Customer Reviews

I Hate People!: Kick Loose from the Overbearing and Underhanded Jerks at Work and Get What You Want Out of Your Job

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Synopsis:
Designed for navigating pitfalls and stop signs in the workplace, I HATE PEOPLE! helps you identify the top drains on your time and resources and teaches office jujitsu tactics to help wrest back your time.

Divided into four parts, the book first identifies and classifies each of The Ten Least Wanted who pose the greatest threat to getting your work done in the office. Without going into a full discussion of The Ten Least Wanted, here they are:

* Stop Sign (like the Kodak executive who predicted digital cameras had no future)
* Flimflam ("expert at identifying people to do her bidding")
* Bulldozer ("wrong decision is better than indecision")
* Smiley Face (think Batman's Joker - constantly smiling with something up his sleeve)
* Liar Liar
* Switchblade (Judas)
* Minute Man ("Do you have a minute, I just have one thing...")
* Know-It-None (full of facts, but most of which are useless or wrong)
* Spreadsheet (Obsessive micromanager)
* Sheeple (avoids making decisions)


The second part of the book introduces the concept of Flying Solo. If you enjoy your work but not distractions from people around you, then your best solution would be to become a successful Soloist. As a soloist, on your best days, you are someone who works effectively with small groups and on your own. By sharing the stories and techniques of successful soloists from a broad range of industries and companies, the book develops a clear picture of how a soloist works.

The last half of the book deals with the work environment. The third section, Office Life, incorporates The Ten Least Wanted with the constraints and demands of office life, such as constant interruptions, disruptions, unreasonable expectations and demands, and excessive rules and red tape. While the last section, Spaces and Places, discusses the need to carve out your own "personal cave" - whether you work in a bull pen, a cubicle, office with a door, or occasionally from home.

Review:
The advice and strategies are interspersed with enough anecdotes from successful soloists to make I HATE PEOPLE! both helpful and interesting read. I'll spare you the comments about how I would have loved to read this while working at Big Law or any similarly predictable remarks. I do think the book's strength is that it helps identify the difficult people and situations that we absorb, acquiesce and live out on a regular basis. I look forward to trying out several of the suggested strategies, such as being more sensitive to and wary of the Switchblades around and trying a "hard stop" with my Minute Man.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who feels frustrated in the office and is looking for ways to eke out more time and autonomy.

I Hate People understands your co-workers, but more importantly, I Hate People helps any employee understand their own habits (good and bad) and how to improve their ability to perform in the workplace. Not only does it amaze me how many traits my co-workers possess that I Hate People warns you about, but it was equally amazing to see my own bad habits in the work place and how to correct it. I never want to be known as a Minute Man, but I have spent far too much time hanging on someone's cubicle, or being a bulldozer when things aren't going well. It was very eye opening for me - considering that I try my best to be a good employee and co-worker, but often I fall into the trap that Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon warn the reader about. Without seeing my own faults, I could not have improved my own ability to better myself in the office. I Hate People is an extremely humorous guide on how to cut out the bad behavior, improve my ability to take charge on my own, and ultimately be rewarded by having a more productive, peaceful workday. Although I cringed when I saw that I possessed some of those awful traits - I know that having recognized these habits, I know how to eliminate them. Great book!

As a current corporate director of human resources, I am on a continual quest for books on people management. That is, "good" books on people management. With this work by Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon I have found a book that is both good and fun to read.

In my role in HR, the majority of my work deals with the conflicts between people that hate each other. It's true. When we really boil down our human resources related issues, it usually involves two different `types' that cannot get along. I noted these details in one chapter of my book, Wingtips with Spurs however Littman and Hershon have carried my observations to a more in-depth level.

While I applaud anyone that can pull off the `solo' career, for the vast majority this is just not possible. In fact, even with a solo career, you will be faced with having to occasionally interact with Mr. Stumbling Block, Ms.Wrong Turn and Time Waster, Jr.

This book is primarily written for people that believe it would be best to work alone. I think this way of thinking is wrong on several levels but I fully understand the mindset. For those of us who must live in a normal society both inside and outside the corporate arena, Jerry Spence's How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Everyday offers an instructive read on how to get along with almost everyone. I have read all of the others by the Big Name authors and Spence's book stands head and shoulders above them on actual practicality and usefulness. I also highly recommend Sylvia Lafair's great work in Don't Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns That Limit Success. If you decide it is better to get along with people rather than avoid them, either of these books will set you on the right path.

Again, I must say this is a good book and very fun way to spend the afternoon.

I hope you find this review helpful.

