Mark: A 2017 study found that workplace bullying is four times more prevalent than all illegal forms of discrimination combined. Michelle: Hold on, say that again. Four times more common? Mark: Four times. Think about that. The daily, soul-crushing jerk at the office, the micromanager, the backstabber—that experience is a bigger, more common problem in American life than the things we actually have laws to prevent. Michelle: Wow. That is both completely shocking and not at all surprising. It puts a number on a feeling that I think so many people have: that their work life is being slowly poisoned, and there’s nothing they can do about it. It feels... un-fixable. Mark: And that is precisely the feeling that drove Stanford professor Robert I. Sutton to write the book we're diving into today: The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt. Michelle: A very subtle title. I like it. Mark: It’s direct, and for good reason. Sutton is a highly respected organizational psychologist at Stanford. He wrote an earlier book called The No Asshole Rule, which was about how organizations should screen these people out. But after it was published, he was flooded with over eight thousand emails. Michelle: Eight thousand? Mark: Eight thousand messages from people essentially saying, "That's great, professor, but I'm already stuck. The asshole is my boss, my client, my colleague. What do I do now?" This book is his answer. It’s a field manual born from thousands of real-world cries for help. Michelle: Okay, so with a problem that huge, where does he even tell people to start? You can’t just tell 8,000 people to quit their jobs. Mark: You can't. And that’s why his first step is so powerful, because it’s completely counter-intuitive. It’s not about pointing the finger. It’s about looking in the mirror.

Michelle: Looking in the mirror? If my boss is screaming at me, I don't think I'm the problem. Mark: And you're probably right. But Sutton’s core mantra for survival is this: "Be slow to label others as assholes, be quick to label yourself as one." Michelle: Huh. That seems overly generous to the people making life miserable. Why start there? Mark: Because toxicity is a contagion. And before you can diagnose the disease in the room, you have to be sure you’re not a carrier. He tells this harrowing story from a marketing manager that perfectly illustrates how this happens. This manager got a job at a company he later nicknamed the "A$$hole Factory." Michelle: That does not sound like a fun place to work. Mark: It was run by a family of, in his words, "blistering A$$holes" who would routinely yell and scowl at everyone. But it started with small things. The president of the company would walk into his cubicle, see a bag of snacks on his desk, stick his hand in, grab a handful, and only then look at him and ask, "Can I have some?" Michelle: Oh, that's such a subtle power play. It's not just about the snacks; it's about showing "your space isn't your space, your things aren't your things." Mark: Exactly. It’s a small act of demeaning behavior. And over time, these things compound. The manager’s own boss, who had seemed great at first, became cruel and two-faced. The environment was a constant, low-grade bath of disrespect. And here’s the crucial part: after a few years, the manager noticed a change in himself. Michelle: Oh no. Don't tell me he started stealing snacks. Mark: Worse. He wrote, "I was losing my temper with vendors on the phone; my stress level was getting too high to manage; and I started to send more scathing emails." It even bled into his personal life. He’d come home and lose his temper with his partner for no reason. He was in the factory for seven years, and only after he finally quit did he look back and realize the factory hadn't just tormented him; it had started to remake him in its own image. He was becoming an asshole himself. Michelle: That is terrifying. It’s like a zombie movie. You don't just get eaten by them; you become one. That story gives me chills because it feels so plausible. You absorb the norms of your environment. Mark: It’s the perfect illustration of why Sutton says you have to start with self-assessment. Are you feeling demeaned, disrespected, and de-energized? That’s question one. But question two is, are you inflicting that on others? Because in a toxic system, it’s incredibly easy to pass the pain down the chain. Michelle: And this isn't just about feelings or office morale, is it? This kind of behavior has a real, measurable cost. Mark: A massive one. Research by Professor Bennett Tepper estimated that in 2006, abusive supervision cost U.S. corporations $23.8 billion a year. Michelle: Billion? With a B? Mark: Twenty-three-point-eight billion dollars. And that’s just from things they can measure, like absenteeism, health-care costs, and lost productivity. That number is almost certainly higher today. The "A$$hole Factory" isn't just a sad story; it's an economic disaster playing out in thousands of companies. Michelle: So, the first step is this brutal self-audit. You have to figure out if you’re in a toxic environment, how bad it is, and what role you’re playing in it. It's about getting a clear diagnosis before you start trying to perform surgery. Mark: Precisely. You have to assess the situation with a clear head. Is this a "temporary" asshole—someone having a bad day—or a "certified" asshole, someone who consistently leaves a trail of victims? Is the problem one person, or is it the whole system, the whole factory? Snap judgments are dangerous. A clear diagnosis is your foundation for any strategy that comes next. Michelle: Okay, so let's say you've done the audit. You’ve looked in the mirror, you've assessed the damage, and you've concluded: "I'm in a toxic soup, and thankfully, I'm not the main ingredient." What now? Do you just run for the hills?

