Even though Stanford Professor Bob Sutton's The No Asshole Rule has been in the marketplace for nearly four years now, people continue to discover it for the first time as does the Harwich Oracle this week in its column, At Your Library: Insights into Bullies. As the Oracle notes:

The book discusses damage done to organizations by bullying employees, including a chapter on “How to Implement the Rule, Enforce It, and Keep It Alive.” There are examples of how the rule (or a variation) is applied at companies such as Google, JetBlue Airlines, and Southwest Airlines. Sutton explains that “enforcing a no asshole rule doesn’t mean turning your organization into a paradise for conflict-averse wimps.” Positive approaches to problem solving, using evidence and logic, with argument over ideas, rather than personality or relationships, are effective.  The author emphasizes that none of this is easy, but the rewards are substantial.  Negative behavior tends to spread to others in a group.

I'm personally grateful to Dr. Sutton not only for teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony, but for breaking the asshole barrier in book publishing. If you want to keep current on ways to deal with bullies in the workplace, put the RSS feed of Sutton's Work Matters into your newsreader.

Update on Cromartie Still Speaking His Mind, Now Making Threats on New York Magazine's Sports page. We in the profession call this conflict escalation, one of the unhappy results of speaking your mind with epithets, almost guaranteed to raise the level of dispute heat in any room.

Conflict resolution quiz

Which is the better response to a dispute?

A. Calling your negotiation partner an asshole?

B. Taking your negotiation partner to lunch?

Good work. No need, actually, to spend the money on lunch. Coffee or McDonalds will do. TED talk on taking "the other" to lunch below.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite Stan Freberg songs taken from Stan Freberg (Modestly) Presents the United States of America, Vol. 1,' a 50-minute Broadway musical for the ear with songs and sketches by Mr. Freberg, orchestrations by Billy May and the voices of the Freberg stock company, including Jesse White (the original Maytag repairman) and June Foray (Rocky the Flying Squirrel and countless other cartoon characters).

Take an Indian to lunch this week

Show him we're a regular bunch this week

Show him we're as liberal as can be

Let him know he's almost as good as we

Make a feathered friend feel fed this week

overlook the fact he's red, this week 

Let him share our Quaker Oats 

'Cause he's useful when he votes 

Take an indian to lunch 

The album's legion of fans have included the onetime chief of the Navajo nation and the likes of Steven Spielberg and Richard Dreyfuss, who passed time during breaks in the filming of ''Jaws'' by singing its songs. History teachers have used it for years to make the Founding Fathers come alive. Asked once where the Beatles got their sense of humor, Paul McCartney told Playboy magazine that it probably came from listening to Mr. Freberg and Lenny Bruce.

I discovered the blog Cooking for Assholes this week - the most recent recipe being "hipster pancakes." It's a damn good cooking blog written for men who employ the word "fuck" as all nine parts of speech (see below and read the chapter F is for Friend in A is for Asshole, the Grownups' ABCs of Conflict Resolution)

That's it for the Week in Assholes, Part Four. Do come back next week for further insights into the use of profanity in modern culture with occasional notes on its place in the escalation or resolution of conflict.