An EZ Thirteen Step Guide to an Asshole Free Life
(OK, not exactly easy. Anyway…)
STEP 1: Avoid him if you can (even at a significant cost)
That might mean not marrying someone you love; divorcing the guy; changing jobs; passing on a profitable business partnership.
For workplace managers—at least according to Stanford management professor Bob Sutton—it means never hire an asshole, fire them if some slip through, and, if you can’t fire them immediately, treat them as incompetent employees.
(There is an interesting question of strategic ahole use—maybe he’ll be perfect in a hard bargaining situation. But this is risky, and the ahole will certainly be costing you dearly in everyone else’s productivity, so there’d better be very good chance of a very good outcome for this make sense from a straight cost-benefit perspective.)
STEP 2: Accept that he probably won’t listen or change
Proper aholes keep it up because it mainly works for them, so you should not expect them do things differently. Spare yourself needless frustration.
STEP 3: Affirm your own worth
Even so, be sure to call a wrong a wrong, instead of buying into the ahole’s view of things. If you need reassurance, but you risk overburdening your friends or spouse, find a similarly afflicted friend and form an ahole support group.
STEP 4: Calm Yourself Down
The function of resentment as a moral emotion is to affirm your
right to better treatment. If you consider that fact—along with the
usual “mindfulness” techniques—you may not need to feel so
resentful and settle into cooler-headed clarity about how you
should be treated.
STEP 5: Make small improvements
Even small changes—such as changing a work routine—can help
you avoid feeling powerless.
STEP 6: Hope for his best
Without expecting his reform, you can at least hope that he’ll come around—even if because of a terrible accident. If nothing else, this can keep you from becoming consumed with rage.
STEP 7: Ask politely
Ask the asshole to treat you as you prefer to be treated, making a specific request, in a polite way. He well might comply. But don’t be surprised when he blows you off. (Repeat this step, but only for as long as you can stand it.)
STEP 8: Feel free to cooperate, for your own reasons, and on your own terms
You don’t have to completely avoid the asshole, or refuse to cooperate with him at all, as long as you cooperate for what you regard as good reasons. If a polite conversation with the asshole will uphold a tone of civility in the office, you can have the chat for the sake of that worthy cause.
STEP 9: Stage a small protest
At the right time, take a public stand to uphold your rights or the rights of your colleagues—for instance, by refusing to shake the guy’s hand, or withholding help you would otherwise give, or keeping a stony silence, or making a cutting remark or joke at the guy’s expense. The point is not to get him to listen or understand, but to stand up for the norms of respectful conduct—to affirm everyone’s rights.
STEP 10: Mildly retaliate?
This is very risky, and I can’t tell you exactly when it is a good idea, but here’s a situation when it worked: Sutton tells the story of a woman whose boss would consistently eat food off of her plate at lunch without asking. One day she put out a box of chocolates, but substituted the chocolates with laxatives. He got the message. The goal here isn’t retribution, but civil peace.
STEP 11: Tolerate Divergent Coping Strategies
In a small group, assholes can be especially effective at turning cooperative people against each other, as each becomes disappointed in the others’ reaction to the ahole. You think the other person is overreacting, he or she thinks your enabling the ahole by not taking a stand. All this makes the ahole’s work easier for him.
Here you can reflect on how deeply frustrating you find the ahole, as a way understanding how people could have very different reactions to a difficult problem. Such tolerance will help the group seize opportunities to stage a more effective response.
STEP 12: Moral and Civic Education
If we turn to larger society, there’s at least one thing we can do, with support on both Right and Left, to dampen aggregate societal production: aggressively support moral and civic education that encourages gratitude to society and a desire to “give back.” That’s especially in early education, but also in college, where talented students could be much better supported in choosing service-oriented careers (in the face of what will often be strong pressures to choose work according to money and status instead).
STEP 13: Foster a National Culture of Service
Are there more aholes than there used to be? It sure seems so, or at least certain trends suggest it: narcissism seems to be on the rise, with ego-boosting parenting, social networking, and reality TV, and I’d also point to our recent “greed is good” style of capitalism, which encourages you to take as much as you can get from society without being too worried about making a real contribution (in contrast with the “greatest generation” style of capitalism, after the WWII, that focused on service.)
What to do about this partly depends on how we diagnose the problem—and I’m not suggesting there’s any easy fix—but might I suggest that we can all support a national ethos of service to society, of gratitude for our good fortune and a sense of reciprocity—a new kind of capitalism that puts the greater good first, with a new accountability for the market choices we make.
