Dating : How to Survive When You Work with Assholes

I hate working with Assholes

We have all worked with people that have “features”. Some people are arrogant and dismissive. Some people are offensive, incredibly needy, or incompetent. Some people pass off their work to others, while some are expert at deflecting criticism. Some people are mentally or emotionally unbalanced, and some are actually sociopaths who enjoy making people suffer. (If you have not read “The Sociopath Next Door”, I highly recommend it.).

Sociopaths are especially dangerous because they don’t follow rationale rules for decision making and behavior. This can make them hard to spot.

Assholes are everywhere

Even the best companies have a selection of assholes sprinkled throughout the organization. They create disruption, but can also help one to grow in patience and emotional maturity — if you play it right. Developing smarter people strategies and a thicker skin is valuable. It comes in handy when …. you have to deal with assholes.

Considering assholes in the workplace as opportunities for growth is a good strategy — if you can take it. It is a bit like drinking super food shakes on a regular basis. Not everyone is willing to suffer through that nasty green frothy drink in order to extend their life by 5 years.

Sometimes the workplace has an overwhelming number of these opportunities for growth, so that going to a staff meeting can be like getting a root canal administered through the anus. If it is that bad, you have to ask yourself if it is time to pull the plug and move on.

I am a hypocrite

I have not always followed my own advice, and I have routinely let myself get worked up, depressed, and irate when I should have been thicker skinned and proactive in charting my own course. To make matters worse, when I reacted to these people in the wrong way, I sometimes became an asshole myself.

Beware the really sneaky assholes

Some people are total assholes, but are really good at hiding it. These people have the ability to camouflage their true behavior when they are dealing with their superiors. They can be very convincing. They are frequently considered honest, earnest, bright, and strong team players. Lots of people that don’t work with them as closely as you do think they are great. But watch for the signs.

I worked with one asshole that was especially skilled in stealth. I am unsure what I did to draw his angst, but I figure I must have done something. He told his boss that I was working to undermine their project and create additional busy work for them. This asshole managed to get his boss so worked up, that his boss challenged me to a fist fight (!) in the middle of a hallway conversation.

There I was, fat dumb and happy — thinking I was in an innocuous conversation — and WHAM! Asshole attack. I was taken completely off guard. I managed to calm the guy down, and avoided having to duke it out like we were in grade school. I must say that I am pretty sure I could have taken him.

Entertainingly, this asshole wound up coming to my company to sell us something fairly recently. Everyone thought he was so intelligent and honest. Needless to say — I disabused them of this notion. Karma, dude.

What would Mary Poppins do?

I do not pretend to have an ironclad method to keep your composure when tested by assholes. However, I have developed a strategy that might help take the sting out of some of your bad days.

Lets take a cue from Marry Poppins. Remember when she had Jane and Michael clean up the nursery? She showed the children that by making a disagreeable activity fun, the job is easily done. I don’t recommend snapping fingers at people in the office to get them to complete an action, but there are often ways to make dealing with assholes fun — sort of — sometimes.

When faced with drama — sit back and enjoy the show

In one of my positions I worked for a person (Bob) who swung between extremes of caring and inspiring leadership, and childish stubbornness — with temper tantrums sprinkled in for fun.

If you saw his resume, or met him at a dinner — you would think he was one of the most capable and good matured leaders on the planet. One day I found him hurling binders full of paper across the room after not getting his way on a fairly trivial issue.

To make matters even more interesting, he had an associate (Bill) that he was very much attached to — to the extent of bringing Bill along on his family vacations. While Bill had excellent credentials, and was quite intelligent, he totally lacked people skills, and I suspect he was a sociopath. Making Bill number 2 on the team was awkward because no one could relate to him.

Bill seemed to focus much of his time on minor administrative tasks of little importance. Another time sink for Bill was keeping people from making decisions that Bob might object to when he was out of the office — which occurred frequently. Bill knew how to work certain people into an emotional crisis and did so on a regular basis.

