I Hate People – The Book – Win One!
The authors of “I Hate People”, Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon were so gracious for sending over a few copies of their latest and greatest creation.
Review
“I Hate People! is the definitive guide for creating a job you love – even though you are trapped with jerks and creeps of every stripe. Littman and Hershon tell great stories, give inspired advice, and wrap it all in the most fun management book since Orbiting the Giant Hairball.” –Robert I. Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule and professor of management science and engineering, Stanford University
Want to win a copy of the book? I’ve got 4 copies to give away. All you have to do is tell me (without naming names) which one of your co-workers you loathe and why – use the comments section below – and I’ll pick best of the best.
Unleash the hounds….
June 30th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I could really do without the project manager 2 cubes over. He has small hands and hasn’t had an original or new idea in years.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
I LOATHE my co-worker Maude. She says the word “clugy” and never washes her hair. She never lets me finish a sentence, had a yellow eye tooth, and always carries around a bottle of mint water – although it is NOT doing it’s job. Her pants are 2 inches too short, she judges me for drinking diet soda, and every time I try to have a meeting within 400 yards of her – even when it has absolutely NOTHING to do with her or her job function – she tries to instigate her into it.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
When I was a receptionist, I had a coworker that sat at my desk during the weekly 6-hour managers meetings. He would gripe and complain about how none of the managers do anything, and that they never take into account the work that everyone else does. That, he said, was the demise of the company. Yet, this guy was notorious for showing up to work late, and leaving early.
Since then, I’ve noticed that almost everyone is like this guy. “Management does nothing, we do everything.” But they’re lying. They, too, work six hours a day and spend four of those hours on Facebook.
So, I need to read this book. Not just to learn how to deal with these people, but to teach them a thing or two so they will SHUT THE HELL UP. (Yeah, you can call me grumpy bear today.)
And, if that’s not reason enough for a free book, then this tweet should be: http://twitter.com/paigepresley/status/2406598306.
June 30th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I once had a boss that left nude pictures of himself on the communal office computer for me to find when I showed up for work in the morning.
It was not attractive.
I left the key to the office and never came back.
I hate him for making me see the terribly disgusting images.
Thanks for jogging my memory of this incident. I think I hate you now, too.
I kid.
June 30th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I hate my co-worker Richard….he has to be making over a 100 g’s but you wouldn’t know it or smell it. His aversion to water is striking…he’s the type that you smell before you see. Compound that with the fact that he never ties his shoes and has this horrible habit of sucking in air through his mouth, which contorts his face into the unrecognizable….gives me the creeps just typing about it.
June 30th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Who needs the book? The comments so far are much more entertaining :O
June 30th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Sally, Sally, Sally, Sally…..
Sally, a temp admin, was hired 3 months ago to help “lighten the load” She has made everyone work harder & causes ungodly amounts of stress.
A few examples:
1. She asked how to shade a cell in Excel. I would have fired her on the spot if I could have, she blatantly told my mgr that she was well versed in Microsoft Office.
2. She argued with my manager that she came in @ 830 one morning. I walked in with her at 12 o-frickin clock…
3. She routinely asks simple mathematical questions. i.e. – is the 15 minutes being equal to .25 of an hour really that hard of a concept? Apparently so.
4. She had to get her picture taken a few days ago for company badge. She obviously bought a new shirt/blouse, cuz it still had the damn tag on it. When confronted with (what I would think an embarassing situation) she just laughed. Never did take the tag off either.
5. Her phone has all supervisors and mgrs names and extensions on it, clear as day. She has a yellow post-it with all of our numbers and it is stuck to the flippin phone.
6. Next to the phone directory post-it, another post-it with her numerous ID’s and passwords. Arghhhhh
7. She shuts down Outlook EVERY f***ing time she reads one email. Drives me absolutely crazy.
By the way, we all work in a IT Department…
Enough venting, gimme the damn book.
June 30th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
With whom to start? The males that are neutered, the women who need to shave their ’stashes, the smokers who take a break every 40 minutes, the mothers who are constantly late or no shows because of “a sick kid.” Worse, the mother who repeats while on the phone that “the poop in the diaper is green” for all to hear. I wish I could pick JUST one, I hate ‘em all.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:02 am
I cannot stand the levels of HR management that insist on telling a recruiter (we have a small team, but have, collectively 50 years of recruitment experience in the trenches between us) exactly how to do our job, right down to the sourcing and screening of candidates–and treat us like children–when they have ZERO recruitment experience themselves. Oh, but the generalists… they are holy, you see. They are above reproach, are treated as professionals, and get to do just as they please without their judgement ever being questioned. I HATE the “holier than thou” and “poor, stupid litte recruiter” looks.
