The Compassionate Instinct

These findings may seem discouraging, but they don’t mean we’re condemned to working with assholes. I’ve spent much of the last few years thinking about how to sustain a humane workplace and how employees can deal with nasty bosses and peers. Based on research and stories that I hear, I’ve developed a few tips for victims of workplace assholes.

My first tip is in a class by itself: Escape if you can. The best thing to do if you are stuck under the thumb of an asshole (or a bunch of them) is to get out as fast as possible. Not only are you at great emotional risk; you’re also at risk of emulating the behavior of the jerks around you, catching it like a disease—what I call “asshole poisoning.”

Indeed, experiments by psychologists Leigh Thompson and Cameron Anderson have shown that even when compassionate people join a group with a leader who is “high-energy, aggressive, mean, the classic bully type,” they are “temporarily transformed into carbon copies of the alpha dog.” Despite the risk of asshole poisoning, escape isn’t always possible. As one woman wrote me in response to this advice, “I have to feed my family and pay my mortgage, and there aren’t a lot of jobs that pay well enough to do that around here.”

In those cases where a victim can’t escape (at least for now), I suggest starting with polite confrontation. Some people really don’t mean to be jerks. They might be surprised if you gently let them know that they are leaving you feeling belittled and demeaned. Other jerks are demeaning on purpose, but may stop if you stand up to them in a civil but firm manner. For example, an office worker wrote me that her boss was “a major jerk,” but she found that he left her alone after she gave him “a hard stare” and told him his behavior was “absolutely unacceptable and I simply won’t tolerate it.”

Next, if a bully keeps spewing venom at you, limit your contact with the creep as much as possible. Try to avoid any meetings you can with him or her and try to talk by phone rather than in person. Keep conversations short; be polite, but don’t provide a lot of personal information during meetings of any kind, including e-mail exchanges. If the bully says or writes something nasty, try to avoid snapping back, as that can fuel a vicious cycle of asshole poisoning. Also, recent research suggests that stand-up meetings are just as effective as sit-down meetings, but are shorter. So if you have to meet with jerks, try to meet in places without chairs and avoid sitting down whenever possible. This will limit your exposure to their abuse.

I also recommend keeping an “asshole diary,” in which you carefully document what the jerk does and when it happens. A government employee wrote me a detailed e-mail about how she used a diary to get rid of a nasty, racist coworker:

I documented the many harmful things she did with dates and times. I encouraged her other victims to do so too and these written and signed statements were presented to our supervisors. Our supervisors knew this worker was an asshole but didn’t really seem to be doing anything to stop her harmful behaviors until they received these statements. The jerk went on a mysterious leave that no supervisor was permitted to discuss, and she never returned.

If all else fails, try to practice indifference. Management gurus and executives are constantly ranting about the importance of commitment, passion, and giving all you have to a job. That is good advice when your bosses and peers treat you with dignity. But if you work with people who treat you like dirt, they have not earned your passion and commitment. Don’t let their vicious words and deeds touch your soul: learn to be comfortably numb until the day comes when you find a workplace that deserves your full commitment. Until then, direct your passion elsewhere, like your family, your hobbies, or perhaps a volunteer organization.

ASSHOLES ARE US

I want to stress again that being an asshole isn’t just something that only happens to others and can’t possibly happen to wonderful people like you and me. All of us are at risk. As I like to say, assholes are us.

But I have identified some strategies for handling the jerk within. One way to do that, as I’ve mentioned, is to stay away from assholes as much as possible and thus avoid asshole poisoning. But, especially if you take a position of power, there are several additional things you can do to stop yourself from turning into an asshole.

One is to eliminate as many unnecessary power differences between yourself and others. For instance, when Frank Blake became CEO of Home Depot last year, he eliminated the executive dining room, cut his own pay, and, according to the New York Times, distributed an image called the inverted pyramid, which places customers and employees above the chief executive.