Keep away from assholes wherever they are

Bob Sutton wrote a very popular book called, ‘The Asshole Rule’. It deals with the workplace bullies one often finds in companies they work in. They can be your fellow employees or your bosses. I am convinced that all of us at some time or another have been faced with these kinds of assholes. Unfortunately, a good part of my life has been spent dealing with some of these undesirable people. Let me give you some examples.

When I was working for Dominion Bridge in Winnipeg in 1957 as a draftsman, one of the other draftsmen would come by my desk and break the pencil points of my pencils. He was thirty years old.


When I worked in an Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario, in 1959, I had to work under one of the most obnoxious school principals I had ever met. It didn’t take me long to realize why thirteen previous senior boy’s supervisors quit before I did, and all in one year.

I worked for a collection agency in the 1960s and one day the president approached me and asked me to review the accounts of the manager of the firm and to report to him in a couple of days. To do this, I had to remain after work when the manager had gone home. In my investigation, I discovered some suspicious collections and I put my report in an envelope and placed it on my desk so that I could give it to the president when he came in later. Unfortunately, the manager arrived earlier and he opened the envelope and read the contents. He immediately fired me. To make matters worse, the president didn’t rehire me. I had been betrayed.


During the 1960s, I worked at a collection agency in which the woman who worked at the desk behind me was so screwy, she would bring out a ruler and measure the distance from the back legs of my chair to her desk. If I wasn’t more than twelve inches from her desk, she would get up when I went to the washroom and reposition my chair again.

One time while I was working in an agency, there was a young married woman who had one of the foulest mouths I had ever seen. She would call us bastards and say, “Fuck off!’ and other similar expletives. One day when I was eating my lunch and only the two of us were in the office at that time, I said to her when she swore at me again, “If I hear you use foul language again when you are addressing me, I will severely punish you.” She laughed and said, “You aren’t the boss. You can’t punishment me.” Later when everyone had returned to work, she said in a loud voice; “Asshole Batchelor says he is going to punish me. “He can’t do a fucking thing to me.”

Then came a moment I shall always cherish. “I said in an equally loud voice. “I am sick and tired of hearing filth coming from a known slut like you.” She immediately exclaimed, “Did you just call me a slut?” I replied, “Of course I did. I know people who know you as a slut.”

She immediately ran into the manager’s office and complained that I called her a slut. The manager asked me to come into his office and asked, “Did you call her a slut?” I said I did and added that I wouldn’t have called her that if she hadn’t constantly used foul language when talking to us.

Now he and the woman thought that a slut is a promiscuous woman, a woman of the street, a prostitute. The dictionary definition of a slut is a woman with a foul mouth. I wasn’t calling her a prostitute. I was calling her a woman with a foul mouth; and she definitely fit the description I gave her.

Meanwhile, since the manager thought that I was implying that she was a prostitute, he asked me, “Do you have proof that she is a slut?” I replied, “I can bring six people in your office that will tell you that they know that she is a slut.” The six people were the other employees in the office who heard her using foul language all the time.

The next day, her husband showed up. Needless to say, he was really upset. I repeated my allegation and they both stomped out of the office and the slut immediately quit her job. Meanwhile, I continued working there.

Back in the 1970s, I worked for a man who operated a three-person collection agency. It had only two rooms. He was the president and salesperson, his sister was the secretary and I was the bill collector. Right from the beginning, I knew I was going to have to work with two assholes.

While I was working with these two people, I was also the host of a TV show that was put on the air live every Monday evening between seven and eight. Five members of the Ontario Court of Appeal agreed to take their turns appearing on my show for five Mondays. One Monday afternoon, I got a long distance call from one of the judges who wanted to know how to get to the station. My boss, a Mr. Kullberg, overheard me talking to the judge and he approached me and asked, “Is that a company call?” I replied, “I am talking to a guest who is going to be on my TV show tonight.” This asshole immediately grabbed the receiver from my hand and slammed it into the cradle. I had to walk down the street and use a payphone to phone the judge so I could give him the instructions on how to get to the TV station.

One summer afternoon, it was so hot in the office; I decided to open the window to get a breeze flowing across my desk. He immediately left his office and shut my window. I told him that I was too hot and that I was going home. He then lifted the window up half an inch in order to keep me in the office.

His sister was no better. One day I was two minutes late for work since I had to drive twenty miles through heavy traffic to get to work. His sister called out to her brother, “Mr. Kullberg. Mr. Batchelor is two minutes late for work.” I was so infuriated, I said to her, “Why is it that every time you open your mouth to speak, it sounds like you have just farted?” I quit soon after that. I had enough of this duo.

