Jerks at Work

Have you ever dreaded going to work not because of the tasks, but because of a particular coworker who drains your energy or undermines your confidence? In Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them, social psychologist Tessa West argues that surviving workplace toxicity isn’t about avoiding difficult people entirely—it’s about learning to understand, manage, and outsmart them using research-based psychological tools. West contends that we all encounter jerks at work—sometimes we even become them—and that by learning what drives these behaviors and how they thrive, you can reclaim your sanity, your productivity, and even your sense of purpose at work.

This book is not a venting session; it’s a strategic manual built on decades of behavioral science. West introduces a taxonomy of jerks—the Kiss Up/Kick Downer, the Credit Stealer, the Bulldozer, the Free Rider, the Micromanager, the Neglectful Boss, and the Gaslighter—each representing a unique threat to your mental and professional well-being. But rather than shaming these behavior types, she helps you decode their motives, understand why they persist in organizational cultures, and learn actionable ways to disarm them without self-destructing.

Why This Matters

In an era where work increasingly overlaps with personal identity, toxic colleagues can have ripple effects—bleeding into sleep, health, and even relationships at home. West reveals that people like Annie, the high-achieving employee slowly broken down by her tyrannical interim boss Sasha, aren’t outliers. They are emblematic of how unchecked toxicity corrodes entire teams. These relationships cause more than irritation—they foster anxiety, physical symptoms like insomnia and high blood pressure, and a toxic sense of learned helplessness.

Most people, West explains, handle jerks in ineffective ways: venting, gossiping, or quitting. But those approaches, while tempting, often leave the jerk unchallenged and the culture unchanged. The smarter path involves getting into a jerk’s psychology—their incentives, social status, and the power structures that enable them. It also means understanding that social relationships are your best defense: friends and allies at work are not optional, but essential survival tools.

The Science Behind Workplace Jerks

Drawing on two decades of social-psychological research, West demonstrates how behavior spreads across organizations through emotional contagion. Stress, dominance, and avoidance spiral outward from one person. The neglected fact, she argues, is that jerks often thrive because the environment rewards them. Flawed hierarchies, inattentive bosses, and vague accountability systems allow destructive personalities to flourish. But these same systems can be reshaped if you learn to leverage social networks and data-driven strategies rather than personal outrage.

West dismantles several myths: that only inexperienced people struggle with office politics; that jerks are incompetent or bitter; and that bosses remain inert because they don’t care. In reality, many jerks are highly socially intelligent—they read people well and manipulate perception even better. Many bosses, meanwhile, are simply overwhelmed or poorly trained. By shifting from moral outrage to tactical curiosity—by profiling your jerk, not demonizing them—you can operate with more precision and control.

Your Role in the Dynamic

West also issues a provocative warning: there’s a bit of jerk in all of us. Under stress or competition, even well-meaning professionals morph into micromanagers, bulldozers, or credit hogs. By helping readers recognize their own tendencies, the book doubles as a mirror—it’s about self-awareness as much as self-defense. In admitting that she too once became an “accidental bulldozer,” West humanizes the very behaviors she critiques and models what transformation looks like: humility, recalibration, and using structured fairness to rebuild trust.

A Practical Toolkit

Throughout the book, West pairs vivid stories—corporate tyrants, manipulative peers, energy vampires—with field-tested strategies. You learn how to spot red flags early: the colleague who weaponizes helpfulness, the boss whose praise vanishes the moment their supervisor looks away, the teammate whose silence hides sabotage. Each chapter breaks down how to respond: from setting procedural fairness checks to recruiting allies, reframing conflicts, and protecting your reputation through documentation and calibrated communication.

Ultimately, Jerks at Work argues that conquering workplace toxicity doesn’t require ruthless retaliation or detachment—it requires strategic empathy, boundary-setting, and an expanded social toolkit. You won’t transform every jerk, but you can transform your environment’s power dynamics and restore your psychological well-being. As West concludes through examples ranging from NASA engineers to exhausted retail workers, healthy work cultures don’t emerge from policies; they grow from people courageously connecting, confronting, and cooperating despite the jerks among them.

