How Do You Handle A**holes?
Throughout my career, I’ve faced all kinds of people—executives at Fortune 500s, scrappy startup founders, authors, speakers, athletes, academia, musicians, students. I’ve seen the egos. I’ve had to manage through them.
If you follow me, you know how active I am on LinkedIn—commenting, connecting, sharing insights. Social media, after all, is meant to be social.
In the journey of reaching out – of asking questions – of learning – it is very rare that I have run into a complete and utter, Grade A – Asshole.
There’s a way to handle things and there’s a way not to handle things. Let me explain.
Years ago, during the Super Bowl, I was working with a local TV sports anchor. We spotted a legend—Mean Joe Greene from the Pittsburgh Steelers. You know the one: the towering defensive lineman from the “Have a Coke and a Smile” commercial in the ’70s.
We approached and politely asked for an interview. He declined.
Not rudely. Not with ego. He just said, “I don’t do interviews with your affiliate,” and shook our hands. Turns out he had an issue with the network—not with us.
That’s how you handle boundaries—with class.
Now fast forward to this week. I sent a professional connection request on LinkedIn to someone who looked interesting—an author with mutual connections and a background that aligned with a few things I’m researching. It’s the same type of connection request that I’ve sent out at least one thousand times.
Here’s the response I got:
If you’d bothered to look me up before spamming me, you’d know that I’m already far more “validated” than you. Go away.
Seriously?
I double-checked my message. It was polite, clear and no different than the ones that have led to interviews, collaborations and even paid work.
So I replied:
Thank you for the note. Going away now. Have a blessed day.
Was I annoyed? Hell yes! Was it rude? Hell yes! Did I take it personally? No. Why? Because I’ve read The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton.
In it, Sutton explains how toxic people—those who demean, belittle and bully—can poison workplace culture and morale. He offers ways to spot and avoid them, and tools for surviving when you can’t. It’s a brilliant reminder: life’s too short to work with assholes.
So I quietly took him off the list of people I’d ever want to collaborate with. Process of elimination as I see it.
What about you?
Have you ever run into a situation like this—online or in real life?
How did you handle it? Would you have said something else?
Drop your thoughts below. I’d love to hear how you deal with a**holes.