I also worked for a man who wanted someone to collect bad accounts in his jewelry business. He even gave me a contract. The following week he asked me to bring the contract to him the next morning as he was going to give me a new one. The next morning I handed him our contract. As soon as he had it in his hands, he tore it in half and then said, “You’re fired! Now get out.”

Not all collection agencies I worked in had assholes in them. When I later became the manager of one of them, I took great pains to treat all of the employees subservient to me with respect. I never raised my voice or used foul language. To do so would have clearly been evidence that I too had been a workplace asshole.

When I was working for a large investigation and security firm in the early 1970s, I had to deal with a real asshole who thought he was God’s gift to the industry. He and the president and one of the president’s brothers started the firm so he was pretty secure in his position as being a boss to the rest of us.

One day he was giving a lecture on law to all ten of us investigators and he made an error in interpreting the law. I was far more qualified in the subject of law than he was since I had previously studied criminal law at the University of Toronto for two of the four years I was there. When I suggested to him that the law he was speaking of had changed, he immediately said for all to hear, “I want you in my office tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp!”

That night, I phoned one of the president’s younger brothers who was the firm’s photo finisher and asked him to tell the president that I wouldn’t be returning to the firm anymore. When he asked why, I told him that I was sick and tired of being insulted by that asshole who was third in charge of the firm.

The younger brother called me back about twenty minutes later. He said that his brother, (the president) told him that he will tell the third in charge (the asshole) that under no circumstances was he to fire me. I can appreciate why the president committed himself to protecting me from the asshole. I had previous written a very large manual on loss prevention for his firm and had solved a number of very complicated cases for the firm and its clients.

The next morning was another of those experiences that I really enjoyed. I didn’t arrive at nine sharp, I arrived at eleven sharp. When I entered his office, he exclaimed in a loud voice. “I said that you were to be here at nine sharp! It is now eleven!” I replied rather coolly, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. But I was too tired when I woke up so I decided to come in late this morning.” Meanwhile, when I was saying this, I plopped down in the chair in front of his desk and then I slumped with both legs extended towards his desk. “Stand up when you are talking to me!” he hollered. I replied, “I would perhaps under different circumstances but this morning I am so tired, I would rather sit down, if you don’t mind.” He began to sputter at this point of the conversation between us so I got up and then said, “I have enjoyed our talk together. Let’s do it again soon, meanwhile I have to get back to my work. Bye.” Then I walked out of his office. From then on, I never had to obey any of his instructions again.

Despite my experiences at having to work with assholes who were my fellow employees and other assholes who were my bosses, for the most part, I worked for companies where both the employees and the bosses were really nice people.

There was an attorney in New York City called Kenny Heller who was probably one of the most obnoxious lawyers that ever practiced in that city. After 50 years of heaping abuse on everyone within earshot and hurling accusations of conspiracies, favoritism, and cronyism at countless judges and lawyers alike, the 77-year-old Heller has earned the distinction of really being an asshole. Heller was disbarred for basically being an asshole. No other lawyer in the city but Heller, according to records of his disciplinary hearing, has been ousted for obstructive and offensive behavior which did not involve fraud or deception.

Several years ago, I was representing a young man in court who was charged with creating a disturbance because he swore at a police officer. The charge was obviously a phony charge because he had walked into a disturbance that had been going for half an hour so he could hardly have created it. The senior assistant crown attorney who was prosecuting my client, chastised me in front of the judge by saying that paralegals (I was one) shouldn’t call accused persons they are representing as their clients. He said that privilege is reserved only for lawyers. In my letter to him a month later, I pointed out to him that the Attorney General in a speech said that accused persons are clients of paralegals and that in two courts of appeal cases; the judges stated that paralegals have clients. He also chastised me for referring to a court case which he said wasn’t pertinent. It was pertinent to the judge because he referred to it when he dismissed the charge against my client.

I did get a chance to get back at the asshole however. In my letter, I wrote in part; “Sonny. I was practicing law when your mommy was wiping your bummy.”

Many law firms in Canada and the United States espouse and enforce ‘no asshole rules’. There is a national law firm with headquarters in Seattle that has applied the ‘no jerk rule’ for years, which has helped the firm to be named one of ‘the Top 100 Best Companies to Work for’ five years in a row.

CEO and co-founder Roger D. Sterling of Sterling Foundation Management said, “There is a principle that I was told about early in my career as ‘Never do business with an Asshole,’ and which we have since adopted. We've applied it to both clients and employees, to greatly beneficial effect. I would reckon it of equal or greater worth than present value analysis, which I must have been taught a dozen times in the course of getting to a Ph.D. in applied economics.”

Being nasty in or out of court isn’t going to make one more successful. Being nasty to others will only destroy relationships and add to the stress that is already too prevalent in the profession of law.

