Category: The No Asshole Rule

I am still sometimes surprised by how strong the emotional reactions are to The No Asshole Rule; the sad, funny, and scary emails keep coming in from around the world (a really awful tale came in this morning from a former victim in the Australian Department of Defense). I am especially struck  by the reactions I have been getting from members of the media –who are usually pretty tight-lipped.  The interviews that I’ve done in the past — for my other prior three books and for other things, like the the Stanford d.school — are often engaging, but rarely contain what feel like "Dr. Phil moments," where the person interviewing me reverses roles and starts telling me his or her stories about dealing with assholes in the workplace — and sometimes ask for my advice. 

Something like this seems to happen in about 50% of the interviews I’ve done lately, even among the most experienced journalists. Experienced journalists have heard a lot of stuff, so I listen and learn.

Just last week, I got a great tip during an interview (I will not name the source to protect the innocent and guilty). We were talking about the problem of asshole poisoning being a contagious disease that you catch from and give to other people, and how sometimes the worst episodes happen during escalating email wars and phone calls, where anger is tossed back and forth between the warring parties. The journalist I was talking to had a great suggestion about how to break such a cycle when you are on a nasty phone call: HANG UP WHILE YOU ARE SPEAKING.  And do it without warning.

Think about it.  If you hang up while the other person is speaking, it is an insult that fuels the flames.  If you hang up while you are speaking, there is a break in the action, and confusion… perhaps the line just went dead?   And in any case interrupting yourself is just not as hostile an act as interrupting someone else.  I guess it is a little sneaky, but it strikes me as an interesting and at times wise tactic that is the lesser of other evils — like screaming an insult, pausing, waiting for the other person to answer back, and then slamming the phone down as they respond (or pressing the "end call" button).

The other sign that journalists are emotionally drawn to the problem of assholes is that several have told me that they became interested in doing a story because they work for — or have worked for — an asshole in the business. I had an experience about two weeks ago where a journalist for Europe interviewed me (and seemed oddly tense during the interview, I was worried that I was offending him in some way). After the interview was done, he wrote me an email about the asshole boss he worked for and asked for advice about what to do.  I am not a professional therapist and warned him that he likely needed more skilled help.  But I did make my usual top suggestion: If you are stuck with an asshole or a bunch of them, the best thing to do is to get out as fast as you can.

P.S. The other funny twist is that media people keep asking for a second copy of the book because their copy has been been stolen. This seems to be a San Francisco phenomenon in particular:  It happened when Jessica Guynn was doing her San Francisco Chronicle story and I just got a note from Moira Gunn of Tech Nation   (who wrote to tell me that our interview runs tonight on her syndicated PBS show), reporting that someone at her radio station KQED had stolen her book.  (It looks like you can find the interview with Moira on The No Asshole  Rule and download a podcast of it here.)

I take all this theivery this as a good sign!   It all reminds me of the old hippie bible Steal this Book by Abbie Hoffman.

I was taken with the detailed and at times horrifying responses I got to my post on Airplane Arseholes —  the very worst was from a woman who wrote about a tuna fish eating pervert.  But the more mundane stuff — about people slamming their seats back or hollering into their cell phones — also generated a lot of emotion too, and indeed, airplanes are places where asshole poisoning sometimes runs wild.  These responses were provoked by my plea for help with a little piece that I was writing for the ValueJet magazine.  Frankly, I got so carried away with the assignment that I sent them a piece about three times longer than requested, and I haven’t heard back from them yet.  I suggested a 12-Item self-test that passengers could take that I called the Flying ARSE — inspired by the original workplace Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE), which has now been completed by about 45,000 people and attracted over 70,000 unique visitors.  They will likely trim it way down or might decline to publish it, but I am happy the outcome in any case.

All this has further inspired me to develop a full-length Flying ARSE test, an asshole self-test for airplane passengers.  Right now, to allow some rough comparison with workplace ARSE levels, I planning on also making it a 24 -item test  — although that may change.  And I am starting to talk with people from Electric Pulp about doing a web-based version like we did with Kawasaki.  I hope to have this up and running a few weeks.  The comments and emails I got yesterday gave me great ideas for items, but now  I need to generate more questions, so please make suggestions. Your stories are wonderful (and horrible), but also don’t hesitate to suggest specific items.

As a bit of inspiration, I offer my favorite item in the current draft, which your stories inspired:

"You are skilled at multi-tasking – walking on the plane, dealing with your luggage, talking on your cell phone all at once.  Sure, you sometimes stand in the aisle a little longer and
bump into people, but it is a good use of YOUR time."

P.S. Check out this New Yorker story called Turbulence by David Sedaris, one of my favorite storytellers and writers.  It shows how asshole poisoning can spread on a plane, as usual with his writing, very funny.