I HATE it that the recruiters are always seen as junior “wannabe” generalists, when that isn’t the case at all. When will they see, we chose recruiting for a reason… because we love walking that thin line between HR and Sales? We LOVE working closely with business operating units to find out what makes them tick. We LOVE to sell a candidate on a great opportunity. Keep your ER, keep your benefits and comp issues, and let us do what we do… because we’re damn good at it.
It’s rare that you find an HR Generalist that loves recruiting, and vice versa. We are DIFFERENT… but why aren’t we treated equally? GEEZ!
July 1st, 2009 at 7:23 am
I have a Co-worker who has been with the company for over six years. He has criticized everyone’s ability and skills in the company, starting from the owner to the secretary. He smiles in everyone’s face and talks so much garbage about them behind their back. What sucks for me is that I have to be trained by this complete idiot who doesn’t feel that training the new person is beneficial for the company. He would rather you spend countless hours trying to figure things out, give you the wrong answer to your questions, or he cant remember, or pretend to be too busy to lend a hand only to chit chat with the customer service girls about there weekend. There have been many times I will come up with ideas and this idiot will always say it will never work. Oh but in front of our boss he will act like it was his idea. He is a rat who watches everything you do and say just to go back to the boss and tell. (Thank God I do what I am suppose to do. )
The sad part is that he is the only person is the entire building to know everything about the systems and he is really trying to keep it that way. I hate liers, tattle tells, and men who gossip!
Did I mention he plucks is eyebrows? Whats up with that?
July 1st, 2009 at 8:17 am
These are HILARIOUS and FANTASTIC!! Keep’em coming. I’ll pick 4 winners next Friday.
July 1st, 2009 at 9:02 am
I hate the Regional Manager of Account Executives for failing to support me his employee in a significant and most egregious attack upon my business.
I am an “associate”, a nobody, if we had someone in the mail room I guess I could kick them but since we don’t I sneak a quick jab in at the copier every once in a while when no one is looking. I only wish the boss didn’t have an assistant because then he would be the one standing there wondering why the copier doesn’t work every third Thursday; but I digress.
Let’s get to the root cause of my loathing.
6 months earlier
There I was on top of the world, I had just won a major client with an exclusive commitment to hire multiple front line technicians from us across the company and the standing need at this company, a behemoth in the rail industry was over 600 open reqs. 25% of which were directly attached to our exclusive agreement. I am a hero! We begin to deliver on our commitment hosting regional hiring events for our client. They start the hiring and we are on a roll.
5 the first month, then 6, then 7! Oh man it’s gonna be a good year I surely have a bonus coming not to mention the commissions!
Then it happens…
2 of my placements are suddenly deleted in PC Recruiter. What that’s $10k where did it go? No contact info no nothing my placements are gone! I dig around for that slip of paper with a phone number on it that by now is most certainly wrapped in chewing gum.
Whew! Found it. I have a number for placement number 1. dialing
Ringing
Cand #1, “hello?”
Me, “Hey Eddie it’s Thomas. What’s going on?”
Cand #1, “I am over here with your co workers at the XXX interviews.”
Me, “What for, I thought you accepted with YYY?”
Cand #1, “Well they called me and said this was better so I came out to see. This place sucks though I am leaving now can I still go with YYY?”
Me, “Sure, No problem they never knew the difference, but don’t do this to me again”
Cand #1, “OK, Sorry. Bye”
WTF!? Dialing… Ringing…
JJJ, “this is JJJ”
Me, “hey man it’s Thomas, why is Ed at your interviews?”
JJJ, “can’ttalkgotaago” click
WTF!?
Where is candidate #2’s number? Digging in the desk, in the trash, in the laptop bag… Found it! Dialing… Ringing…
Stephen, “hello?”
Me, “Hey Stephen it’s Thomas. Are you at the XXX interviews today?”
Cand #2, “Yeah man this is great it’s closer to my house and everything. I called my buddy Cand #3 and he likes this better than YYY too so we don’t want to go to work there anymore.”
Me, “you have an offer already from XXX?”
Cand #2, “no but after seeing this I just want to be closer to home and so does Cand #3. Hey I gotta run my next interview is in 5 minutes and JJJ is flagging me down.”
Are you kidding me?
So I try to call the coworkers who have shafted me and all day long they avoid me. The primary Culprit is a Sr Partner and Equal to my boss on the hierarchal food chain, remember I am an “associate”. The reason this matter is Sr. Partners have unlimited access in PC Recruiter and the ability to delete, modify and otherwise molest the database is theirs without regard for it’s impact on good order & decency. I use my position as a technology guru in the company to get another Sr Partner to create a duplicate database from the previous days backup. In my duplicate database I now have the proof of my candidates having accepted offers and being marked as off the market in the system.