Our staff meetings became legendary as there were tears, shouting matches, and even the threat of physical violence on one occasion. At a particularly low point, I recall seeing one of my colleagues — a very talented individual with a long track record of impressive successes — staring at the floor for most of the meeting with a look of despair.

I remembered Mary Poppins, and decided to start pretending that staff meetings were a show — designed to entertain me. I even brought popcorn to a few meetings to help me feel like I was at the theater. The meetings became more enjoyable almost immediately. I would watch Bill expertly pulling a colleagues strings until he went apoplectic. Then Bob would step in, all self righteous and angry, and a brawl would ensue. I enjoyed trying to guess the next twist in the plot.

TMI

I am sure that you have worked with someone who goes to heroic but unnecessary lengths to explain something to you.

He went the store to buy coffee and had to get a different brand than he wanted. When telling this story — it somehow turned into an epic saga rich in meaningless details.

Aided with pen and paper to draw diagrams, logic trees, and schematics of the store layout, Mr. TMI managed to address the social concerns of coffee growers in Africa, his stance on reusable cups vs plastic or Styrofoam, and an interesting pattern that natives of the area weave into blankets — before forgetting what he was talking about in the first place.

I felt like a victim subjected to Chinese water torture — the incessant drip of words on my forehead slowly driving me mad. After 15 minutes or more, someone would say, “Oh,” with dawning and desperate comprehension. “You got Folgers instead of Peets?”.

“Yeah.”

“That’s fine.”

And it was done….

I started making notes on these tales of wonder, and entertained myself by inserting other diversions that seemed to fit the pattern. Maybe we should use plant based stirring spoons. Did ancient astronauts drink coffee? Would they support sustainable farming? Reading them afterwards was great fun.

Babbling Betty

Betty loves to speak at great length. She babbles on for minutes at a time while half the room zones out or turns to email. The weird thing is that the boss LOVES Betty.

Betty does have some strong skills and is very intelligent, but she often goes on at length about subjects that it is clear she does not really understand. And she does so in combinations of incomplete sentences, starting one — restarting with another approach — then taking a different approach or restarting to add in something else …over and over.

You eventually get a feel for Betty’s point, but you have to endure a veritable verbal diarrhea to get to it. And many times it is not a helpful or original idea. So, it is a huge disappointment when you finally get to the end. It is even worse when you figure out her point 15 seconds in but realize you have another few minutes to go before she is done.

An associate and I came up with a game we called “find the sentence”. By monitoring Betty’s comments critically, we realized that there were no complete sentences in the course of several minutes. There were lots of good (trendy) words, half thoughts, caveats, popular phrases, and re-statements — but no complete sentences. I desperately wanted to channel Price is Right and ask to buy some punctuation when Betty paused for an infrequent breath.

I embraced the fun by collecting some of Betty’s phraseology, and then putting these pieces together into an imaginary conversation. I sent another associate one of these during a staff meeting — a conversation that started with someone asking “Where should we go to lunch?”. I created a simulation of Betty’s response. Apparently my effort was successful, as within seconds after I hit send, I heard a gasp from across the table as my normally very controlled associate choked in his effort to suppress his laughter.

Everyone is Stupid but me

One of the most frustrating people to work with is the guy who thinks that no matter what is being discussed — he is the smartest guy in the room. When this person is in a position of authority it is especially frustrating because you can so rarely get them to change their opinion.

The best way I have seen to deal with these people is to make them think that your solution was their idea. This is surprisingly easy to do. When presenting an idea to a group meeting, start by saying something like, “I was talking to Gordon (the peacock) the other day, and he came up with a really good idea that I think could address this problem!”.

You may think that this transparent pandering will recognized and spark an angry response. You would be wrong. Gordon is already convinced that any good idea came from him, and the others will rush to mimic your brilliant tactic.

Play along, stroke his ego, give him credit for ideas that were not his. It can be a challenge to make yourself do this, but you will learn patience.