Once in a while one comes across a judge who is regularly arrogant. One such arrogant judge in Ontario was finally removed from the bench because of his arrogant conduct on the bench.

Fortunately, judges generally maintain a high standard of behaviour on and off the bench. Even so, the number of delinquents on the bench is on the rise with them committing such social vices as sexism, vanity, arbitrariness and like vices that are no longer uncommon. Sometimes colossal ignorance, indolence and utter indifference are sometimes found in their written judgments. Outright rudeness to lawyers and their clients is not that uncommon either.

Judge Michael Stano, who sits on the bench in Oklahoma said; “I am fortunate to serve as a judge in a county where lawyers and judges get along really well. Angry outbursts and rude and unfriendly acts are rare in my courtroom. Such acts, however, do occur. Nothing upsets or distresses me more than people not treating others with courtesy and respect.”

Joe Gold was the founder of the famous gym ‘Gold Gym’ that produced multiple body building champions, including film star and California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gold’s management philosophy was: “To keep it simple you run your gym like you run your house. Keep it clean and in good running order. No jerks allowed, members pay on time and if they give you any crap, throw them out. There's peace where there's order."

Peter van Aartrijk is the CEO of ‘van Aartrijk Group’ and founder of this 14 person marketing and advertising firm. He once told The Wall Street Journal: “I decided we would surround ourselves with clients who are fun to be with and are still very smart. All of what we've done since has been built around that simple philosophy --- a ‘No Assholes Policy’. He said that he applies the rule to employees as well as clients, and that: he routinely uses this policy to turn away clients.

I practiced law as a paralegal representing clients in courts and tribunals for many years and on occasion, I would have one who was clearly an asshole. I would get them away from me as soon as I could. Life is too short to have to deal with these kinds of obnoxious fools.

Lou Pepper was CEO of Washington Mutual in the 1980’s, he was a lawyer when he was brought in as CEO. It was then a small local bank that was losing about 5 million dollars a month. Everyone assumed that his job was to shutdown the bank or to sell it. Instead, Lou helped turned the company around and it has since become a huge and successful bank. Lou wrote the author of the book, No Asshole Rule and in his letter he said, “I was CEO of Washington Mutual in the 1980s and had a clear rule for our hiring. It was hire the smartest we can so long as they are not assholes. In 1990, when my successor took, over he kept the same rule.”

SuccessFactors, a Silicon Valley firm is one of the fastest growing software firms in the world. They not only have a ‘no assholes rule,’ they require all new hires to sign an agreement – they call it ‘the rules of engagement’ --- that includes making a commitment not to act like an asshole.

Author Jay Rob of Hamilton, Ontario proposed, ‘Let’s Try To Be a Jerk Free City.” Rob’s half serious proposal was that they adopt ‘Hamilton: The Jerk Free City’ as their official slogan. And he added: “To stand by our slogan, we'd have stand firm on our no-jerk rule. We wouldn't work for them, do business with them, or elect them.”

Employers need someone with technical qualifications, but they also have to find someone who can work with other people and respect other people, be they fellow employees, supervisors or customers and clients.

One woman complained, “I work in an environment where the assholes/bullies look like sorority girls. They are all smiles, good clothes, perfect teeth, etc. For the first few months after joining the firm, I thought that their bad behavior was the result of a particular individual's incompetence. However, it soon became apparent that this nastiness was a form of bonding for these women at the expense of the ‘Losers’ they victimized.

Working with or under the authority of company assholes is bad for one’s health. Constantly struggling with their rudeness and then going home exhausted, aggravated and bitter and then going back the next day to put up with it all over again just makes one’s mental and physical wellbeing get worse.

If you do know someone who is an asshole, give them the asshole award....Toilet paper, or just buy a roll for yourself with the asshole’s picture on it. You can have them made especially for you. Display it on your desk. That will surely humble the asshole.

Working with or under the authority of company assholes is bad for one’s health. Constantly struggling with their rudeness and then going home exhausted, aggravated and bitter and then going back the next day to put up with it all over again just makes one’s mental and physical wellbeing get worse.

What is a real asshole? My take on that is:

It is a person who is indifferent to other people’s feelings.
It is a person who satisfies selfish needs regardless of others.
It is a person who uses manipulation and intimidation to control others.
It is a person who goes beyond the formal and informal rules.
It is a person who creates the truth to his/hers advantage.
It is a person who can’t say a nice thing about anyone.
It is a person who leaves a trail of conflicts behind them.
It is a person who is always rude to others.
It is a person who likes to tease and bully others.
It is a person who thinks he or she is better than everyone else and doesn’t hesitate to let them know.

That is pretty much the definition of a psychopath. It certainly is the definition of an asshole. There are other words that are also fitting such as creep, jerk....