Work Matters

Category: The No Asshole Rule

  • Bosshole Sues Clown For Not Being Funny Enough

    Since The No Asshole Rule was published in paperback a couple months back, the inflow of asshole stories into my inbox has been on the upswing.  I am getting at least three a day lately, and last week, I got ten one day.  I also expect an upswing next week, as I have a piece coming out in The New York Times business section this Sunday called "When Bad Apples Infect The Tree. "  I only share the most striking and instructive of such stories here; I got one Wednesday that certainly qualifies. The woman who wrote me works for a guy who clearly is a candidate for bosshole of the year. I am leaving out some parts of the email for length and also to protect her identity.  Consider this excerpt from a woman who finally took a job after searching for over a year:

    I was kind of desperate and took this job even though my gut said, "not a good idea."  You should always follow your gut.  I have almost walked out several times.  He lies about my benefits and salary.  He stated one salary and then told me once I started that the salary he quoted included potential bonus.  Of course, there is not going to be any bonus. 

    I don't get a lunch hour, and have to work at my desk or he calls me or texts me all the time.  In this year's time I took some time during lunch twice to go to doctor's appointments and he complained that I needed to not go so much as he was feeling taken advantage of.  Of course, his asking me to stop off at the grocery store and buy milk for him and his family and bring it to him (he was working at home) since it was on my way doesn't constitute being taken advantage of. 

    Needless to say, he has been a nightmare.  He has even texted me in the middle of the night demanding a report be redone immediately, and I actually did it.  Complete and total asshole.  And he's an asshole in his personal life.  His son had a birthday party and they hired a clown.  Well, he wasn't happy with the clown so he and his wife sued the clown to get their money back.  Seriously, this guy make millions a year and he sues a clown??? 

    She added "I've got to get away from asshole.  He's is like a vampire, sucks the joy out of life."  

    No kidding. I hope she finds a better job with a better boss as soon as possible.  I was careful to advise her, however, to resist the temptation to storm out, to tell her boss to take this job and shove it, as it is a lot easier to find a new job when you already have one.

     

  • Tips: How To Be An Effective Asshole

    The post I did yesterday about the All-Star Certified Asshole, Steve Raucci, reminded me of stuff I had written on the virtues of assholes, which is the focus of Chapter 6 of The No Asshole Rule.  I thought a bit of this material might be fun and perhaps instructive for those of you who went to leave a trail of victims in your wake, while using your nasty ways to get ahead in the local pecking order.  That is what Mr. Raucci did for decades;  although please keep in  mind that he will be at least 84 years old when he gets out of prison, if he lives that long.  Here is a list from Chapter 6 of NAR (which is Jeff Pfeffer's favorite chapter in the book, although it isn't mine):

    Do You Want to Be an Effective Asshole?

    Key Lessons

     1. Expressing anger, even nastiness, can be an effective method for grabbing and keeping power.  Climb to the top of the heap by elbowing your “colleagues” out of the way by expressing anger rather than sadness, or perfecting a “general’s face” like George S. Patton.

    2. Nastiness and intimidation are especially effective for vanquishing competitors.  Follow in the footsteps of baseball legend Ty Cobb, and succeed by snarling at, bullying, putting-down, threatening, and psyching-out your opponents. 

    3. If you demean your people to motivate them, alternate it with (at least occasional) encouragement and praise.  Alternate the “carrot” and the “stick,” the contrast between the two makes your wrath seem harsher and your occasional kindnesses seem even sweeter.

    4. Create a “toxic tandem.”  If you are nasty, team up with someone who can calm people down, clean-up your mess, and who will extract favors and extra work from people because they are so grateful to the “good cop.”  If you are “too nice,” you might “rent-a-jerk,” perhaps a consultant, a manager from temporary staffing firm, or lawyer.

     5. Being all asshole, all the time, won’t work. Effective assholes have the ability to release their venom at just the right moment, and turn it off when just enough destruction or humiliation has been inflicted on their victim.

    A final reminder for readers who are dreaming of putting these principles to work.  Here is how I end Chapter 6:

    'In closing, I want to make my personal beliefs crystal clear. Even if there were no performance advantages to barring, expelling, and reforming nasty and demeaning people, I’d still want organizations to enforce no asshole rules.  This book isn’t simply meant to be an objective summary of theory and research about the ways that assholes undermine organizational effectiveness.  I wrote it because my life and the lives of the people I care about are too short and too precious to spend our days surrounded by jerks.        