West introduces the Kiss Up/Kick Downer as one of the workplace’s most recognizable predators. Charming upward but vicious downward, these individuals manipulate hierarchies by flattering those above them while undermining peers and subordinates. Their world runs on the currency of comparison—who sells more, earns more, or sits closer to the corner office. As West’s story of Dave, the shoe salesman, shows, what looks like charisma is often control masquerading as confidence.

Reading the Room: The Weapon of Status Acuity

Kiss Up/Kick Downers have an uncanny awareness of who matters. Through what West calls status acuity—the ability to detect hierarchies in seconds—they learn who can elevate their careers and who can be safely stepped on. Studies by West and her colleagues found that people vary greatly in how precisely they read social rank, but those who master it wield enormous psychological influence. Dave, for instance, instantly charmed his boss Marie while quietly sabotaging coworkers who posed competition.

Why They Thrive

These climbers flourish in scarcity-driven cultures where success is zero-sum. West points out that their behavior feels rational within systems that reward aggression and visibility. They work overtime to secure early power—a phenomenon she links to the Matthew Effect, where small advantages compound over time. Organizations unintentionally nurture them by valuing short-term performance over relational integrity.

They charm bosses in hallways, spin classes, or children’s soccer matches—their version of pressing the flesh. The goal isn’t connection but surveillance: controlling narratives and reputations across the chain of command. (Psychologist Jeffrey Pfeffer has made similar observations about how corporate power often rewards performative loyalty more than competence.)

Fighting Back with Strategy

West’s antidote involves tactical networking. You begin by finding arm’s-length allies—people with broad but shallow organizational connections who can verify whether the toxic behavior extends beyond you. Reality checks prevent self-doubt. Next, locate others targeted by the same person and document patterns of mistreatment. When ready to approach your boss, lead with the offender’s strengths to neutralize bias (“I know Dave brings great value, but several of us are struggling with his behavior”).

If your boss is complicit, West advises expanding your social network laterally—create procedural fairness norms like customer rotation or shared decision meetings so schemers can’t monopolize power. Ultimately, Kiss Up/Kick Downers thrive in silence, so your best weapon is a chorus of calm, corroborating voices challenging their narrative.

West’s parting guidance to leaders is preventative: don’t delegate communication to the charming hustler who “handles everything.” Kiss Up/Kick Downers thrive when bosses are insulated. The cure, as she puts it, is connection multiplied by accountability—regular one-on-ones with all team members, transparent fairness rules, and a culture that values quiet consistency as much as performative brilliance.

Few things sting more than hearing your boss praise someone else for your idea. The Credit Stealer weaponizes trust under the guise of mentorship or teamwork. West retells the story of Sandra, a talented real estate agent exploited by her mentor José, who repeatedly repackaged her ideas and clients as his own. These people don’t just take credit—they use visibility and charm to mask theft as collaboration.

Intentional vs. Accidental Stealing

Some steal strategically—they test small ideas first, escalating once they gauge your boundaries. Others steal unintentionally, a byproduct of self-serving biases that inflate how much they believe they contribute. West cites research showing that most of us overclaim credit by 30–40%, a cognitive blind spot that leads both parties to believe they did most of the work. In teams, this effect—fueled by the spotlight bias—creates friction even without malice.

Protecting Credit and Building Voice

West’s research highlights one predictor of fairness: “voice.” When you speak, do people listen and remember? Gaining voice involves becoming an advice tie—someone seen as a helpful connector inside the organization. Broad networks protect you by embedding your contributions across multiple witnesses. Leaders and peers recall your input not because you shouted, but because you’re visible in valued social flows.

In practical terms, document your input publicly—recap meeting decisions, circulate notes, and echo others when credit is due. Giving recognition strengthens your reputation as a fair collaborator and ironically inoculates you against theft.

Team Structures That Prevent Theft

West extends her strategies to collective environments. She recommends designating a rotating notetaker who logs ideas during brainstorming sessions (“Idea + Whose It Was”). For teams of “like-minded thinkers” prone to idea overlap, she urges diversifying backgrounds to reduce duplication. And for groups where work occurs privately, time-tracking and contribution logs expose invisible labor.

