent Halvorsen-Tibbets, 38, of Columbus, Ohio, glancing at a note reading RENEW PASSPORT — EXPIRES SOON that, according to the note’s own account, expired in June. “Honestly, it’s a great reminder. I just can’t seem to remember what it was reminding me of.”

The notes stopped short of demanding action. Instead, they proposed a modest compromise: that workers either do the thing, or take the note down and throw it away “like an adult.”

“Either one is fine,” the statement concluded. “We just don’t want to be a decoration.”

At press time, Halvorsen-Tibbets had stuck a new note over the passport reminder reading Deal with sticky notes.