Mark: Running for the hills—or what Sutton calls "making a clean getaway"—is a perfectly valid and often the best strategy. He's very clear that quitting a toxic job isn't failure; it's a triumph of self-preservation. But for the thousands of people who wrote to him, that wasn't always an immediate option. Michelle: Right. You have a mortgage, kids, a life. You can't just walk out the door on Tuesday. Mark: So for them, Sutton opens up the survivor's toolkit. It's a collection of strategies that range from psychological self-defense to direct action. And one of the most elegant and surprising tools is a bit of social jujitsu that comes from one of America's founding fathers. Michelle: I'm intrigued. Are we talking about Alexander Hamilton writing a diss track? Mark: Close. Benjamin Franklin. Early in his career, Franklin was targeted by a wealthy and influential rival who bad-mouthed him in a long speech. Franklin, being a man of modest means at the time, couldn't fight him head-on. He needed to turn an enemy into a friend. Michelle: How do you even do that? Mark: He didn't confront him. He didn't send him an angry letter. Instead, he heard that this rival had a very rare and curious book in his personal library. So, Franklin sent a polite note asking if he could borrow the book for a few days. Michelle: Wait, he asked his hater for a favor? That sounds like a recipe for humiliation. Mark: It seems completely backward, right? But the rival, likely flattered by the request that acknowledged his superior taste and collection, sent the book over immediately. Franklin read it and returned it a week later with another note, this one expressing his gratitude. Michelle: And what happened? Mark: The next time they saw each other in public, the rival approached Franklin and spoke to him with great civility. Franklin wrote that the man "ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends." Michelle: That's incredible. What's the psychology behind that? Why does that work? Mark: Sutton calls it the "Benjamin Franklin effect." The underlying principle is that we humans strive for cognitive consistency. We justify our actions to ourselves. If I do you a favor, my brain needs to explain why. The easiest explanation is, "I must like you." The act of kindness reshapes the perception. You're not changing their mind with an argument; you're letting them change their own mind by nudging their behavior. Michelle: Okay, I can see how that could work for a political rival in the 18th century. But what about the modern office? Asking a favor from the guy who steals your lunch and actively sabotages your reports? That feels... a lot riskier. It feels like you're just giving them another weapon to use against you. Mark: And that's a fair critique. Sutton would agree this isn't a magic wand. It's a tool, and it works best in situations where the animosity is more about ego and status than pure malice. For more deeply toxic situations, you need a different tool. Sometimes, the answer isn't subtle influence; it's drawing a very hard line. Michelle: You need a firewall. Mark: Exactly. And there’s a great story about the late, great Anthony Bourdain that shows the other end of the spectrum. He lived by a simple rule in his business dealings. Michelle: Let me guess. The "No Asshole Rule"? Mark: You got it. He told a story about being offered a very lucrative TV show deal. He and his team met with the executive, and the deal would have made them all very, very wealthy. But after the meeting, Bourdain just asked his team a simple question: "Do we want to be in business with that person for the next few years?" Michelle: And the answer was no. Mark: The answer was a hard no. They all agreed the executive was an asshole, and they walked away from the money. Bourdain’s philosophy was that life is too short. The daily misery of working with someone you can't stand isn't worth the paycheck. He chose to protect his and his team's well-being over the financial gain. Michelle: I love that. So you have these two beautifully contrasting strategies. On one hand, the Benjamin Franklin effect, which is this subtle, almost gentle way of reshaping a relationship. And on the other, the Anthony Bourdain approach, which is a clean, decisive break. It's about knowing which tool to use for which problem. Mark: And that's the essence of the survival guide. It’s not a single answer. It’s a toolkit. It gives you options. You can use mind tricks to protect your soul, like reframing the situation or finding humor in the absurdity. You can use avoidance techniques, like strategically scheduling meetings to reduce your exposure. Or you can fight back, by documenting everything and building alliances. The power comes from knowing you have choices.

Michelle: It feels like the real thread connecting all of this is about reclaiming a sense of agency. When you're in one of these toxic situations, the worst feeling is helplessness. You feel like you're just a pinball being bounced around by other people's bad behavior. Mark: That's a perfect way to put it. The book is a manual for taking back control. And the ultimate act of control isn't just about managing others; it's about managing yourself. The book is filled with these incredible stories and data points, but the most profound insight for me comes back to that first mantra. Michelle: "Be slow to label others, be quick to label yourself." Mark: Yes. Because at its heart, the book isn't just a guide to surviving assholes. It's a guide to not letting them turn you into one. It's about breaking the cycle of contagion that we saw in the "A$$hole Factory" story. The goal is to navigate the storm without becoming part of the storm. Michelle: There's a beautiful little fable in the book about a group of porcupines huddling together on a freezing night. They need to get close for warmth, but when they do, they prick each other with their spines. So they shuffle in and out, again and again, until they find that perfect distance where they can share warmth without getting hurt. The book says they called this distance "decency and good manners." Mark: A brilliant metaphor for all human society. We all have spines. The challenge is finding that respectful distance. Michelle: And maybe that’s the real takeaway. It’s not about eliminating every difficult person from your life—that's impossible. It's about learning how to find that distance. So, a question for everyone listening: What's one small act of 'decency and good manners' you could introduce into your own environment this week? It doesn't have to be grand. Maybe it's just not sending that snarky email, or genuinely thanking a colleague. Mark: A powerful and practical challenge. We'd love to hear your own survival stories, by the way. Join the conversation with the Aibrary community and share what's worked for you. Michelle: Because we're all just porcupines trying to stay warm. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.