Do You
Have to Be
a Jerk?
Sometimes it seems that only ruthless bullies
make it to the top of the business ladder—but
that’s not always the case
By Charles Hirshberg
O
NE AUGUST DAY IN 1834, A 19-YEAR-OLD HARVARD
student named Richard Henry Dana Jr. dressed
himself in an ill-fi tting sailor suit and set off for
Boston Harbor to join the crew of the cargo ship Pil-
grim. Dana had just recovered from an attack of measles that had
badly damaged his eyesight, and only time would tell whether
he would ever recover suffi ciently to resume his studies. So he
had come up with a new life plan: he would embark on the ad-
venture of a lifetime, a two-year, 26,000-mile voyage around
Cape Horn, from Boston to California and back again. If he sur-
vived and his vision improved, he would return to Harvard.
It seemed an admirable plan. But, alas, it ran afoul of an un-
anticipated, soul-crushing obstacle: a bosshole.
A what? The term’s origins aren’t clear, but it was Robert
Sutton—a Stanford University professor of management sci-
ence and engineering, best known for his seminal book The
No A**hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviv-
ing One That Isn’t—who transformed “bosshole” from a piece
of vulgar slang to a mot juste, suitable for use at the Harvard
Business School.
Its meaning is just what you might suppose, and surviving
one, or more than one, of these characters has been a rite of
passage in the American workplace since the nation, and Rich-
ard Henry Dana Jr., were young. Some bossholes are pathetic
specimens whose meltdowns and abusive insults are a refl ec-
THE SUCCESSFUL ATTITUDE
