How to cope with an asshole.

[RockHard]

In light of the personality-defected individuals on this board and elsewhere, Stephanie Rosenbloom offers an interesting article in yesterday's NYTimes: "Help, I'm Surrounded by Jerks."

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/fashion/18difficult.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=f631bf18e16641cb&ex=1169355600&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1169213441-yVjgWITtyXQmfSB4GROUMw

 

Since I've been mostly a leader all my life, I have little exposure to the self-help book section in book stores. The sort of help I need can't be found in a book store, unless I discover Benjamin Nicholas peeing in their men's restroom.

 

Who knew one could find such titles like, “151 Quick Ideas to Deal With Difficult People” by Carrie Mason-Draffen and “Since Strangling Isn’t an Option” by Sandra A. Crowe? The titles alone seem to almost guarantee "best seller" status.

 

Apparently, the Career and Professional Development Center at Duke Law School will offer a first-time workshop called, "Dealing With Conflict and Difficult People" and Harvard Law School's executive education series will present a seminar called, "Dealing With Difficult People and Difficult Situations." And at Harvard's Graduate School, more than six seminars entitled, "Positive Approaches to Difficult People" will be offered this year.

 

It seems difficult people are a chronic problem and the difficulty is growing at an alarming rate. An education in learning how to cope with them is becoming an industry. Wouldn't it be easier to round them up and just shoot them all? I guess they don't make that many bullets.

 

Anyway, the article offers a few tidbits on why some people cling to their beastly behavior and what others can do to deal with them. Maybe these book titles should be listed in the rule section of this site to help members cope with fellow members.

 

I guess gay doesn't necessarily mean happy. :-(

[Guest RandyRon]

I guess one reason I don't have a difficulty dealing with assholes is that I don't give a fat rat's ass what other people think of me. Therefore, I either ignore them or tell them what I honestly think of them or their ideas. Mostly, I use the ignore method because as Al Capp said:

 

"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It's a waste of your time and it irritates the pig."

 

This attitude doesn't always get me friends but in the professional area I seem to have a reputation for honest candor. As this has gotten me through almost 70 years without getting my head bashed in, I think I will continue it.

[Guest Jocoluver]

Sartre: "Hell is other people." :*

[SAdler]

"Dr. Bramson lists seven difficult behavior types: Hostile-Aggressives, Complainers, Silent and Unresponsives, Super-Agreeables, Know-It-All Experts, Negativists and Indecisives."

 

Don't even know where to start

[Lookin]

Drunk in a bar lifts his glass and yells, "Lawyers are assholes!"

 

Guy at the end of the bar yells back, "Screw you buddy! Don't be saying shit like that!"

 

Drunk says, "What are you, a lawyer?"

 

Guy says, "No, I'm an asshole!"

[AdamSmith]

Benway: "Why not one all-purpose blob? Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down, you dig, farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard.

 

"This ass talk had a sort of gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.

 

"This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called 'The Better 'Ole' that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, 'Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?'

 

"'Nah! I had to go relieve myself.'

 

"After a while the ass started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.

 

"Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: 'It's you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.'

 

"After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have amputated spontaneous -- (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) -- except for the eyes you dig. That's one thing the asshole couldn't do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eye on the end of a stalk."

 

From Naked Lunch, Burroughs

[Guest zipperzone]

Good to know.

 

Should be required reading for many in this group.

 

We might get some insight as to how to deal with RockHard

[RockHard]

"We might get some insight as to how to deal with RockHard"

 

Actually, I have a professional reputation for NOT being difficult and I'm quite proud of it. I love what I do and it shows.

 

A few lazy employees might accuse me of being difficult. The way I see it; if a client is paying my rates, he/she deserves perfection. And in order to get perfection out of some lazy asses, you have to beat it. :-)

[Lookin]

"I love what I do and it shows."

 

I vote for making this the new site motto!

[Louis]

Books and articles are great. Sometimes we can learn from them sometimes not.

When it comes to personality... you can't turn an "A" type into a "B" type. I guess personalities could be modified to a degree, but I pretty much have the same personality that I had when I was a child.

Some people are leaders and some are followers. For some reason you get these leader type of people writing books and doing TV shows, telling everyone to act like them, and they too will be rich....Well it just doesn't work that way.

The words I live by are from the Bible... "Love thy neighbour as thy self".

Do I succeed, sure I do, but I do fail too, and when I fail, I do my best to resolve any problems.

But aticles on how to deal with situations or overcome difficulties are always welcome, and I always seem to pick up or learn something.

[RockHard]

"I guess personalities could be modified to a degree, but I pretty much have the same personality that I had when I was a child."

 

I pretty much have the same personality that I had when I was a child, too, but the way I deal with people, business, and difficult situations has changed dramatically since my early 20's. I have much more wisdom now and care less about things that don't matter. I'm much smarter, less hyper, more secure, and less emotional. I'm wealthier, too. Success offers the reward of confidence but one must learn how to avoid complacency.

 

Genetically supplied optimism with a dose of a favorable birth-date zodiac reading may supply the foundations for an OK personality but it doesn't guarantee that your ability to deal with difficult people and/or situations, and the nuances surrounding these things, will produce positive results. Life experience is a lesson with big influences, and behavior and attitude are different from personality. One can easily affect the other and all of them can change. Where there is the will, one can find a way. :-)

[Lookin]

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/1/943582_91ac4ae15e.jpg

[Guest alanm]

...with a dose of a favorable

>birth-date zodiac reading may supply the foundations for an OK

>personality...

 

Sometimes no comments are necessary.

[Louis]

I would agree that I am emotionally more stable, and don't let people bother me like they did when I was younger... so in that regard I have changed.