Nonfiction: Works Well With Others, Ross McCammon

Works Well With Others
Ross McCammon
ISBN: 9780525955023
Read January 30, 2016
A professional etiquette guide disguised as a funny memoir, or perhaps the other way around?

McCammon sticks with the short form here, in snappy little short chapters that are practically magazine articles themselves.  In fact, many of his features or interviews in Esquire are longer than these little chaplets, most of them value-added with self-mocking questionnaires and snarky personality evaluation brackets.

His beautifully self-aware and self-deprecating tone is perfect for giving advice, and he gives it good.  Not one to get bogged down in lists (at least not serious ones; tongue-in-cheek ones abound) or prescriptive categories of DOs or DON'Ts (although, again, you'll find them scattered mockingly throughout) he simply offers tales of his own experiences during his first year at Esquire, and draws important fundamental self-representational guidelines from the stories.

Be honest (but not on Twitter, unless you are a lifestyle brand).
Be curious.
Be genuine.
Be passionate (but not too passionate because that weirds people out).
First days on the job and first meetings with recruiters are always awkward, for everyone involved.  Don't waste mental/emotional energy stewing in the miserable memories.
Put your best foot (dressed as best as you feel capable of, for your own benefit) forward.
Dn't be afraid of making mistakes.

I especially liked his brutal takedown of "Failure Culture" where he eviscerates the idea that "failure is positive" and that you should "embrace/seek/crave failure."  What they really mean, he argues persuasively, is that "mistakes" are to be embraced and learned from.  Actual failures are miserable, abject, humiliating, and basically serve as giant red psychic flags to NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.

A fun short read, and a nice change from the usual order of self-help books out there, which are either relentlessly psychoanalytical or brutally prescriptive.  He basically spends the book saying: here's where I screwed this up, and this is why, but it goes much better if you do this instead, or occasionally (not as often, because bragging doesn't fit the tone as well) here's where I did this thing really right, and you can too!