    And, despite my failures in this regard, I feel obligated to avoid inflicting my “inner jerk” on others.  I wonder why so many assholes completely miss the fact that all we have on this Earth is the days of our lives, and for many of us, huge portions of our lives are spent doing our jobs, interacting with other people.  Steve Jobs is famous for saying that the “journey is the reward,” but for my tastes, as much as I admire his accomplishments, it appears that he has missed the point. We all die in the end, and despite whatever “rational” virtues assholes may enjoy, I prefer to avoid spending my days working with mean-spirited jerks and will continue to question why so many of us tolerate, justify, and glorify so much demeaning behavior from so many people.'

     

  • An Amazing Story About a Certified Asshole on This American Life

    As regular readers of Work Matters know, since I published The No Asshole Rule in 2007 (or really, since I published a short essay on the rule  in Harvard Business Review in 2004) I have since been deluged with stories about certified assholes of every stripe. An astounding story about a candidate for the worst of the worst, the winner of this race to the bottom, perhaps the worst bosshole I have ever heard about, was played on This American Life a couple weeks ago.  It is called "Petty Tyrant,"and you can listen to it for free here. 

    The story is about Steve Raucci, who was in charge of the the maintains department at the school system in Schenectady, New York.  It sounds like an innocent and valuable position, but the pattern of his behavior was just outrageous. He was a masterful bully, doing everything from forcing his employees to socialize with him, to making constant and open threats, to forcing them to campaign for members of the school board he supported (indeed, it appears that most of the members of the school board were beholden to him), to firing and demoting people who were disloyal, to relentless taunting that ranged from sliding burning papers in a bathroom stall were an employee sat to outrageous sexual harassment. 

    Listen to the story if you want to hear the nuances, I can't do them justice here.  But this case is intriguing because, in many ways, Steve Raucci demonstrates the hallmarks of what might be called, for lack of a better term, an effective asshole.  He did a masterful job of "managing up" so that he had very powerful political allies in the administration and the school board, and was arguably the most powerful person in the school system.  He also did a pretty good job of running the department so that they did their job well.  And he used heavy handed tactics to force his employees to be loyal to him — or else.   Yet, it still stuns me to discover how these power strategies provided cover so that he could get away with consistently outrageous behavior.  

    Eventually, Mr. Raucci was sentenced to 23 years to life, "convicted on 18 of 22 counts against him for intimidating co-workers and perceived enemies with explosives at the school and union where he worked."  The picture above shows him at his sentencing hearing last May.  My only quarrel with the story on This American Life is that the term "petty tyrant" does not quite capture his evil nature.

     

  • I hand out copies of your book like valium pills

    This quote is from an email I got from the head of a "conflict resolution" office at a large organization. She was talking about The No Asshole Rule.  I wonder if the combination of the book and valium would be especially effective under some conditions!

  • Send The No Asshole Rule as a “Secret Gift”

    Over the years, I have had a few people write or call me to yell at me because someone had given them a copy of The No Asshole Rule anonymously — I remember a nasty phone call from a police sargent who had been left a copy that included an inscription suggesting that he was a certified asshole and needed the book.  As I have written here before, calling someone an asshole can be an asshole move — and also has potentially dangerous consequences including creating (or further pissing off) one of your enemies. Yet there still may be times when sending The No Asshole Rule to the creep of your choice may have benefits ranging from an act of revenge to a sincere desire to deliver the message to someone who needs to hear it (but that you don't want to risk his or her revenge or wrath).

    As such, I was intrested to learn about an outfit called "Your Secret Gift" in this Daily Finance story about various gifts employees to send to their boss on National Boss Day (which was Friday, October 15th).  Note this paragraph

    On the other hand, if there's no hope for the bad boss, then a louder wake-up call may be in order, such as "The No Asshole Rule" by Robert Sutton. Boss is a real scumbag? How about three toy scum “bacteria” in a Petri dish, a more direct hint. The Boss Toss catapult lets the sender give the boss the heave-ho. The first season of The Office on DVD draws a comparison between the manager in question and the notoriously inept Michael Scott. The Bullsh*t Button or even a piece of realistic fake dog poop in a gift box say more than words can express.

    Here is the url to send The No Asshole Rule — it costs a little more than Amazon, but under certain conditions, it well worth the price!

     

  • How a New Yorker Used “The No Asshole Rule” on the Subway

    I got this fantastic email the other night.  The headline was "No Asshole Rule to the Rescue."  I repeat it in full, except for the name of the sender:

    Dear Prof. Sutton,

    I'm am about halfway through your book The No Asshole Rule and I have to tell you how it just moments ago let me diffuse a possibly temporary asshole (but probably a certified asshole) in a way you might not expect.