I wrote a post earlier today about a weird review of The No Asshole Rule on Amazon that was not only hostile, but also seemed to be about another book.  My book might have a dirty title, but does not say, for example, that "women are spare parts in the social repertoire —
mere optional extras" or that "all minorities are poor,
stupid ghetto trash." I asked people to send messages to Amazon that the reviews was inappropriate and I also got in touch with people at Amazon, who responded almost immediately. It was fixed within about 15 minutes.  I want to thank all of you for your help!  And I would also add that, although Amazon has a huge website, and things do go wrong at times, this is the second time I’ve dealt with a problem on The No Asshole Rule page, and both times, they have been incredibly responsive.

See my earlier post about Amazon and the Best Diagnostic Question. As I said then, the best single  diagnostic I’ve ever found for indicating if an organization is innovative, cares about customers, and is good at implementation — and learning — is "what happens when they make a mistake?"  This time, they didn’t even make a mistake, they just took down a review meant for another book.

As I said months ago, I wish that Amazon was running my cell phone company!

Thank you to everyone who helped!

P.S. Scott points out that the Amazon reveiwer, Lear, has a pretty crazy pattern of reviews, so this just may have been a random act on nastiness.

This is the title of Diane Stafford’s Work Space column, which appeared today in the Kansas City Star. Diane is singing my song, even if Mr. Befera of Palo Alto disagrees.

Alas, it seems you have to register to see the story, but it is free. Also, you can check out Diane’s Workspace blog, which has lots of great stuff — on everything from exit interviews to work lessons from the Oscars.

I am writing a short piece for the EasyJet In-Flight magazine. EasyJet is a very successful discount airline in the UK, sort of the Southwest of Europe. I am writing to hear from folks about the kinds of things that "Airline Arseholes" do, ideas I might use to develop a short version of the Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE) for airline passengers. I thought of things like always taking both armrests, berating airline employees, talking loudly (especially on the cell phone), and jumping in the aisle to to knock people down to be first.

If you have ideas of items I can add to the Airline Arsehole list, I’d be delighted if you could make a comment or send me an email.  Comments will be better for brainstorming, but I understand some people prefer to keep things less public.

The deadline is tomorrow!  And then no doubt they will edit down, as always happens.

This post that sort of blends ideas
from Polly LaBarre’s suggestion that too much of the language that leaders use
in organizations is worn out biz-buzz, what she calls “jargon
monoxide” and a post a bit earlier quoting the government employee who,
along with her co-workers, maintained “asshole
diaries” about a nasty coworker that were apparently instrumental in her “mysterious”
departure from the workplace.  I got a
note from a guy who works for a demeaning CEO, and he explained to me that he is
the curator for the careful records that he his colleagues are keeping of his
actions, which they call their “Doomsday Files” for “Napoleon Narcissus.” I think Polly
would approve of the eloquent language!

I just got this email. it sounds legitimate.  They are using the word etiquette, but it sounds to me like they will train and reform the assholes and other creeps in your office (which might include you…) and you get to be on TV at the same time.  It sound like sort of a reality TV version of The Office, with the extra twist being that they are going intervene to make you or other people  "behave better." 

The header for this e-mail was "Casting: Looking for ill-mannered coworkers."

I saw an article about your blog in Metro.  Maybe you know
of some bad bosses or ill mannered co-workers that might need a manners make
over.  Please pass around to anyone you think might be appropriate.

Thanks, Sean

Do any of your co-workers disgust you with ill-mannered
behavior?  Are you worried your lack of social skills might get you
fired?  Is your boss rude rather than supportive and you wish you could
tell him or her in a nice way?  Well if you’d like to make your workplace
a more harmonious environment, be a better boss, or be better equipped to climb
the ladder of success, a new national television show on a major cable network
wants to show you how top-notch etiquette lessons can create stellar office
camaraderie and make your business flourish!  If you (or someone you know)
has a particular office situation where expert protocol instruction and a
revamped set of manners at a top-notch etiquette school would be of great
benefit to all, we want to talk to you. please visit http://casting.citylightstv.com/AgeWntwManners.htm
to fill out an on line application or email us at etiquettecasting@yahoo.com

 Sean De Simone, Manager of
Casting and Talent Development , City
Lights Television NY/LA

As
I’ve written before, one of the main reasons that I wrote the chapter in The No
Asshole Rule on“The Virtues of Assholes” was that, when I started telling people
about the book, they often would argue “what about Steve Jobs, doesn’t his brilliance
show that assholes are, indeed, worth the trouble?”  I grudgingly agrue in the book that – if you are only talking
about performance – Steve
Jobs is the Poster Child for the Upside of Assholes , although as I
emphasize in the post, “Jobs is famous for saying the "the journey is the
reward," and for my tastes, even if the journey ends well, it still sucks
when you have to travel with an asshole, or worse yet, a pack of them.  If
you are successful asshole, you are still an asshole and I don’t want to be
around you.”

