I had a very busy month and wasn’t able to read too much, but here are two of my February Books of the Month!

Book #1 – Lessons in Chemistry – by Bonnie Garmus

This book started so slow I almost gave up on it. It was the book club book of the month so I knew I needed to push through it and thankfully, it got much better.

Setting: California, USA in the 1950s-1960s

During this time, women were expected to be in the home, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children. Elizebeth Zott, the main character, didn’t follow the traditional path and chose instead, to go to school and study to become a chemist. She worked incredibly hard and was often smarter than her male counterparts, but had a hard time finding work in her field and when she did, she was taken advantage of consistently. No one took her seriously as a chemist despite her proving herself over and over again.

In Zott’s story, we start off learning about her education and career and are later introduced to Calvin Evans, her love story. They are both chemists who find that they not only challenge each other but work incredibly well together.

Evans and Zott get pregnant and Evans ends up passing away leaving Zott to be an unwed, single mother, which further lowers her status and ultimately gets her fired from her job.

Despite losing her job and dealing with an array of challenges, Zott finds another opportunity that allows her to talk about chemistry and make a difference in the world.

She receives an offer to work for a TV station doing an evening cooking show, which was intended to teach women how to make new meals to prepare for their husbands’ arrival home. Zott switched up the script week after week to insert her quirky lessons on chemistry AND women’s empowerment.

Her show not only talked about food but fighting the patriarchy, getting out of toxic relationships, and motivating women to go back to school and work if that’s what they wanted to do. Although she was first embarrassed at having to take this job just to put food on the table, she eventually turned it into something that she was proud of and felt good about.

The ending of the book is a delicious meal of karma served iced cold and I wouldn’t have wanted it to be any other way.

Zott is strong, intelligent, and fearless throughout the whole book and once you get past the socially awkward and blunt exterior, you find she is incredibly kind and relatable.

Book #2 – The No Asshole Rule – by Robert Sutton

Robert Sutton writes this book to talk about something it seems most of us have experienced in our professional lives but haven’t had much luck combating – the workplace assholes.

He provides an abundance of research on bullying and both positive and negative workplace behaviors from supervisors, management, and coworkers to which he concludes “There is so much evidence that civilized workplaces are not a naive dream, that they do exist, and that pervasive contempt can be erased and replaced with mutual respect when a. team or organization is managed right” (pg. 5).

He believes “every organization needs a no asshole rule because mean-spirited people do massive damage to victims, bystanders who suffer the ripple effects, organizational performance, and themselves”(pg. 27) and shares quite a few examples of businesses that have implemented the rule across their company and how it affects overall staff morale.

One of the key ideas of the book was that run-ins with assholes aren’t just individual incidents, the mistreatment of others can be cancerous causing a “poisoning” of the entire environment. When someone is mistreated at work, their home life often suffers because their personal happiness and energy suffer. Not only that but when one person is repeatedly put down or bullied, their attitude in the workplace often turns sour and they become less enjoyable to be around, which impacts all the other employees who work with that person. It has a bit of a domino effect.

One of the chapters tells the story of a study where in-person group interviews were being conducted among nursing staff to collect data regarding workplace burnout. This study severely backfired because they brought together a bunch of employees who weren’t happy with their jobs or treatment in the workplace and by being in one place and being able to openly complain, it fueled a further disdain for the workplace. Sutton says “Conversations, gossip sessions, and even therapy sessions led by professionals sometimes do more harm than good. These gatherings sometimes degenerate into “bitch sessions” where victims complain bitterly about how bad things are and how powerless they are to stop it.” (pg. 144). When this happens, employees often leave feeling more depressed/deflated than they were when they first stepped into the room.
I have, personally, been in a situation like this so it resonated with me. What I learned from that was that even if there are “professionals” leading these sessions, if it’s affecting me negatively, I need to get out. I do not enjoy or find value in gossip or collective complaining unless change is guaranteed.

Sutton’s advice on not getting asshole poisoning included:
– Choosing the place you work wisely. Try to get to know the team before signing.
– Once a nasty person is identified in the workplace, try to avoid them at all costs. Do not purposefully put yourself in situations where you’ll be forced to work with that person.
– Walk out of a bad place quickly if you find the culture is damaged or there is an unavoidable bully that brings you down constantly with no options for accountability.
– Find out how others see you. <- This is on making sure you’re not poisoned by the behavior and dishing it out yourself as a result.

He ends the book by providing advice on how not to be an asshole if you are the problem or becoming the problem and also recognizing how some assholes of the world are well respected and why.

This is a really short read, and the no asshole rule should be common practice, but based on the evidence provided in this book, it’s just not. Employers sometimes need a reminder to check their teams for assholes and get everyone back in line so their workplaces become safe and respectable places to work. Employees need a reminder that they can stand up for themselves and leave places that aren’t treating them well. And if they can’t leave, at least ensure they don’t get poisoned by the behavior.

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*You can check out my Book Reviews page or my goodreads page to see what else I’ve been reading this year if you missed any of my previous posts*