So...what about a ban on people who talk about their kids non-stop?

A recent installment of the McKinsey Quarterly has a great piece called, "Building the Civilized Workplace," by Robert Sutton. The subject isn't about espresso machines on every floor and foosball tables in the lunchrooms. It's about jerks.

Office Jerks. Yes, they get capitals in their names.

It's worth reading just for the attempt to quantify the time and other resources office bullies and jerks take up as colleagues attempt to negotiate their way around the landmines these employees--often holding leadership titles--lay about the workplace. Personally, my favourite bit is at the beginning of the article.

It describes the acheivements of SuccessFactors, a softward company in California, as listed by the CEO of the company. On top of immense growth and great exposure of its product, CEO Lars Dalgaard also says that they were successful in "employing no jerks."

Actually, their website openly refers to these types of "employee non grata" as "assholes." Which I love even more.

Think about it. Your CEO says, "Our top 3 goals for 2008 will be 1) Expansion into the Asia-Pacific market, 2) Outsourcing our business processes and 3) Keeping jackasses out of our company." That sounds like heaven.

We've all seen them, we've all worked with them, we've all gossiped about them in the cafeteria. What we rarely do is DO anything about them, apart from compensate in our own day-to-day work practices to get around them, under them or (gasp!) please them without loosing our head, our shirt or our minds.

The really brilliant thing about SuccessFactors, along with other organizations who focus on keeping the Office Jerk at bay, is that dealing with the Office Jerk is really about having a culture where you can openly ACKNOWLEDGE that someone's being an asshole. And not just someone: ANYONE. Apparently the CEOs been called an asshole from time to time, and he's widely apologized for it.

The simplicity of this notion makes me a fervent convert to this whole concept. Don't want to deal with a jerk? A bully? The author says: Easy Peasy. Call him or her out. In front of everybody.

Takes guts? Yes. Risky? Well it depends. But even if you didn't work in an enlightened place like the one described in the article, what would you rather do? Kowtow, literally, spiritually or emotionally, to a jackass, diva, bully or just flat-out, no-holds-barred asshole for months and possibly years, or call a spade a spade? Hell, even if you continued working for the jackass, you'd all at least be operating under no illusions.

And if you get in trouble? There's now this handy article to show to upper management to demonstrate exactly how much that guy or gal is costing them.