 My
idiosyncratic experience aside, however, I also present some Google searches in the book, where I compare three people
from entertainment and technology who have, at least at times, been accused of being
overbearing jerks: Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison of Oracle (See The
Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn’t Think He’s Larry Ellison and Michael Eisner,
former long-time CEO of Disney (See Disney
War).  I used the absolute number of
Google hits as an indicator of how often each is mentioned as an asshole (which I
admit is flawed because a website may say, for example “Michael Eisner is not
an asshole” and still be counted).  Guy Kawasaki
also had good fun with this, running all sorts of searches with different phrases
and the word asshole, like “lawyer” and “Guy Kawasaki.”

But I just learned about a big improvement in this method.

I got an amazing email from Kenneth
Cliffer, who has a Ph.D, and describes himself as “a neuroscientist by training"  who has been working "as an
educational consultant developing curricular materials for math and science.”  Ken points out, quite rightly, that a flaw in
my method is that doesn’t control for the number of overall Google hits for each
person.  It is only based on the absolute number
of hits that contain the person’s name and the word ‘asshole."  In the spirit of evidence-based
based management, where having strong opinions weakly held is essential –so that
updating is possible when better facts come along – it appears that I may have been
too hard on Steve Jobs.  The upshot seems
to be that Larry Ellison, not Steve Jobs, might be most properly called the
poster child for The No Asshole Rule.
I present Ken’s charming and enlightening email below on the “assholiness index:

I have come to the part of The
No Asshole Rule in which you compare Jobs, Eisner, and Ellison with regard
to their assholiness (consider using this term – it has a certain appeal in its
incorporation of "holiness" in it) using Google hits. However, I feel
compelled as a scientist to point out that it does not control for the
popularity of each of these figures, for which one might expect Jobs to be the
most generally popular, followed in order by Eisner and Ellison – exactly the
order of asshole references you found. Indeed, I get 70.4, 1.31, and 0.121
million hits for the three, respectively, the same order as for asshole hits
you got. To control for general popularity, you could use the percent
of all references that are asshole references, or the ratio of asshole to
non-asshole references. I now get many more asshole references for each than
you got, with Ellison now passing Eisner in that department – the numbers I get
now are 699,000 for Jobs, 20,200 for Eisner, and 30,500 for Ellison. Here is
how these numbers feed into one or the other assholiness index:

Executive 
Percent asshole/general hits   Ratio asshole/non-asshole hits

Jobs
          699/70,400 = ~ 1.0%
                 699/69,701
= ~ 1.0%

Eisner
       20.2/1,310 = ~ 1.5%
                  20.2/1,289.8
= ~ 1.6%

Ellison
       30.5/121 = ~ 25%   
                
   30.5/90.5 = ~ 34%

If you use the number of hits you got vs. the current number of
all hits, you get a percent assholiness for Jobs, Eisner, and Ellison of about
0.13%, 0.86%, and 0.83%, respectively. Note that this is not entirely
legitimate, since the asshole references and general references were assessed
at different times, but it does suggest that Eisner and Ellison may have been
roughly equal and scored about 6 or 7 times higher than Jobs for assholiness
with respect to their overall popularity (which means nothing as an absolute
index of assholiness – Jobs may be more assholy, but proportionately even more
popular). Now, according to my table above, it appears that Jobs is the
least assholy in relation to his overall popularity, Eisner is about 50% more
so, and Ellison pegs the meter at 25 to 35 times more assholy with respect to
popularity than Jobs.

Ken’s method is clearly a big leap forward from the one used in
the book, but being a scientist, he is careful to point out that further
research is still needed, suggesting “You’d
have to have an independent assessment of assholiness, such as your
self-test applied to the candidates, to make an absolute comparison.”

I also confess that I have not subjected this to the scrutiny of my colleagues and doctoral students at Stanford, who are quite skilled at finding imperfections in various methods, so I invite comments about the viability of The Assholiness Index.

P.S. I just put “Robert Sutton” and asshole in Google and got 14,300
hits. Robert Sutton alone yields 117,000 – since it  my ratio is worse than Jobs and Eisner,
although not Ellison’s.  Although I think
this has more to do with the book than my personal behavior!

When I was in New York last week, I was interviewed about the book by Jenna Lee at Forbes.com. The called the segment Are You An A$&*@^? Weed out the bad seed in the next cubicle. It was fun, in large part, because Jenna was smart and asked good questions, but doesn’t take herself too seriously.

David Haygood from IDEO wrote me a lovely, funny, note about what happened when "Pete
Kale, a friend and an IDEO client with our Transformation group, went into a
bookstore to buy The No Asshole Rule to share with his organization." 

In doing so, Pete — who tells his story below –demonstrates how to order the book without swearing: