I have joined meetings while looking at another screen, thinking about the next task, and only half listening.
I finished Robert I. Sutton’s The Asshole Survival Guide less interested in identifying the assholes around me and more worried about how easily I could act like one without noticing.
That wasn’t comfortable. I like to think I’m respectful. I don’t enter a meeting planning to dismiss someone or make them feel small.
From my side, I was busy. From the other person’s side, the message may have been clear: what you’re saying isn’t important enough for my full attention.
I can’t hide behind intent there.
Anybody can act like an asshole sometimes. Sutton made me separate a bad act from a repeated pattern. That was both a relief and a discomfort. One sharp interaction doesn’t have to define a person. The same generosity I want for myself has to extend to other people, and the same scrutiny I apply to them has to come back to me.
One bad interaction is not a verdict
The book made me more cautious about judging somebody from the first interaction. They may simply have handled that moment badly.
None of that makes rude behaviour acceptable. It means one encounter is one moment, not the whole person.
The line for me is repetition. If somebody keeps interrupting, humiliating, or refusing to listen, especially after the effect is obvious, the excuse of a bad day stops working. The behaviour has become a pattern.
I have to use the same line on myself. One distracted meeting doesn’t define me. If being busy becomes my permanent excuse for not listening, it isn’t an isolated lapse anymore.
The room changes the weight of the behaviour
Toxic workplaces don’t only attract assholes. They can turn ordinary people into them.
The change doesn’t have to be dramatic. One person cuts somebody off and gets away with it. A manager humiliates someone and still gets praised for results. Nobody challenges it. The next time, the behaviour is easier to copy and harder to question.
Sutton writes about physical and psychological distance from toxic people. In a Stanford interview about the book, he describes bad behaviour as something proximity can spread. What hit me wasn’t only the advice to create distance. It was the thought that character is more vulnerable to the room than most of us want to admit.
That doesn’t let anyone off the hook. It means I can’t blame one bad personality and ignore the conditions around them, especially when I’m one of the people helping set those conditions.
Power is one of those conditions.
As a lead or manager, I have more power than the people I lead. I can’t pretend that doesn’t change the weight of a small lapse.
If a colleague at my level looks distracted, I can call it out. Someone who reports to me may not feel free to say, “You’re not listening.” They may finish the meeting, say nothing, and leave with the feeling that their point didn’t matter.
I don’t like admitting how ordinary this can look. No shouting. No insult. Just me checking another screen while somebody is speaking.
I can be respectful in general and still behave disrespectfully in a specific moment. Being busy explains the distraction. It doesn’t erase the effect.
If I interrupt, I can say, “I cut you off. Please finish.” If I genuinely can’t listen, I need to say so and move the conversation. Pretending to be present is worse.
The first audit is mine
Sutton calls it asshole blindness: seeing the problem clearly in other people while missing it in yourself. That was the part I couldn’t leave safely inside the book.
It’s easier to remember the people who frustrated or disrespected me than to examine the busy, impatient version of myself. The one who interrupts. The one who looks at the other screen. The one who thinks good intentions should count for more than they do.
Before I decide what somebody else is, I need to ask what my conduct felt like from their side.
That doesn’t mean explaining away repeated harm. Sometimes the label is accurate. A pattern is a pattern, especially when it continues after the damage is clear. I don’t want to apply the label so quickly that I stop being curious, or so slowly that I keep excusing the same behaviour.
The book didn’t leave me with a cleaner list of people to avoid. It made me look at the version of myself that comes out when I’m busy. The one who checks another screen, misses half of what someone says, and tells himself it wasn’t a big deal.
Maybe they noticed. Maybe they didn’t feel able to say anything. I don’t get to call it harmless just because I didn’t mean anything by it.
Next time, I need to notice sooner. Close the other screen and listen.
