How to Deal with Assholes

Does an asshole co-worker make your job a living hell? Is that person down the hall from your apartment making life difficult for you and the other tenants? Are you about to lose it over your fellow commuters behaving like the roads were built for them and only them? Maybe some tips from the resident asshole expert, Professor Robert Sutton, can help.

Robert I. Sutton | bobsutton.net

A professor at Stanford University, Bob Sutton is author of The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, as well as The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt.

This latter provides instruction for “how to assess, escape, endure, fight and force out bullies, backstabbers, and arses.”

“The longer you wait the worse it will get.” - Robert I. Sutton

Below are some of the considerations he recommends, and we encourage you to read The Asshole Survival Guide in full to get the most out of his recommendations.

How bad is your situation?
  1. Do you feel as if the alleged asshole is treating you (and perhaps others) like dirt?
  2. How long will the ugliness persist?
  3. Are you dealing with a temporary or certified asshole?
  4. Is it an individual or a systemic disease?
  5. How much more power do you have over the asshole?
  6. How much are you really suffering?

How bad is your situation?

Detection tips for avoiding asshole employers
  1. Google them.
  2. Reliable gossip is gold.
  3. Past victims or enemies?
  4. Exposure to other assholes?
  5. Bad first impression?
  6. Bad second impression?
  7. Damn with faint praise?
  8. Signs of a superiority complex?
  9. How do they treat each other?
  10. All transmission and no reception?
  11. A toe in the water?

Detection tips for avoiding asshole employers

The Asshole Reframing Game: Little Sayings that Can Reduce the Sting
  1. You aren’t alone
  2. You aren’t to blame
  3. Downplay the threat
  4. Focus on the silver lining
  5. Rise above it
  6. Develop sympathy for the devil
  7. Focus on the funny side
  8. Look back from the future
  9. Use emotional detachment

The Asshole Reframing Game: Little Sayings that Can Reduce the Sting

When considering fighting back, how much of these resources do you have?
  1. Power
  2. Documentation
  3. Solidarity

When considering fighting back, how much of these resources do you have?

Seven techniques that are prone to fail and backfire
  1. Do the first thing that comes to mind, right now.
  2. Use direct and aggressive confrontation with a powerful tormentor – even though you lack documentation or allies.
  3. Call an asshole an asshole.
  4. Exact vindictive, anonymous, and useless revenge.
  5. Find a scapegoat
  6. Catch the disease to please
  7. Ask crooked people and systems for help

Seven techniques that are prone to fail and backfire

A FEATURE DOCUMENTARY FROM JOHN WALKER

A JOHN WALKER PRODUCTION IN CO-PRODUCTION WITH THE NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA IN ASSOCIATION WITH DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL

CINEMATOGRAPHER PAUL MCCURDY EDITOR JEFF WARREN COMPOSER SANDY MOORE SOUND DESIGNER ALEX SALTER ANIMATOR RON MCDOUGALL LOCATION SOUND JIM RILLIE PRODUCERS ANN BERNIER  ANNETTE CLARKE  JOHN WALKER WRITTEN BY JOHN WALKER  ROBERT SANDLER DIRECTED & NARRATED BY JOHN WALKER

A John Walker Production in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada in association with documentary Channel and Canada Media Fund, with the assistance of the Government of Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia Film & Television Production Incentive Fund, Telefilm Canada and the Rogers Group of Funds, through the Theatrical Documentary Program, Rogers Telefund and The Canadian Film or Video Film Tax Credit and developed with the assistance of Superchannel