Is There a Jerk at Work? Here Are 7 Tips for Staying Sane
Stanford professor Robert Sutton offers a slew of suggestions for how to break up negative vibes in the office
By | Scotty Hendricks | bigthink.com
We’ve all done it, had to interact with an asshole at work. Sometimes its the customer who will never be truly happy with their service and yet inexplicably keeps showing up for more service to complain about. Sometimes its the coworker who just enjoys walking all over everybody else on their way to the top. Some of us have even had to endure the sadistic boss who enjoys watching other people suffer.
More than half of all Americans have endured some kind of workplace bullying, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute. Dealing with a jerk at work is one of the most common problems you can have. It can also be bad for your health, as Stanford professor Robert Sutton says, “There are longitudinal studies that demonstrate pretty clearly that people who, for example, work under assholes for many years end up being more depressed, more anxious, and less healthy.”
But, what can we do about it?
In his book The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt, Professor Sutton proposes several solutions to how to deal with jerks based on your situation and their position. For him, an asshole is “someone who leaves us feeling demeaned, de-energized, disrespected, and/or oppressed. In other words, someone who makes you feel like dirt,” and is a person who does these things consistently. We can all be guilty of this kind of behavior from time to time, but if someone is doing it constantly that’s what is known, in scientific terms, as a real piece of work. Professor Sutton offers us a slew of suggestions for how to improve our situation, in no particular order.
