Narrator: Imagine landing your dream job as Vice President of Sales at a high-end leisurewear brand. The first two months are a whirlwind of success. Then, your boss, David, leaves for an extended trip to Asia, placing a long-term employee named Sasha in charge. At first, Sasha is charming and supportive, but as soon as David is out of sight, her behavior transforms. She begins sneaking into your team meetings to publicly undermine your decisions. She arbitrarily slashes your budgets to assert her authority and starts firing people in groups, creating a climate of constant fear. Your dream job has become a nightmare, leaving you stressed, anxious, and physically ill. This is the exact scenario that befell an employee named Annie, and her story sits at the heart of a pervasive workplace problem.

In her book, Jerks at Work, social psychologist Tessa West dissects these toxic workplace dynamics. She argues that simply enduring such behavior or hoping it will go away is a failing strategy. Instead, West provides a research-backed playbook for identifying, understanding, and neutralizing the various types of difficult people who can poison a work environment, offering a clear path to reclaiming one's peace of mind.

Narrator: The first and perhaps most recognizable archetype is the "Kiss Up/Kick Downer." These individuals are driven by a relentless ambition to climb the corporate ladder. They are masters of impression management, reserving all their charm and good behavior for superiors while treating their peers and subordinates with disdain or outright sabotage. West illustrates this through the story of Dave, a shoe salesman in a high-end department store.

To his boss, Marie, Dave is a superstar. His sales numbers are high, and he constantly talks about the importance of "a good team culture." Marie is completely won over. But to his colleagues, Dave is a menace. He steals their customers, criticizes them behind their backs, and sabotages the stock room to make them look incompetent. When a colleague named Tessa tries to raise concerns, Marie dismisses them, blinded by Dave's performance and flattery. West explains that these individuals possess high "status acuity"—an almost psychic ability to read a room's power dynamics, identifying who to impress and who can be safely targeted. The strategy for dealing with a Kiss Up/Kick Downer is not direct confrontation, which they can easily spin. Instead, it requires building a coalition of allies, documenting their behavior, and presenting a united, fact-based case to a supervisor who can see past the charade.

Narrator: Credit stealing is one of the most common and demoralizing conflicts at work, precisely because it is often perpetrated by those we trust—mentors, teammates, and work friends. West tells the story of Sandra, a talented real estate broker who joins the firm of a successful but slick broker named Jose. He takes her on as his protégé, but as Sandra’s success begins to rival his own, he starts subtly stealing her work.

It begins with small things. Sandra suggests staging a beach house with all-white furniture; Jose dismisses the idea, only to use it himself for a major showing. The theft escalates until Jose takes over negotiations with a major client Sandra had cultivated for a year, claiming she was too busy. Because the theft is ambiguous and happens behind closed doors, Sandra feels trapped and powerless. West argues that the single most important defense against a credit stealer is cultivating a strong "voice." This means becoming so respected and well-known for your expertise that when you speak, people listen and attribute ideas to you. This is achieved by becoming an "advice tie"—a go-to person for help—and by proactively documenting and communicating your contributions.

Narrator: Teams are particularly vulnerable to two opposing but equally destructive forces: the Bulldozer and the Free Rider. The Bulldozer dominates every conversation and decision-making process, often by exploiting a weak or conflict-averse manager. In one story, an employee named John leverages his boss's fear of confrontation to get special perks and sabotage any decision he dislikes, causing team dysfunction and high turnover. Bulldozers make themselves indispensable, often by taking on undesirable tasks, so the group becomes reliant on them.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Free Rider, who capitalizes on the "Ringelmann effect," the phenomenon where individual effort decreases as group size increases. West describes Derek, a master of delegation who managed to avoid doing any real work for two years. He thrived on a team of conscientious people who would rather pick up the slack than confront him. He made insightful comments in meetings and wrote detailed emails outlining work for others, creating the illusion of contribution. Both Bulldozers and Free Riders exploit a lack of clear rules and accountability. The solution is to formalize processes: set clear guidelines for meetings, rotate roles to prevent knowledge hoarding, and create systems to track individual contributions so no one can hide or dominate.

Narrator: Two of the most common jerk archetypes are found in leadership positions. The Micromanager obsesses over trivial details while failing to provide meaningful guidance. West shares the story of Matt, a journalist whose boss, Karen, constantly interrupts him to check on minor tasks and sends multi-paragraph emails correcting tiny mistakes. This behavior, West notes, is often a sign of a manager who is bored, insecure, or lacks proper training. They focus on the minutiae because they don't know how to engage with the bigger picture.

The Neglectful Boss is the iceberg underneath the micromanager—they are often so busy, either micromanaging someone else or catering to their own boss, that they have no time for their direct reports. They overpromise mentorship during interviews but are ghosts in practice, offering vague, positive feedback without any concrete guidance. The strategy for both is similar: you must learn to "manage up." This involves initiating conversations about big-picture goals, proactively setting expectations for communication and check-ins, and offering to take work off their plate to help them focus.

Narrator: The most sinister jerk is the Gaslighter, who manipulates a victim into questioning their own sanity and perception of reality. They thrive on social isolation, either by making their target feel like a "chosen one" privy to special secrets or by systematically stripping away their self-worth until they are too embarrassed to speak to anyone. West tells the story of Julie, a senior leader who, feeling insecure about her slipping performance, begins stealing ideas. She enlists a junior employee, Kunal, to help her, framing their work as a top-secret project that must be protected from jealous colleagues.

She isolates Kunal, making him work odd hours and forbidding him from talking to anyone. When Kunal notices inconsistencies, Julie dismisses his concerns as his imagination. Gaslighters are clever and rarely leave a paper trail. Escaping them requires three steps: reclaiming your recall by meticulously documenting every interaction, rebuilding your social network to break the isolation, and finding a "social referent"—a respected, influential person who can sound the alarm bells on your behalf.

Narrator: While the book provides targeted strategies for each jerk type, its ultimate solution is systemic. This is powerfully illustrated by the team behind NASA's Perseverance rover landing on Mars. In a high-stakes, high-pressure environment where conflict could derail the entire mission, the team couldn't afford to have jerks. They implemented simple, proactive strategies to prevent conflict from festering.

For example, to combat credit stealing, team spokespersons were required to name individuals for their specific contributions rather than using the generic "we." To prevent free-riding, they kept careful track of who did what. And to withstand the intense stress, they prioritized relationships, celebrating cultural events and holding happy hours. As one engineer noted, "When things got tough at work, we were all fighting the issues instead of each other." This demonstrates the book's core thesis: the most effective antidote to jerks at work is a strong, supportive network and a culture of mutual respect and accountability.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Jerks at Work is that passivity is not a strategy. Reclaiming your workplace well-being requires a shift from being a victim of circumstance to becoming a strategic analyst of human behavior. The power of the book lies in its assertion that you don't need to be a manager or have formal authority to effect change. By understanding the motivations behind toxic behaviors—whether it's a Bulldozer's need for control or a Credit Stealer's opportunism—you can develop a tailored, effective response.

Ultimately, Tessa West's work challenges us to look both outward and inward. It equips us to handle the difficult people we encounter, but it also forces us to recognize that under the right pressures, any of us can exhibit jerk-like tendencies. The final challenge, then, is not just to build defenses against the jerks around us, but to actively cultivate the self-awareness and the supportive, accountable culture that prevents the jerk within us—and others—from ever taking control.