Finally, bosses should tie credit to effort, not only successful outcomes. In environments obsessed with performance bonuses, Credit Stealers exploit ambiguity, while process-based recognition rewards authentic labor. West illustrates with Nobel history: the insulin discovery misattributed to Banting and Macleod instead of Banting and Best—a mistake the Nobel committee only acknowledged decades later. Her lesson is clear: errors of credit aren’t rare—they’re structural. Your job is to engineer transparency before resentment metastasizes.

In short, to counter Credit Stealers, West advises a blend of diplomacy and design: recognize biases, foster procedural fairness, and anchor credit in clarity, not charisma. Relationships built on shared recognition, not rivalry, future-proof your career.

Bulldozers are the loudest jerks at work—you see them coming a mile away. They dominate meetings, override consensus, and paralyze teams until everyone gives up resisting. West shares the story of John, a top-performer who bullied his manager into submission through intimidation and persistence. When his new boss Susan refused to bow down, John redirected his fury toward his peers, creating chaos and turnover.

Bulldozers’ Playbook

These employees don’t hide behind charm—they wield competence as a weapon. They often occupy essential roles or possess esoteric knowledge (like Mike, the programmer who controlled an entire hiring system). Their dominance follows a predictable sequence: take key power roles early, create procedural dependency, then weaponize insider connections. They exploit weak, conflict-averse managers and solidify informal authority through sheer presence.

Speaking Up and Holding the Floor

West encourages confronting bulldozers with tactical communication. Use the Traffic Light Rule—make points within 30 seconds to keep attention. Speak early and reclaim interruptions quickly (if the interrupter talks uninterrupted for 10 seconds, they win the floor). Your allies can help by verbally reinforcing you (“Let Lisa finish”). Even a small intervention shifts social balance.

If your boss is uninformed, West recommends data: use talk-time apps to empirically show who dominates meetings. Present the issue as loss of creativity (“We might be missing diverse ideas”) rather than accusation. The goal is restorative balance, not revenge.

Long-Term Defense

Because bulldozers thrive on being irreplaceable, the cure is redundancy. Rotate key tasks, distribute access codes, and train backups. A sole gatekeeper quickly becomes a dictator. West offers a humorous caution list: never hand a bulldozer passwords, protected files, or budget autonomy without oversight.

Even gossip works as a natural regulator; reputational consequences spread fast in social systems. But for sustainable protection, teams must codify procedures—majority voting rules, timekeeping, and structured speaking turns. These forms of procedural fairness prevent meeting hijacks and weaponized ambiguity.

In essence, bulldozers thrive on chaos and exhaustion. West’s insight reframes managing them as a collective exercise in structure and composure. By reestablishing procedural clarity and group voice, teams reclaim both time and psychological safety.

The Free Rider might seem less vicious than a bully, but their silent drain on morale is immense. West traces the roots of free riding to the Ringelmann effect: as group size increases, individual effort decreases. The more capable and conscientious a team is, the worse the freeloading becomes—because high performers compensate. Like Derek, the charming colleague who contributed nothing for two years, free riders prosper in cultures where no one tracks contributions and everyone values harmony.

The Three C’s of Vulnerable Teams

West identifies three environmental traits that nurture freeloaders: Conscientiousness (teammates who pick up slack), Cohesion (teams that prioritize friendliness over accountability), and Collective Rewarding (systems that pay groups equally). While these qualities typically enhance cooperation, together they blur responsibility. In cohesive teams, confrontation feels like betrayal, allowing Derek-types to coast indefinitely.

Diagnosing the Problem

Free riding is hardest to see because it often masquerades as teamwork. West’s interview data reveals most freeloaders genuinely believe they’re contributing—denial reinforced by politeness culture. But when accountability vanishes, burnout rises, and star performers disengage.

Her prescription is the Fairness Check: early in every project, create shared task lists and mid-course check-ins where everyone notes what they completed, unexpected barriers, and who went “above and beyond.” Transparency transforms shame into motivation. Even minor exposure halts freeloading behavior faster than punishment.

Sustainable Accountability

Avoid public humiliation; it hardens disengagement. Instead, have non-intimidating teammates privately confront slackers with a mix of validation and direction. Rotate task documentation, and reward process milestones, not just end results. West also highlights contrafreeloading—our instinctive enjoyment of earning rewards. By giving team members autonomy and visible progress, you reignite intrinsic motivation and shrink space for idlers.

