I’m Not as Bad of an Asshole as I might have Thought

According to Guy Kawasaki’s Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE), I scored an 11. I don’t know what the highest score could have been, but I thought my rating would be worse. I feel I perhaps have hope of making a turnaround if some good friends could see their way to hang in there and wait for the new and improved Lawrence to evolve.

Here’s a good idea for my friends (and enemies!). Take the quiz, too. If your score is higher than 11, then maybe we can consider that you are the problem - not me. If we are tied, we’ll have to settle our differences with an arm-wrestling contest (in which I will use nasty tricks) or one of those IQ test books you can buy at Barnes & Noble.

But, if you are lower than an 11, then you are free to openly consider me the asshole that is the source of any of our inter-personal difficulties. And now that I’ve come clean, you won’t have to worry about me denying it. It’s open-source material up for grabs. I’d like to thank Guy for taking the time to put this together. He based it off Bob Sutton’s book “The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t”. I’ve done the latter more than a few times, so maybe you can have pity on me and consider that my score of 11 may have been fostered by a few selective ex-employers (you know who you are). Maybe I’d only be a 5 or 6 without those experiences.

Here’s the breakdown from Guy:

0 to 5 “True”: You don’t sound like a certified asshole, unless you are fooling yourself.

5 to 15 “True”: You sound like a borderline certified asshole, perhaps the time has come to start changing your behavior before it gets worse.

15 or more: You sound like a full-blown certified asshole to me, get help immediately. But, please, don’t come to me for help, as I would rather not meet you.

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