ARSEMail: When You Care Enough to Send the Very Zest

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 by Frank Roche

ARSEMail

Want to reach out and punch someone? Want to let your zingers do the talking? When you care enough to send the very zest, now there’s ARSEmail. Bob Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule, developed ARSEMail. Prof. Sutton writes:

You have a choice of sending one of two cards, one to help someone who is dealing with an asshole, OR the other to apologize if you have been asshole. You can send a personal message with each card. Plus the card about dealing with assholes has some tips, as well as a link to my post on tips for victims of workplace assholes. You pick your card, write your message, and then send it.

I’m sure this is one of these things that makes you both laugh and go, uh-oh, if you’re in HR. I’m sure you can imagine that first phone call you get when someone in your organization gets their first piece of ARSEmail. You could feign shock and indignation. Or, you could just realize that ARSEmail could very well be a behavior modification device that actually could work. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts about that.

I do think that ARSE Self-Exam would be a great item to add to the performance review system. Rate over an 11? No bonus for you. Rate a 24? Then you’re a certain New York-based client manager at a place where I used to work a long time ago. I wish that Prof. Sutton would have invented ARSEmail back then. I might have used a card or two.