Free riders don’t just waste time—they distort culture by teaching that quiet exploitation is acceptable. West’s framework restores fairness without cynicism: document, discuss, and design systems that make contribution visible—and laziness impossible to hide.

Micromanagers are everywhere—bosses whose constant interference turns simple tasks into uphill battles. Yet, West reveals an uncomfortable truth: beneath every micromanager lies a neglectful boss in disguise. Their over-control of some employees inevitably means abandonment of others. At its core, micromanagement isn’t about trust—it’s about fear, insecurity, and poor system design.

Roots of the Behavior

Micromanagers emerge in cluttered hierarchies where too many reporting layers leave middle managers idle. When purpose disappears, petty oversight takes its place. Add the “faith in supervision” bias—the belief that more monitoring equals better results—and you get Ellen, the retail manager who assigned meaningless tasks like color-sorting stockroom clothes simply to feel productive.

Fear amplifies the pattern: fear of irrelevance, of mistakes, of losing power to new hires. West likens these behaviors to perfectionism spiraling under stress, reinforced by corporate models from figures like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk who romanticized obsessive control.

How to Reclaim Autonomy

West’s practical counsel starts with asking yourself, “Does this work even matter?” If not, exiting may serve you better than debating your boss. For meaningful projects, she suggests reframing conversations away from micromanagement toward shared purpose. Ask big-picture questions (“How does my project fit the department’s broader goals?”) to redirect their focus upward. Then, negotiate mutually agreed timelines and boundaries around email frequency and off-hours availability.

Most important, schedule regular short check-ins. Paradoxically, frequent structured updates reduce random interruptions and reassure anxious bosses of progress. Use specificity and compliment sandwiches when confronting controlling behaviors—address facts, not personality. Broad claims (“You never trust me”) trigger defensiveness; specific examples (“You sent 30 emails yesterday about the same file”) open doors to dialogue.

When Detail Isn’t Domination

Not all micromanagement is bad. When stakes involve safety or massive precision—like Van Halen’s “no brown M&Ms” clause or surgical protocols—attention to detail saves lives. The distinction lies in purpose. Healthy managers use detail for prevention, not ego. If unsure, consult veteran coworkers; they can distinguish productive scrutiny from pathology.

Overall, West reframes micromanagement as an organizational symptom, not just a personality flaw. With structure, empathy, and transparent boundaries, you can turn surveillance into support—and help your manager feel safe enough to let go.

At first, a hands-off boss can feel like freedom. But West warns that chronic neglect devastates employees as deeply as overt hostility. Neglect breeds anxiety, confusion, and burnout through uncertainty. Her case study of Kate and her absent boss Xander illustrates how inconsistent oversight—weeks of silence followed by frantic control—creates psychological whiplash.

The Neglect Cycle

Neglectful bosses follow a three-part rhythm: ignore, panic, control. They disappear until their anxiety about being out of touch spikes, then reassert dominance with arbitrary demands. West likens it to crash dieting—neglect followed by binge correction that never sustains real change. Employees live in perpetual suspense, awaiting the next intrusion.

Why They Vanish

These managers often aren’t villains; they’re overextended implementers crushed by organizational layers. With 70% of their time devoted to pleasing their own superiors, little remains for coaching. Others were once micromanagers burned by overload, retreating into avoidance as coping. Some, like Xander, simply lack the training or tools to manage detail-rich projects. In a landscape of constant “time thieves” and shifting priorities, neglect becomes a survival mechanism.

How to Re-Engage Them

West’s central tactic is need-nudging: make small, concrete requests with flexible time frames. Overwhelmed bosses are likelier to respond to a five-line email asking for a 30-minute chat next week than a long list of urgent demands. For longer term reform, she recommends implementing a shared calendar where employees can self-book limited time slots—balancing access and fairness.

If neglect stems from burnout, the solution may be counterintuitive: ask for less and offer support. Prioritize your requests, volunteer to offload trivial tasks, or help manage the inflow of “favor seekers.” Building structured generosity can reset equilibrium and earn back mentorship attention.