I bring my catalogued proof to my boss and to the rest of the Sr. Partners in the company.
In a matter of minutes my backup data is gone; I am told that nothing will happen to JJJ and that I am not to bring it up to anyone ever again.
They underestimate my tenacity. I made a copy of the DB that they were unaware of.
I sent the entire package up to the CEO of the company.
My boss DDD comes into my office and sits down about an hour later.
“Thomas, I told you nothing is going to happen. Let it go.”
AAAAAGHHH! I HATE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!
July 1st, 2009 at 10:51 am
I have the misfortune of working with “that girl.” You know the one. She’s the coolest//hippest//prettiest person she’s ever met except for the fact that she’s not. Her clothes are perpetually two sizes too small (on a good day), she has adult braces with colorful rubber bands, a Cindy Brady lisp, and she recently asked me if I’d “ever heard of a new band called Coldplay.” As if these borderline amazing attributes were not enough to drive me to drink, she can’t walk in a heel higher than 1/2 inch, laughs over nearly every comment she makes and interrupts conversations more frequently than an eight year old boy with ADHD that lost his Adderall. Bust the most amazing think is that she met a guy online nearly two years ago and they recently met face to face. He allegedly gave her an engagement ring upon meeting her, but what she doesn’t know is the majority of the office knows that someone saw her buying the ring herself prior to their face to face encounter. I’d rather staple my finger up my nose than attend the wedding but I’ll probably be asked to read something….”Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud….”
July 1st, 2009 at 10:54 am
I hate coworkers who add unnecessary steps and processes in an effort to make themselves seem more important than they are. If they focused on getting results and information sharing the enterprise would profit and they could add real value, rather than claiming expertise and hiding behind paperwork. Enough with advancing bureaucracy for its own sake!
July 1st, 2009 at 10:58 am
Lets call this guy… Ron. I’ll break it down.
I’ve worked here as a network engineer for 4 years. Within 6 months he has turned virtually everyone against him.
He recently tore a hamstring and was on crutches. The employee health department said he was a risk being on crutches and they forced him to use a wheel chair. A special wheel chair…. a…. wide…….. wheelchair.
1) He weighs a cool 450 pounds, which I have nothing against overweight people as I am overweight myself, but he constantly tells us about how he’s starting some new diet every other week. Apparently each of these diets permits him to super size his meal he eats every day from McDonalds.
2) He keeps telling us about the new motor cycle once he loses another 75 pounds of said diet.
3) He’s a one upper to the one upped degree. We turned it into a game. Started coming up with stories to see how’d he’d one up them. So far we’ve found out that he has killed and eaten his own ostrich. He’s a ghost hunter. He’s gone noodling/grabbling. The ideas themselves don’t sound far fetched but when imaging a 450 pound man doing it, it gets funnier.
4) They had to buy him a special chair because they were afraid he’d break a normal chair.
5) They had to buy him his own desk fan because he kept turning the thermostat down to uncomfortable colds in the lower 60’s.
6) He would leave the windows open over night/over weekends during the winter.
7) He’s a freemason. I’m not sure if that’s funny but it’s a fact.
9) His daily musk is comprised of smoke, dirt and grilled onions.
10) He takes a 30-45 minute smoke break every 60-90 minutes.
11) He butts in and tries to take over conference calls on which he has no role.
12) He keeps making claims that his wife is bi-sexual (she’s kind of a female version of him from what I can tell)
13) He drives a 2 door kia rio5. Look around. Looks like a clown car on him.
14) He makes constant claims that he has “low profile tires” on his car. Truth is he weighs the car down so much they just look low profile.
I could keep going… I really could. But I think I’ll just stick with these.
