A helpful, hands-on approach for preserving personal sanity and professionalism when dealing with irrational co-workers.
A practical guide to recognizing, adjusting for, and dealing with difficult people in the workplace.
This book focuses on a subject that many people encounter on a daily basis. In many instances, and especially at work, it’s simply not possible to walk away from unpleasant people; therefore, one must make certain adjustments to one’s mindset to lessen the impact of their disruption. Patterson offers the titular “Rule #1,” which defines such people as “crazy”—not in the clinical sense, but an “everyday brand of crazy”—and provides 10 rules for interacting with such people in one’s career. The book seems to be split into two main parts: the first highlights warning signs to recognize when Rule #1 is in play; the second provides strategies and tools to help readers navigate through tough situations. Each creatively named chapter outlines various scenarios of dealing with “crazy” people, and provides relevant stories and examples; for example, “Rule #4: Count the Bricks,” focuses on how Rule #1 people have a distorted view of progress, and “Rule #8: First Guy on Paper Wins” notes the importance of a paper trail to ensure a clear recollection of facts when faced with “crazy” people’s “faulty memories.” However, Patterson’s “Rule #2” provides the most telling clue that one is dealing with a difficult person: when they “will not remember saying things that you know they said…and they will remember hearing things that you know they never heard.” Such behavior, the author says, will inevitably result in one asking oneself, “Am I crazy?” Using his three decades of business experience as a foundation, Patterson does a good job of identifying such trying situations and providing useful solutions.
A helpful, hands-on approach for preserving personal sanity and professionalism when dealing with irrational co-workers.Pub Date: May 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9861942-1-4
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Spring Branch Farm, LLC
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
There are many universal, compelling issues left unexplored, but Aquan-Assee’s recovery and construction of the narrative...
A slightly out-of-focus, harrowing account of recovery from what a doctor called “horrific” injuries sustained in a 1997 Toronto motorcycle wreck.
Describing in the third person the days of his long coma, he notes the efforts of his family and friends to remain with him 24/7, attempting to keep him mentally and physically stimulated. Aquan-Assee then downshifts into a slow-motion first person account of his own frustrating efforts to regain physical and mental focus, fighting back memory loss and struggling to remember people’s names from one second to the next. Neither angle is entirely satisfactory to particularize what surely was a long and arduous battle by the 29-year-old to pull himself back, often by the fingernails, into a world in which he felt increasingly out of touch. For instance, he slides past crucial moments when doctors encouraged his family to “pull the plug,” and their subsequent refusal to do so, even when his life signs were little more than flickers. It would have been helpful to know the thoughts and emotions of his parents and siblings at those precious turning points, as well as the doctors’ reactions to his subsequent recovery–a feat admirably accomplished in spite of their negative proclamations regarding the prospects for his “quality of life.” These are the hot-button issues crying out for greater attention throughout. But Aquan-Assee’s focus remains narrow, limiting the potential audience.
There are many universal, compelling issues left unexplored, but Aquan-Assee’s recovery and construction of the narrative are triumph enough.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-973-2782-0-X
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With poetic prose and vivid watercolors, Yang has created a rich portrait of life in China during the 1930s and '40s. Yang chronicles her Baba's (or Daddy's) boyhood and adolescence in 20 tales, each preceded by a watercolor. Baba was the fourth son in the eighth generation of the wealthy House of Yang, and his landscape teems with physical and spiritual dangers. He's threatened by torrential rains, ravenous wolves, red-bearded bandits, famines, demons, Japanese bombs, Russian troops, Communists, Nationalists, even an arranged marriage. When Baba is six, his family is forced out of their Manchurian homeland after the Japanese invasion. They move to China proper, then return five years later when Baba's father loses his job with a mining company. They live under the protective patronage of the family Patriarch until a bloody tug-of-war between followers of Mao and Chiang Kai- shek rends the family and country apart. Ancient legends, political upheavals, and religious ceremonies define Baba's youth. Storytellers teach him about gods and demons, prodigal sons, and the ghosts of the improperly buried. Their wisdom then plays out in his own life as Baba witnesses the goddess of Mercy protect his mother from marauding invaders; the troubled ways of one of his older brothers; and a 49-day funeral ceremony ensuring his great- great-grandfather safe passage to Heaven. Yang's prose feels ancient and foreign; for instance, she describes the effects of the first Japanese bombs: ``The glass windowpanes inhaled and exhaled, but the paper panes heaved a sigh and suddenly gave way, cracking like white porcelain.'' The tension between ancient rituals and modern reality elevates these tales from the merely beautiful into an astonishing personal vision, and a unique portrait emerges of a culture straddling thousands of years. Yang's work is like a lovely painted scroll swimming with wild souls, beasts, birds, flowers, day and night sky, tragedy, and hope.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-15-100063-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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