Table Of ContentOFFICE IDIOTS
OFFICE IDIOTS
What to Do When Your Workplace Is a Jerkplace
By Ken Lloyd, PhD
Copyright © 2013 by Ken Lloyd All rights reserved under the Pan-American
and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in
whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the
publisher, The Career Press.
OFFICE IDIOTS
EDITED BY KIRSTEN DALLEY
TYPESET BY DIANA GHAZZAWI
Cover design by Howard Grossman Printed in the U.S.A.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Lloyd, Kenneth L.
Office idiots : what to do when your workplace is a jerkplace / by Ken
Lloyd, PhD.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-60163268-5 -- ISBN 978-1-60163-525-9 (ebook) 1. Problem
employees. 2. Interpersonal relations. I. Title.
HF5549.5.E42L583 2013
650.1’3--dc23
2013012531
To my growing family.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is based on e-mail that readers have been sending to my Website,
www.jerksatwork.com, and to my weekly workplace advice column that has been
running in several newspapers for more than 15 years. With that in mind, I offer
major thanks to the many readers who took the time to write to me regarding
some of the issues, concerns, problems, and, yes, office idiots they were
encountering in their work. To all of these readers, I offer sincere thanks for their
confidence and candor in expressing what’s really going on in so many
workplaces today.
And speaking of newspapers, I also offer great thanks to the outstanding team
at the Los Angeles Daily News for their enduring support of my column over all
of these years. Thanks also to the Los Angeles Newspaper group for running my
column in some of their excellent newspapers. Special kudos go to three
outstanding newspaper professionals who have played a key role in the success
of my column: Greg Wilcox, Barbara Jones, and Kevin Smith.
Thanks once again to Career Press. This is my sixth book with this
outstanding publisher, and I have consistently enjoyed working with their highly
professional team. In this regard, I offer special thanks to Ron Fry, Adam
Schwartz, Michael Pye, Laura Kelly-Pye, Gina Talucci, Kirsten Dalley, and
Diana Ghazzawi.
And finally, thanks also to my home team, composed of my amazing children
and son-in-law, and especially to Roberta Winston Lloyd, a great librarian,
researcher, editor, best friend, and wife.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1: Office Idiots and Their Miscommunication
2: Conflict and Office Idiots
3: Idiotic Job Interviewers
4: Idiotic Job Applicants
5: Who’s the New Idiot?
6: Meetings With Office Idiots
7: Office Idiots and Their E-mail
8: Idiotic Managerial Practices
9: Office Idiots and Their Idiotic Feedback
10: Power-Tripping Office Idiots
11: Office Idiots and Their Mindless Motivational Methods
12: Idiotic Blaming, Deflecting, and Backstabbing
13: Office Idiots in Training
14: Outrageous Behaviors, Even for Office Idiots
15: How to Avoid Becoming an Office Idiot
Index
About the Author
1
INTRODUCTION
Many books approach the subject of absurd, ridiculous, and outrageous
workplace behaviors from the standpoint of hypotheses, anecdotes, and hearsay.
The result is a combination of speculation and conjecture about idiotic
workplace behaviors and what to do about them. This book is different. It’s
based on real incidents caused by real idiots in real workplaces. As well, the
action steps to deal with them move out of the realm of guesswork and into the
realm of real work.
An ongoing stream of e-mail to my newspaper column and Website keeps
returning to one overriding theme: today’s workplaces continue to be infested
with office idiots. You would think that the recent economic slowdown would
have pruned their presence to little more than a pesky weed here and there in
most organizations. Or perhaps the jittery economy and current hints of recovery
have somehow reenergized, refocused, and redirected the cadres of practicing
office idiots.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.
Office idiots can be found running companies and managing departments, and
they’re just as likely to function (or malfunction) as colleagues, peers, associates,
fellow employees, or subordinates. You can even find them at the door in the
form of job applicants. Their antics cover a vast spectrum of clueless, misguided,
counterproductive, and downright inappropriate behaviors. And when left
unchecked, they’re not only an annoyance, disruption, and distraction, they’re a
significant source of performance and productivity issues, as well.
So, herein you will find examples of some of the most widespread and
disruptive forms of office idiocy, along with a full toolset with which to deal
with them. This not only means the optimum strategies for working over, under,
around, beside, with, without, and in spite of office idiots, but also the strategies
to rein in their idiocy. It’s a compendium of what to say, what to do, and how to
do it. And if you happen to possess any latent idiotic tendencies yourself, or if
any such tendencies have somehow crept into your day-to-day workplace
behaviors, this book shows you how to recognize and get rid of them.
Description:"Once again, Ken Lloyd has written a book which is relevant, timely, and applicable. It will be of use to employees and managers, as well as organizational leaders. The book not only discusses specific and real workplace examples, but also provides useful action steps in a manner that everyone can r
