A Survival Guide for Working with Humans: Dealing with Whiners, Back-Stabbers, Know-It-Alls, and Other Difficult People [Paperback]

Gini Graham Scott Ph.D. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2004

"The relationships you have with your coworkers can determine not just how pleasant your 9-to-5 life is, but also your ability to get your job done, and even your long-term career success. Packed with real-life strategies for engaging even the most difficult people, A Survival Guide for Working with Humans includes interactive quizzes, true-to-life problem and conflict scenarios, and helpful profiles of common personality types. Covering everything from knowing when to speak up (and how), to gracefully navigating through uncomfortable but necessary confrontations, this book is an essential guide no human should be without. "This book goes way beyond counting to ten before you say something you regret! Dr. Scott offers a treasure trove of no-nonsense ways to deal with difficult people and situations in the workplace." -- Susan Urquhart-Brown, Career and Business Coach, Principal, Career Steps Consulting in Oakland, CA "Gini has done it again ...she's identified many of the all-too-common workplace situations (and people) that make us crazy, and come up with thoughtful, practical solutions based on long experience. Her book provides new insights for all of us who occasionally have days when we'd rather stay in bed than face our coworkers' behaviors." -- Shari Dunn, Managing Principal, CompAnalysis"

Editorial Reviews

Review

“…easy to read, and rather cleverly constructed.”

-Training

“Next time, instead of picking up a voodoo doll, pick up this reference book.”

— Niche

“…an invaluable reference.”

--Bookwatch

Review

Training: "Easy to read, and rather cleverly constructed."

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 15 and up
  
• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: AMACOM; 1 edition (January 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814472052
• ISBN-13: 978-0814472057
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #680,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love to Work but Hate the People, July 22, 2004

By 

Craig L. Howe "The Pointed Pundit" (Darien, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Survival Guide for Working with Humans: Dealing with Whiners, Back-Stabbers, Know-It-Alls, and Other Difficult People (Paperback)

I love to work. It is the people with whom I work that transform my hours at work into an unpleasant experience.

In Survival Guide for Working with Humans, Gini Graham Scott offers me practical tools to help me resolve my everyday conflicts.

Each chapter introduces a problem and offers one or two illustrations of them. A discussion of what the people did to resolve their problems successfully follows. Some of the problems covered include revenge, fraud, and overly sensitive people. As a bonus, the author includes a toolbox of techniques for improving work relationships.

Since I love my work, the price of this book was a small price to pay to improve my relationships there.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Waste of Money, February 6, 2007

By 

Jane Q P "JQP" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Survival Guide for Working with Humans: Dealing with Whiners, Back-Stabbers, Know-It-Alls, and Other Difficult People (Paperback)

This book has very simplistic ideas and lacks the constructive solutions that I hoped to learn. For example, her advice for dealing with people prone to explosive temper is "If you stay around someone and feel you are walking on eggshells, find ways to handle the eggs--and that person--more gently so the shells don't break." Reading her advice made me wonder what kind of education and experience she has that qualifies her to write such a book. Interestingly enough, there's very little information about that in her bio. It looks like her Ph.D is in journalism or English. I would love to send this book back and get my money back. I would probably spend it better on a book written by an educated, credentialed, psychologist who understands the difference between constructively handling people with behavior problems versus enabling them to continue to abuse others and make work life hades.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Spend your $15 on a good Chinese restaurant, March 17, 2008

By 

Elizabeth Ray (Stockton, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Survival Guide for Working with Humans: Dealing with Whiners, Back-Stabbers, Know-It-Alls, and Other Difficult People (Paperback)

A fortune cookie will give you better advice than this book will. In fact, much of the author's advice sounds like it came directly from a fortune cookie... actually, maybe not, since fortune cookie writers are more creative and resort less frequently to cliches than does Dr. Graham.
Each chapter follows the same format. She begins by describing in painstaking detail some scenario involving a difficult person. I would have been satisfied with a brief summary of what the problem was, but instead the author treats us to pages of "he said" "then she said" dialogue, and vivid descriptions of how the persecuted person feels about each of the "he said" and "she said" statements. I suppose in a way this technique did make me sympathize with the non-difficult person in the scenario, because after reading the accounts I started to hate the difficult person too.

After the lengthy setup, the author then asks the reader what he or she would do in that situation. She presents a variety of possible actions, some of which are clearly stupid (the equivalent of cussing someone out in a meeting) and others which might be advisable. However, she gives no clear guidance as to the best course of action, which made me wonder "Why am I reading this book?"

At the conclusion of each drawn out chapter are "take home messages," which sound like they came from the author's local Chinese takeout place... I suspect that she eats a lot of Lo Mein, and builds each chapter around whatever vague advise her fortune cookie offers that night.