This scenario plays out every time the wife and I go food shopping. For this example, we’ll use peanut butter. Delicious, chunky peanut butter. Note the word chunky.

Wife: Get a jar of peanut butter
Rager: Fine (reaches for a jar of Skippy Chunky)
Wife: Not that.
Rager: Why?
Wife: I don’t buy Skippy, I like Jiff. And not chunky, I don’t like chunky.
Rager: I do like chunky and I’ve always had Skippy.
Wife: Well I’ve always had Jiff.

And scene. Thank you. Thank you. Bows all around. Hand for the wife.

Ignoring the chunky option, if someone handed me a PB&J that wasn’t made with Skippy could I tell the difference? Probably not. Then why does it matter if it’s Skippy or Jiff?

Easy. That’s what I’ve always bought. It’s what my mom always bought. We were a Skippy family. I want my family to be a Skippy family. My wife wants a brood of Jiffs. You could label it a simple case of brand loyalty but is it really that black and white?

It’s called Stickiness (not a pun in this case) and it’s one of the core traits of decision making described in the new book You Are What You Choose: The Habits of Mind that Really Determine How We Make Decisions.

Scott de Marchi and James T. Hamilton present a new theory about how we decide, based on an extensive survey of more than thirty thousand subjects. They explain that people exhibit six core traits that shape every decision they make. From huge life changing decisions to something as simple as what to have for lunch.

People tend to go with “the usual” way of deciding whenever there’s a trade-off between current and future happiness. For me, the usual is Skippy. For the wife it’s Jiff.

I wasn’t aware of all the intangibles that went into something as simple as picking a peanut butter until I read the book. Sure I’ve read books and studies about how we make choices but this is the first that explains the why.

Here is a decision that doesn’t need a how or why; all this yapping about peanut butter is making me hungry and I’m going to make a PB&J sandwich.

We use Jiff. I wonder where angry wives fall into the decision making process?

Click here to check out You Are What You Choose: The Habits of Mind that Really Determine How We Make Decisions

Do people still read business books?

I do on occasion but most of them are written by the brain-dead. At least this time the book is ABOUT the brain-dead. Undead to be exact.

Z.E.O- A Zombie’s Guide in How to Get A(Head) in Business

Lessons include:

• The “Z-hour” work week,
• How to negotiate like a zombie (hint: they don’t), and
• Zombie time management and initiative.

I’m convinced my boss is a zombie. He can’t really stink like that and be alive.

Like a combo of wet turd and licorice.

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Stephen loves his job. Crazy right? Not kidding. He loves it. There is nothing else he would rather do to make scratch. It helps that he is great at what he does. I asked him one part of the job he hates and he struggled for something, anything, that made the gig at least slightly unpleasurable.

“Oh wait,” he said after a few moments of thought “my boss is a massive penis.”

He didn’t say it quite like that, but this is a PG-13 blog, so I’ll let imaginations run wild about the word he actually used in reference to his boss “the Richard”.

This isn’t uncommon. Many people find themselves in careers and positions that they love, like or don’t mind, only to find themselves saddled with a boss that is less than stellar.

How does a employee handle a terrible boss?

Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster propose the following in their new book Working for You Isn’t Working for Me: The Ultimate Guide to Managing Your Boss; detect, detach, depersonalize and deal. Let’s call them “The Four D’s for handling a Di…ehhh Richard.” You get the idea.

Crowley and Elster cite real life case studies to delve into the personal and interpersonal exchanges between managers and underlings to get to the root issues. They suggest simple and researched coping tactics and provide real, plausible methods on how to handle unbearable superiors in the work place.

Among my favorite sections is the chapter reviewing twenty boss behaviors that drive workers bonkers, not only because it was spot on accurate, but because it eases the fears of most working stiffs that they aren’t the only person in the world unlucky enough to have a boss act like a jackass. Many bosses seem to exhibit very typical behaviors.

The book was easy to digest and I’d recommend it to any 9-5er in any line of work.

Thankfully, two Harvard-trained psychotherapists like Crowley and Elster wrote a book of such a delicate nature. I had a similar idea and proposal titled “How one stapler to the temple could kill a fella”.

It was to be my War and Peace.

Click here to get Working for You Isn’t Working for Me or their first book Working With You is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself from Emotional Traps at Work

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