    Living in NYC you expect a fair amount of asshole interactions but tonight on my way from Union Square to my home in Park Slope I was confronted with an unusual asshole. I left your book at home on accident and decided to pass my time playing Word Mole on my cell phone. All of a sudden in my peripheral vision I saw the edge of a book and heard a mumble. I looked up and a bookish looking man was staring at me with a disgusted look and said, "This is Book."  the implication was "you kids these days just never read and only look at your mobile phones all day." I was taken aback for a moment, deflated by his constant critical stare, and then a swell of confidence came over me. I responded,"Yes, I know that's a book. I left my book on the counter this morning. It's called The No Asshole Rule and it's really been helping me deal with negative confrontation." all with a kind voice and friendly smile. IMMEDIATELY his face changed. He knew he was exposed. He responded, "Oh..ummm… I'll have to read that…" I said "Yup, it's great. Especially Chapter 4.".

    My stop arrived and I knew. I had handled myself thanks to The No Asshole Rule.

    This is, for better or worse, further evidence that I have written a book that people find useful — and sometimes dangerous — on the basis of the title alone.  This is one of the major themes in the new chapter in the paperback edition.  Being the asshole guy continues to be both weird and remarkably entertaining.

  • On Being The Asshole Guy: New Chapter in The No Asshole Rule

    The new paperback version of The No Asshole Rule came out a few weeks back and it has a fairly long new chapter, as the headline says, called  "On Being The Asshole Guy."  It digs into topics including"  "The Title is Powerful, Useful, and Dangerous," "Be Slow to Label Others as Assholes, But Quick to Label Yourself," "Subtle, Skilled, and Strategic Assholes are Especially Insidious," "Many Leaders and Organizations Use the Rule — And it Works," "The Book Touched a Nerve About Bad Bosses," and "Eliminate the Negative First."

    Here are the opening paragraphs of that chapter: 

    I didn’t plan
    it.  I never wanted it.  I didn’t believe it at first.  And it
    still makes me squirm.  But I accept it now much as I accept being a 56-year-old
    balding white male:  I am the asshole guy.

    Regardless of
    anything I ever wrote or said about management, or ever will, I am condemned to
    be that guy for the rest of my life.  This
    book was first published in North America in February 2007.   The No
    Asshole Rule has sold over 125,000 copies in the English language, plus over
    350,000 copies translated into other languages (especially Italian, German, and
    French).   I have given hundreds of media interviews and received
    thousands of emails filled with stories, studies, questions, compliments, and
    insults from readers – or from people who haven’t read a page but instantly
    love or despise the book based on the title alone.  After Guy Kawasaki
    posted the 24-item self-test in Chapter 4 online and renamed it the ARSE
    (Asshole Rating Self-Exam), more than 220,000 people completed it. The ARSE
    classifies people as “not a certified asshole” (0-5 asshole behaviors),
    “borderline” (5-15), or a full-blown certified asshole” (15 or
    more).   As a result, strangers sometimes introduce themselves (both
    in person and on line) to me by saying things like “Hi, I’m Cindy, I got a 4, I
    am not an asshole” or “I’m Albert, an 8, so be careful.”

    People
    still tell me asshole stories everywhere I go.  Questions and comments about
    the book continue to flood my email inbox and blog.  In recent weeks, for
    example, over 100 strangers emailed me about assholes and their
    management.   An unemployed programmer described how “the assholes
    won” at his old workplace. He was sacked for complaining about his vicious boss
    and the “ones who are still there are all on anti-depressants, have continual
    health issues, and work in fear of their jobs.”  A woman who escaped from
    a swarm of assholes at her old job asked if it was OK to start a Facebook page
    about this book.   Professor (and former naval officer) Donnie Horner
    of Jacksonville University sent his article from the Navy Times, which asserts “the
    verbal abuse and public degradation of junior officers by senior officers” has
    driven promising young officers out of the service and contributed to a rash of
    mishaps at sea. Horner wrote me that such institutionalized indignities were
    largely to blame for the recent grounding of a big ship – a dangerous,
    preventable, and expensive error (see the Total Cost of Assholes or “TCA” in
    Chapter 2).  Anne sent me a picture of the big brass plaque on her office
    wall.  It says: “The Best Test of a Person’s Character is How He or She
    Treats Those with Less Power (especially when no one is watching),” paraphrasing
    Chapter 1.  On and on it goes.  Even when I am in no mood to talk
    about nasty people with strangers, I can’t avoid it because I am introduced or
    recognized as “the guy who wrote the asshole book” rather than, say, a Stanford
    Professor    .