Michael L. Gooch, SPHR

As a former corporate executive in the entertainment industry, I know a little something about jerks. This book not only nails the descriptions of the types of jerks you can expect to encounter in the work-world, it gives you great strategies for dealing with them. Having left the corporate world (happily, I might add), I'm now a business coach and plan to give this book to every one of my clients. In fact, I highly recommend it to anyone who has a job, a career, or has to deal with people!

Libby Gill, Business Coach, Brand Strategist, Author of the upcoming You Unstuck

This is an interesting non-fiction book that talks about how to make time for yourself at work to pursue your own interests. By setting time aside for yourself, and working solo, you will find that you will come up with great ideas and become more productive.

There are quite a few modern-day companies, like Google for example, that are used to show that breaking away from tradition is often times a good thing. One thing that really surprised me was that taking a nap at work has actually been shown to improve productivity. This would be a great thing to mention to your boss.

The main idea that I got from this book is that the "cave" is something you need to retreat to in order to become more productive and re-energize yourself. This can be your cubicle, a space in your house, or even your car. The important thing is to try to find a place where you can have uninterrupted thoughts. Here, in your "cave", is where you'll get creative when you think like a soloist.

In order to deal with the most common type of people you'll run into at the office, the kind that get in your way and try to sabotage your ideas, this is a must read. I call it office survival reading...don't leave home without it!

This book should be required reading material for any employee at any corporation. I don't normally read self-help books, let alone business self-help books. However, "I Hate People" has been a tremendous help to me both professionally and psychologically. It offers very real solutions to dealing with some of my colleagues that drive me crazy and prevent me from being most effective at my job. It's hugely entertaining, insightful, and useful. I even bought my manager a copy as for a Christmas gift.

Littman and Hershon should win a Nobel prize in literature for this work!

This is a fun book to read and has some good key points. However, it is so based on the typical right/wrong world we have created that it is only half the story. If you work with people there will always be an opportunity to meet jerks and dummies.

What we need more than ever are some ways to help each other grow into the best individuals we can become. In my experience as a corporate consultant and executive coach I have found that those who work through the difficulties, get past what I call "the ugly middle" of disputes and upsets,and find the real humanity in the other (believe me, it is there) often become great office mates and colleagues.

We are too quick to throw people under the bus if they annoy us and then we all lose.

Sylvia Lafair PhD author "Don't Bring It to Work"

An incredible guide to identify and overcome objections at work and get the best from your job, no matter who you work with.

Many corporate types used to navigate the perils of the work environment
via Myers Briggs, which has Jungian roots, so I'm told. This is much more fun!
At first, I thought: sheesh, what a pair of negatory naysayers; I was wrong.
"I Hate People" can help you recognize the ten typologies-of-time-wasters,
and allow you to bypass them almost altogether. Buy the book right now.
And pre-order the take-home version of the game show (surely) soon to follow;
Little Brown, Chronicle, Milton Bradley, anybody?

Jonathan Littman & Marc Hershon have collaborated on an irreverent, and often hilarious perspective of life in the cubicle; while their strategies for survival may work in certain situations, it could prove disastrous in other scenarios. Still, there's nothing wrong with lampooning the banality of corporate America. After all, if they don't deserve to be ridiculed, who does?

Anyone who's ever seen the movie "Office Space" (I have, about a dozen times) would certainly get a kick out of this book. The authors share the same disdain for bureaucracy, office politics, and dumb corporate mandated programs & dubious decision making. While they identify a nice, round "ten" types of co-workers we love to hate, from the Stop Sign to the Sheeple, there are certainly a lot more; especially running around at a typical "corporate" office.

That's where I encountered my personal demons; the corporate drones. These are the people running around the big office trying to act like they're doing something. From what I could tell, their primary function was to micro-manage the people in the field who were actually running their operations; making profit for the corporation.

I dealt with three different types of corporate drones---the badger, the weasel & the jellyfish. All three were unique, but all three were only interested in preserving their careers, and the best way they thought they could accomplish that was by backstabbing guys like me. Certainly, the politics of big business are tricky; dealing with people you report to in a distant corporate hierarchy is much different than the scenarios Littman & Hershon depict.

I wrote a book about my experience, which I recommend reading along with this one---Life Under the Corporate Microscope: A Maverick's Irreverent Perspective. I was one of the top executives with Enterprise Rent-a-Car, and I was definitely considered to be a totally irreverent maverick, and I suppose that was true. What made me such a despised iconoclast with the Enterprise corporate office was the thing I prided myself on---being a fun-loving, down to earth guy, who was able to engage my employees to successfully do that thing called "work".

Unlike the authors, I loved the people working in the trenches for me; I never forgot what it was like to work your ass off in hectic surroundings. I suppose an alternative title to my book would simply be, "I Hate Corporate People". Now we're talking.