We love e-mail, cell phones and Blackberries. And why not? Not only are they useful but, even better, they make it so damn easy to ignore all those people we hate. At least in our personal life. The reason that they are less helpful at pulling off the dodge in our professional lives -- whether you're cranking it out at the office, trapped in a meeting tickling the keys of your texter or jammed at the airport with that Bluetooth hanging out of your ear -- business demands some basic etiquette. Because blowing off your fellow executives, managers or boss (in e-mail or in person) is generally not advisable.
Even if you hate them.
Think about it. The office is the last bastion of unprotected peopledom. Whether your company has ten employees or ten thousand, you must deal with people you hate. The utopia promised by technology and newfangled business models? It never included not tangling with people. A lot of us do work in good but not perfect businesses and corporations complete with daily, if not hourly, interactions with all kinds of people. There's no getting around it.
Visit us regularly. You'll find I Hate People...But It's Nothing Personal to be a business blog with bite. Take the plunge. Jump in and help us identify the people we all hate. We'll uncover the strategies that can be used to counteract the morons, misfits and maniacs that keep getting in our way. Maybe your goal is simply to slide through the day with a minimum of pain and misery. Or you want to scale the corporate cliff faster than the other monkeys. Or you might even be angling to escape altogether by sidestepping the rats, getting out of the race and kicking off your own venture. All are fine by us. By learning to productively hate people (but keeping in mind that "it's nothing personal") we can all get where we're going with a lot less trouble.
©2007 Jonathan Littman & Marc Hershon