July 1st, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I hate people, and I’m in HR. That’s a problem. Ok, so I hate stupid people. To be more PC, I hate people that suck the life out of me. I have a current employee that this book can help me stop the life-sucking pig. Before I explain why he sucks the life out of me, I have to Tell you about Sue. Sue was our executive secretary who was living her 13th life. She was convinced that she was one of King Henry the 8th wifes, and was murdered. (I’m Not making this up) she was a sociopath, and I saw through her. She was built like a Viking Warrier, (maybe one of her previous lives she was a man) and once she realized I wasn’t buying into her King Henry life, she threatned to kill me in my sleep. She would get up in my face, threaten to have me killed by a henchman, then when she heard the bosses footsteps, would race back to her desk, and feign working hard with a bright sun-shiny smile on her face. Every day, she would put her feet up on the desk, check the local racing forms, anything but work – until she heard the pitter patter of the bosses feet. She claimed taking the 401K deductions out of her check (that another personality signed up for- oh yeah aside from living multiple lives, she had multiple personalities with in her existing life), she filed a complaint with DOL about unauthorized deductions from her pay for the 401K. The entire time she worked for us this went on – the boss did not see it and thought perhaps we had a personality conflict! Eventually she was discovered to have multiple alias by our local police department. When we finally fired her, we had to have a police officer in the room. She went after his throat, he tackled her, cuffed her and took her to the pokey. I’m giggling right now picturing this she(he) looking Pat, Chris, Alex type person in her frilly dress getting body slammed during her termination meeting. I’m not making this up. Ok, so after remembering this, maybe the guy with the long grey EAR HAIR, flakey skin, Albert Einstein hair that interrupts every meeting with a loud stammer, a,a,a,a,a,ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, then says nothing relevant to the issue being discussed – maybe he isn’t so bad. I hate people, there, I said it….
July 1st, 2009 at 1:32 pm
I hate the supervisor who has a major superiority complex even though his very success is all due to the work of his subordinates. Upon his own merits, not only would he be fired, but probably jailed. Luckily, having some well placed people in the right positions, enables him to be able to sit back and say, “Look at my empire and all the mighty things i accomplish…You should be like me.”
July 1st, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I hate the manager who thinks she knows how to recruit and hire better than I do because she feels her hiring managers know more about the job than I do. She refuses to use our performance based interview questions because they are not specific enough and she believes they do not relate to the jobs she hires for. She waits and waits until her boss makes a decision because she can’t. How she got to the level of mgmt. I do not understand when she does not know what her team does and cannot perform their tasks. She is sweet and people like her, and when she leaves our main gossip channel will be gone. that must might help too.
She cannot grow vegetables in a garden either. And she is so cheap and does not take vacation time.
Oh I hate these kind of people.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I hate people who hit the “close door” button repeatedly just as you are about to enter the elevator. Come on, people! What are you gonna lose, 2 seconds? Does that fate of the world hang in the balance? Is a baby dying? Is their a fire? Are you gonna get fired for being late?
You know who you are. And I hate you.
July 2nd, 2009 at 6:43 am
I hate the person who has only 2 letters in their reply to every question or suggestion! = ‘NO’ Then, goes away and presents the suggestion to management as theirs to gain ’smarty points’! We used to say this type of person got promoted thro’ incompetence’ and to make room for someone who can do the work properly.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:55 am
I hate our manager who believes someone died and made her the CEO. She has a severe superiority complex and is very condescending to her employees and everyone around her. She is a bully. Her staff talks to her about different programs they can do for our patients and the community and she takes them to Administration stating they were her ideas. One day, the CEO and CFO (which is my boss), were both gone and she managed to yell at one person in each department if not the whole department. She went back and apologized to all except me. She has been heard saying, “Don’t mess with me or I will make sure you get fired.” I have caught her in lies regarding our Medical Director and other employees before. None of the employees trust her and the morale of the whole facility goes down when she is here. Of course, Administration doesn’t see this because she makes sure she is “Perfect Patty” when she she needs to be. Personally, it makes me sick to see the viciousness then to see her turnaround and be so fake nice. She kisses my boss’s ass so much, she has worn a path from her office to the CFO’s office, which by the way, passes right in front of my office. Ugh, just thinking about her while typing this makes my skin crawl. I hate her!!!
July 4th, 2009 at 7:31 am
I hate an self appointed, unofficial team lead who constantly interrupts anyone else who speaks. This source of pure evil thinks it knows everything about .net programming but has never used design pattern ever and thinks .net 3.5 is bull ****. This person is best friends with the manager and constantly backstabs. The manager believes everything pure evil says because he is too busy to know what is really going on. I can’t get away from this jerk because there are no jobs and the source of evil monitors my every move so I can’ sneak out during the day for interviews. This source of evil sits in the next cube I have to play nice all day long. I feel a tingle in my left arm , time to up the life insurance.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I actually like everyone I work with, I’m probably the guy they hate. Anyway’s everyone’s comments are entertaining.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
There’s one guy at work I don’t know very well, but we have had a few conversations. He also goes to the same gym, and at the gym he refuses to even make eye contact and acts like I’m some stranger about to strangle him in front of everyone on the treadmills.
I mean, I know people like to get in “the zone” at the gym, but not even offering a “hey, what’s up?” just makes you look like a dick.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
You won Deb..please check the latest post for info.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
You won Ramond…check the site for info.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
you won a copy! please check the website for info.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
you won a copy! Check the website for info.