Rude Awakenings : Overcoming the Civility Crisis in the Workplace

Rating:
Summary: An Eye-Opening Book
Review: Civility is profitable for everyone - employers, employees, customers, and society as a whole. And incivility is harmful and unprofitable to everyone. That is the message of this book, and it is a message well presented and well supported. As a retired operations VP for a firm dealing exclusively with Fortune 500 companies, I was amazed at the insights Gonthier has into the lack of civility so common in today's workplace and into the causes of that lack of civility. And as a consumer and a customer, I was impressed by the breadth of her understanding of the stress and rudeness we all face in today's world and the straightforwardness of her approach to addressing and reducing those problems. While she does have a thorough and extremely helpful chapter on specific breaches of etiquette, this is really not a book on business etiquette. It is about how profitable it would be for all of us if we all treated each other with basic respect. She has very helpful ideas for implementing programs in the workplace to create a civil environment that is conducive to retaining the best workers, retaining customers, and building profitability.

Rating:
Summary: Good history but not prescriptive for individuals
Review: Rude Awakening does an excellent job of relating how the rise of incivility occurred. Where it falls short is in providing options for those of us on the opposite end of inappropriate behavior. If you're not in a position to institute policy revisions at your workplace, Rude Awakenings will be a frustrating read. Gonthier and Morrissey are targeting human resources and management NOT individuals with their remedies.

Rating:
Summary: Good history but not prescriptive for individuals
Review: Rude Awakening does an excellent job of relating how the rise of incivility occurred. Where it falls short is in providing options for those of us on the opposite end of inappropriate behavior. If you're not in a position to institute policy revisions at your workplace, Rude Awakenings will be a frustrating read. Gonthier and Morrissey are targeting human resources and management NOT individuals with their remedies.