Have you ever been on an airplane with a screaming baby? Has your boss ever scheduled a Friday night team dinner but excluded partners and spouses? Did you ever stand behind someone in the express checkout lane who thinks 12-items-or-less is a suggestion and not a rule?
Those people might be jackasses, including the baby.
The world is full of people who get it wrong. That’s the premise of the new book called “The Jackass Whisperer: How to deal with the worst people at work, at home and online―even when the Jackass is you.”
Husband and wife duo Alison and Scott Stratten take pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and share a group of stories to highlight jackasses in various locations: at the office, in traffic, and your family. After each story, they offer two ways you can manage the situation: as emotionally regulated adults with empathy or as jackasses yourselves.
What I love about this book is that Alison and Scott also offer a scoring system. If you see yourself in any of the scenarios, you get one point. At the end of the book, you tally up your “jackass score” and have a real reckoning with yourself.
Is the world a terrible place? Do people suck? Or are you part of the problem?
This book makes an excellent office white elephant gift, a great stocking stuffer for your annoying cousin, or even an excellent book for a boss with a sense of humor. Except, don’t give your boss a gift. That’s not how the world of work works, and you’ll look like a jackass.
If you’re sick and tired of people with bad manners and no sense of dignity in the world, I can’t recommend this book enough. I read it on an evening flight to Boston, and I was the jackass with my overhead reading light on while people were trying to sleep.
Ooops.
I also laughed out loud at several chapters in the book, which means I’m the weirdo in a window seat having a moment to herself on the plane while others are just trying to make it through the flight.
Sometimes, the jackass truly is me.