Leading Up

Finally, if your boss lacks specific expertise, supplement laterally. Seek guidance from peers, ex-employees, or cross-department advisors and keep your boss informed in brief summaries. Transparency curbs their insecurity and showcases initiative without undermining hierarchy. As West confesses from experience, even self-aware neglectful bosses rely on gentle reminders—proof that leadership reform starts with honest communication both ways.

Neglect, West concludes, is invisible harm. Rebuilding certainty through structure and empathy—sometimes on your boss’s behalf—isn’t capitulation; it’s strategic survival that preserves your momentum and mental health alike.

The Gaslighter represents the book’s most insidious archetype—one who manipulates reality itself. Through charm, isolation, and deceit, gaslighters undermine victims’ confidence and distort their memories until loyalty replaces logic. West’s haunting case of Julie, the creative director who stole ideas and convinced her protégé Kunal he was part of a “secret genius team,” exposes the psychological sophistication of this abuse.

Anatomy of Deception

Unlike simple liars, gaslighters construct entire alternate realities. They might praise you while subtly invalidating your perception (“You must be confused—you didn’t see that”). Their tactics rely on repetition, emotional dependency, and isolation—either by making you feel elite (“no one else can know our project”) or worthless (“no one else believes in you”). Victims internalize self-doubt, becoming pliant collaborators in their own erasure.

Spotting the Lies

Drawing on studies by Stanford researchers David Larcker and Anastasia Zakolyukina, West notes that liars use linguistic tells: replacing “I” with “we,” speaking in vague generalities (“they say,” “everybody knows”), and using exaggerated positivity. For victims, recovering truth starts with documentation—time-stamped notes or summaries after meetings. Gaslighters avoid paper trails, so recording facts restores your sense of reality.

Rebuilding Social Safety

Healing from gaslighting requires reversing isolation. West draws from Princeton psychologist Betsy Paluck’s work on social referents: identify influential, widely trusted people who can help expose truth and rebuild norms. Approach allies indirectly through feedback requests (“I’d love your perspective on how my work with X feels to others”), a low-risk way to surface red flags without triggering retaliation.

Gradually enlarge your network through small, consistent outreach. Victims often misread neutral faces as hostile—a symptom of trauma’s “threat bias.” Awareness of this distortion helps you distinguish potential allies from imagined foes. When you’re ready, disengage methodically: avoid direct confrontation until your exit plan is safe and socially supported.

Restoring Collective Sanity

To prevent future manipulation, organizations must cut off gaslighters’ access to victims and information. Colleagues should adopt a unified silence—refusing to participate in gossip or reputation attacks. Social exclusion, when deliberate and coordinated, becomes ethical quarantine. As West writes, “Sometimes the best revenge is the quiet withdrawal of attention.”

Ultimately, confronting a gaslighter restores more than individual truth—it fortifies the collective immune system of the workplace. Truth-telling, documentation, and solidarity remain the best disinfectants against psychological abuse disguised as mentorship.

West closes with an optimistic vision: jerks may be inevitable, but they are not invincible. Using NASA’s Perseverance mission as metaphor, she shows that even in high-pressure, high-stakes settings, teams succeed when they institutionalize fairness, clarity, and recognition. The engineers who landed a rover on Mars didn’t avoid conflict—they managed it through rituals of acknowledgment, naming every contributor in updates, and echoing ideas publicly. In their environment, credit couldn’t be stolen because it was visible to all.

The broader message is practical humanism. Every toxic behavior—flattery, theft, bullying, neglect, deceit—thrives in systemic opacity. The cure, therefore, is deliberate transparency and structured empathy. Procedures like rotating leadership, fairness audits, and open communication norms keep authority fluid and behavior accountable.

West’s research echoes modern management pioneers like Amy Edmondson (psychological safety) and Patrick Lencioni (team trust). Safety, accountability, and meaningful recognition don’t make workplaces soft—they make them unstoppable. By substituting gossip with feedback and resentment with ritualized fairness, we transform jerk-filled jungles into collaborative ecosystems.

Her conclusion is both sobering and empowering: jerks at work reveal the social architecture of power itself. Learning to navigate them is less about fixing personalities and more about designing better systems. When contribution, not manipulation, drives visibility, even the biggest jerks lose their audience—and you, finally, get your peace of mind back.