    Yet I did not come to
    grips with my life sentence as the asshole guy until Spring of 2008, a year
    after this book was published.  The events that propelled me from denial
    to acceptance weren’t exactly subtle.  The first was at a retreat for 20
    or so executives from some of the largest U.S. companies, held at a seaside inn
    in Maryland.  McKinsey, the prestigious consulting firm, had invited me to
    lead a discussion about what great bosses do.  Our host was Lenny
    Mendonca, a senior McKinsey partner widely admired for his reserve and
    thoughtfulness.  Lenny gave me a warm and detailed introduction,
    describing my work on innovation, the knowing-doing gap, and evidence-based
    management.  I was taken aback, however, when he ended by saying something
    like “and, of course, Bob Sutton is, and will always be, the asshole
    guy.”  I felt my face turning red as I acknowledged (and admitted to
    myself) that I was indeed that guy.

    This
    new and not entirely comfortable self-image was sealed a few weeks later in an
    elevator at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.  I was there to give a
    speech to SuccessFactors customers — a software firm that touted its “no
    assholes” rule.  As I rode up a crowded elevator, a fellow passenger
    looked at me and blurted out, “Aren’t you the asshole guy?”  He
    immediately became flustered and started apologizing – he desperately wanted
    those words back.  I interrupted him in mid-sentence and said “Yes, that
    is me. I have accepted it and am beginning to like it

    P.S. Sorry about the big font… I was having some struggles with Typepad.

  • Hitting the Delete Button: “I gave a copy to my (former) asshole boss with my resignation letter tucked inside.”

    I am mostly focused on the launch of Good Boss, Bad Boss as it was just published last week (I am sitting in a hotel room in New York right now as I am here doing some book PR).  But, as the new chapter in the paperback emphasizes, I am and will always be "the asshole guy."  And when I get emails like this one (reprinted with permission) from an attorney, it still makes my day:

    I just wanted to thank you for your blog and The No
    Asshole Rule    .  Your wisdom helped me finally escape a terrible job
    that was sucking my soul and making me miserable.      I started my own solo
    law practice and am happier than I've ever been    .  Thank you so much for
    helping me salvage my career and, frankly, my life.  I tell everyone who
    will listen about your book.      I gave a copy to my (former) asshole boss
    with my resignation letter tucked inside. 🙂

    I hope she has great success in her new practice.  And this note, and so many others like it, show how destructive bossholes can be to those around and, ultimately to themselves.


    Button_bigger P.S. As my tips for surviving assholes suggest, this woman is doing what I believe — and the research shows — is the best solution if you are stuck with an asshole boss that you can't get fired: escape as fast you can.



  • The No Asshole Rule Paperback is Shipping — with “On Being the Asshole Guy”

    SuttonbigNARnew2

    Amazon is already shipping the paperback edition of The No Asshole Rule; the official release is September 1 but they are moving a bit ahead of schedule.  I had a lot of fun writing the new chapter called "On Being the Asshole Guy."  It considers a bunch of things that I learned from writing a book that provoked such strong and often surprising reactions. The chapter starts with this paragraph:

    "I didn’t plan it.  I never wanted it.  I didn’t believe it at first.  And it still makes me squirm.  But I accept it now much as I accept being a
    56-year-old balding white male:  I am the asshole guy.  Regardless of anything I ever wrote or said
    about management, or ever will, I am condemned to be that guy for the rest of
    my life.    "

    The sections in the chapterinclude: "The Title is Useful, Powerful, and Dangerous," "Be Slow to Label Others as Assholes, But Quick to Label Yourself," "Subtle,Skilled, and Strategic Assholes are Especially Insidious," "Many Leaders and Organizations Use the Rule — and it Works," "The Book Touched a Nerve About Bad Bosses," and  "Eliminate the Negative First."

    Amazon is charging less the ten bucks for it. So if you've been waiting for the paperback to buy the book, or for that special friend or enemy, the time is here. And don't forget about the ARSE — Asshole Rating Self-Exam.  A self-test to see if you are a certified asshole (or not).  Close to 250,000 people have already completed it.

    P.S. Amazon has the old cover up but will be fixing that soon.

  • Cover for Updated Italian Edition of The No Asshole Rule

     
    Metodo cover compressed

    I got a note from my Italian literary agent, Roberto, last week with the proposed cover for the updated Italian version of The No Asshole Rule, which appears in September.  I love it.  What do you think? 

    I have been amazed by the popularity of the book in Italy, as it has sold over 200,000 copies.