If you are at Starbucks and you hear someone ordering a “decaf grande half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n’-Low and one NutraSweet,” and wanting pay with a credit card you are probably in the presence of an asshole, so says Prof Robert Sutton.
Sutton is the author of the book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.
I don’t like profanity, but “asshole” is the only word that delivers the proper connotative meaning in some situations. (Same reason why I used words like “dumb fucks” in my blog.)
The book’s genesis was an article Sutton penned for The Harvard Review, which didn’t allow him to use the word “asshole” in its title. And when the article was later developed into a full blown book, Harvard Business School Press again didn’t allow Sutton to use the word “asshole” so the good prof took it elsewhere and it was published by another publisher, becoming a best-seller for many months, selling over 115,000 copies in 2007, and won the Quill Award for best business book in 2007.
If you wish to know how to deal with asssholes or if you are one yourself (there is a test in the book to determine if you are a certified asshole), then read the book.