The No Asshole Rule Round-Up

The No Asshole Rule continues to provoke stories and reactions, many from the people who read this blog and write to me, and although things are less crazy than a few months ago, also continues to provoke media attention. This is a round-up of some interesting things that happened over the past few weeks, plus I am giving a couple local talks in the area that are open to the public this week.

Porcupines with hearts of gold. I received several detailed emails from people who told me stories about bosses they had who, on first impression, seemed like assholes, but after you got past their gruff exterior, they were actually great people. I think that such stories are important to hear and think about, and I am working on a post dedicated to people who, on first contact, seem nasty, but are actually great people. I’ve always talked about how important it is to be slow to label people as assholes, but am thinking about it more deeply now. I mentioned this at a talk recently at a software firm, and the audience just cracked-up when one engineer said something like “We say that people like this have a bad user interface, but a good operating system.” If you have ideas and/or stories about this perspective, please write!

Subtle assholes. I received an especially thoughtful email from a woman who started by saying “Thank you for your book. I found that it reads almost like the Zen of Working with an asshole by basing responses and framing situation as the kindest and happiest among us do.” But she went on to make a great point about something that the book should have developed more.

One comment, however. I felt that this book was almost too heavily waited to the very flaming asshole and not nearly enough on the more subtle arse. …..I would encourage you to write about the methods and the effects of the more subtle arse; the alter-ego to the flaming asshole - who can have just as profound an effect on people but is much less obvious to weed out. I related well to the feeling of uselessness, helplessness and lack of confidence that the more flaming assholes inspired in the stories in your book. But I did not relate to the bosses' characters that made them feel that way. I think the subtler jerks are just as bad, but much, much harder to recognize.

I agree completely, and although I touch on jerks who treat others as invisible and so on in The No Asshole Rule, I agree that I need to focus more on the moves made by subtle assholes. Indeed, these more subtle assholes actually can often get away with doing more damage than their more “over the top” and less politically skilled counterparts.

Nasty to her nannies. A huge number of people in the United States – and everywhere else in the world – work taking care of other people’s children, and plenty of these bosses are assholes. Susan Tabas Tepper, a Phildelphia area millionaire, is apparently a repeat offender. The Main Line Times reports

The latest incident of alleged abuse occurred at about 10:40 p.m. on May 20.
Tepper, who had been drinking earlier that night at dinner, became angry when Urszula Kordzior, a native of Poland who was employed by Tepper as a nanny, wanted to leave the residence that night, according to the criminal complaint.

Tepper allegedly blocked the doorway when Kordzior attempted to exit the home and leave in a vehicle that Tepper provided as part of the employment agreement, the complaint said. Demanding that Kordzior turn over the keys to the vehicle, Tepper followed the nanny outside, the complaint said. Continuing to yell at Kordzior, Tepper scratched the left side of Kordzior's face and lip with her hand and then shoved her to the ground, according to the complaint.

Kordzior's nine-year-old daughter attempted to intervene, telling Tepper not to hurt her mother, the complaint said. Tepper, using an epithet directed at the girl, then shoved the girl, the complaint said.

The Flying ARSE takes off. I finally launched The Flying ARSE, a 24 item self-test that you can take to see if you are driving other airline passengers, or perhaps to take with others in mind. I thank Diego and Pam Slim for their posts, and several blog readers for making some suggestions about improving the test. I will get some information from Electric Pulse about how many people are taking the test and the range of scores. Meanwhile, the original ARSE is approaching 90,000 completions.

Recent press coverage. I spent an hour on Joy Cardin’s show last Thursday on Wisconsin Public Radio and had some most interesting callers. I was personally most troubled by the faculty member from a university who complained that one of his colleagues as constantly driving young faculty out of his academic department, but that because this senior faculty member brought in a lot of research money, everyone in the administration and his colleagues were afraid to confront him about his behavior. Alas, academia can be as bad as the private sector. You can listen to the program here. I also had several other articles on the book appear including one in CIO Insight and another on TheStreet.com. I found this article by David Simanoff in the Tampa Tribune to be especially thoughtful.

The Huffington Post business section is live. As I wrote about a couple weeks ago, The Huffington Post, one of the highest rated “gang blogs” on the web is just starting a business section. It went this weekend and has some interesting posts. I especially like the one by Giles Slade called Hold the iPhone. I will also post there occasionally, and I just sent them a couple posts that introduce Huffington readers to The No Asshole Rule.

Two talks and book signings on May 30^th. I am doing two talks and book signings in a four hour period on Wednesday, May 30^th in the Stanford area. Both are open to the public. The first will be an interview by Stanford student Mike Rothenberg in the DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar Series on the Stanford Campus. It will be held from 4:30 to 5:30 in the Skilling Auditorium and be followed by a book signing. This is a Stanford class, but it is open to the public, and Skilling holds a lot of people. Also, the talk will be available as podcast at the above URL within 24 hours (usually sooner than that). Next, I run over to Books INC in Mountain View to talk about The No Asshole Rule and sign some books there too. That event starts at 7:30 and the bookstore in is at 301 Castro Street.

Parting shot: Bringing the book to work can be risky! I got this email awhile back, but never printed it: Mr. Sutton- Maybe you have received similar emails, but I was just called by my boss and told not to bring The No Asshole Rule book back to work. I left the book on my desk at work and read it during breaks, and I didn't care if people saw the title or not, I actually talked about it to some coworkers. Anyway, I thought you might be interested in how your book has been banned in my office.