Reading this book will shake your opinions and confuse the hell out of you all the way through. You'll laugh often, disagree, become pissed off and finally shake your head at the deepest most original wisdom you may have ever read.
Sukop's style is arrogantly irreverent and you'll love it as he kills your sacred cows. An example ... "Common sense tends to degrade what works. Maybe the solution for monetary disparity in the world is not to fight greed but to promote it heavily."
Seriously, there isn't an author alive or dead who understands more about money and what causes it to flow than Egbert Sukop. If you want to read something powerfully fresh and definitely groundbreaking - buy this book. --Tom Volkar

“Oh, Egbert, you are so funny! I'm in stitches everytime I read your newsletter. To take an unvarnished truth and make it funny is one thing, but you are completely off the charts in driving home a point with such alacrity and humor! You hit the bull's eye and drive the arrow clean through the wall!” --L.C.

"I'm dumbfounded, awestruck, perplexed, befuddled. I'm a miserable bastard going through a divorce and unemployed, who at 35 doesn't know what to do for peace of mind or soul. I'm not looking for you to solve my problems - I just find your writings fascinating." --B.T.

"Wow, your site has an attitude. Every god damn site I go to is so politically correct, other than porn sites. You say it like it is. Thanks." --C.

“I totally appreciate your reminders and insights. I need the wake-up call. It's comforting. I do print them out from time to time and read them out to my mother, and she loves it too. It lets us know it's ok to be more ... human. God bless U.” --P.

"Did you know that you belong in the loony bin, you screwball? No one can help you anymore, you idiotic imbecile."
Anonymous, Schweinfurt, Germany

“You have unconventional wisdom that's unique to you. I'm not sure what the mainstream would think of what you have to say. I've noted when I talk to people along the lines that you lay out, they tend to get turned off or even a little pissed off. I think the reason for this is it tends to go against everything they have been taught and believed all their lives.  Well, I'm going to go back and read some more of your rants as I find them quite refreshing.” --K.B.

"To me the ideas as published on your site are new and refreshing. I have done a lot of the other motivational stuff such as goal setting etc., and it is time to break out of that and get a life! Your approach seems much more natural and I would like to learn more about it."
R.S., The Netherlands

"I have not laughed as much as I have reading the information on moneybymistake.com. Laughing is something I have needed to do right now because I have been taking life all a bit to seriously over the last couple of months. I have been able to laugh at myself and the mistakes I have made with money as I read through your website. You know what? The sun will rise tomorrow whether I have money or not and it is up to me to choose the attitude of how I will greet the day and others around me." --M.P., Australia

”Oh, by the way ... I really enjoyed your newsletter on 'will power'.  It opened my eyes on how habits come about.  I'll drink to that! You've been the highlight of my day.” --B.A.

How to Better
Hate Your Job

by Egbert Sukop

 

”Every day millions of people trudge to the wrong job in the wrong place to produce the wrong goods.” --The Economist, September 1991

I didn’t invent the quiet desperation of Monday mornings and the phrase ‘Thank God It’s Friday’, nor have I caused the cult following of the movie ‘Office Space’. I have just observed that people in general are not too happy with their jobs.  Try it yourself:  type “I hate my job” into a Google search box and you’ll get over 18 million results.  With the same search Bing.com produces more than 60 million entries. You will discover links to the lowest ranked companies for employee satisfaction, for instance. 

Perhaps it surprises you that companies you prefer to buy from are the same employers that hardly anyone enjoys working for. In other words, you may love to shop at Barnes & Noble, but you better be prepared that the individuals who work there hate what they do ... and that includes having to deal with you. You are a part of their miserable job!  Your business turns their work into a daily grind.

Barnes & Noble is amongst 100 companies with the most dismal employee satisfaction.  So are Verizon, Nordstrom, Target, Home Depot, Bank of America, Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, Walgreens, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Sears, IBM, Toys-R-Us, Geico, Macy’s, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and Radio Shack.  Do you buy from any of them?  Probably.

Do I single out these companies as bad and evil corporations?  Not at all. They don’t force anybody to work for them.  I only suggest that it can be critical for you to be aware whether a person you conduct business with is mostly happy or disgruntled.

Even if you don’t hate your job per se, many of those around you sure do.  That has consequences for personal and business relationships.  Let’s assume you are through and through a happy person.  But you still talk to people, no? Now, I agree that it is close to irrelevant if you purchase a book at Barnes & Noble and a grouchy person helps you find the title you are looking for. Dissatisfied people may cost you extra time, since the notoriously unhappy aren’t known for exceptional competence and efficiency.  And dealing with a miserable individual is not as much fun as breezing through your errands supported by happy people. Still, the price for the book you end up buying at Barnes & Noble remains identical.  Content or miserable, the cashier rings it up just the same. Except for those times when a happy employee is less reluctant to grant you a surprise discount.  Yep, happiness has cash value and if I were you, I would seek to explore and exploit that.

Whether you negotiate the logistics of your son’s next baseball practice with your spouse or you negotiate a sales contract with a client, it is crucial for you to be aware of possible psychological and emotional implications of somebody’s job dissatisfaction. If you can’t walk the proverbial mile in the job hater’s shoes, it will cost you.

Not all of us work for somebody else.  Does that mean every entrepreneur or self-employed person loves her job?  Of course not.  ‘Do what you love, the money will follow’ (Marsha Sinetar) is a nice motto, but also a myth. Indeed, it is possible and definitley advisable to choose a professional career based on your favorite interests and activities.  But do you enjoy firing people? I didn’t think so. The man power you are forced to volunteer on annual income tax preparations: doesn’t that waste of productivity make you cringe? I am confident you get the point.  Some job related mood downers are inescapable, no matter how you approach the issue.

The hope, that some day you may be able to do what you like 24/7, is a bit naive.  I’m sorry, but it’s just not how the universe works. Something “comes up.”  Always. It starts with a flat tire at the wrong time and it doesn’t end with a canceled flight because some volcano decided to hold your happiness hostage. Life will continue providing you--and unfortunately me, too--with unforeseen and detestable obstacles.

In short, if you are human you’ll randomly have to deal with stuff you hate.

If we could expand the good times indefinitely and shrink the bad times toward zero, all would be well. If we could only change the world a little and make it a better place, we could live happily ever after.  I am all for it.  If you can improve poor conditions on your job or in your own business, go for it. You have my blessings. No need to suffer through my controversial book.

If you can’t change the disstressing situations of your workday into pleasant moments, reading my book ‘How to Better Hate Your Job’ is probably the best you can do right now to successfully approach the subject of happiness in adverse environments.

Sounds like magic, doesn’t it: Exploit adversity for fun and profit!

The answer is as simple as it is common. From the car mechanic at the corner to the most prominent plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, they profit from stuff that people hate.  The use of hate--as a creative and motivating force, as a resource of productivity, and as a means to trigger cash profits--has been evolving throughout the history of humankind.  As long as you have something to hate, you deserve to practically benefit from the exploitation of hatred as well.

Yeah, but what about the fun part? You couldn’t let that go, could you? Alright, it takes some 200 pages and approximately twenty bucks out of your pocket to explain it in all its beautiful and ugly details.

You don’t particularly care for cleaning your swimming pool yourself, but the pool guy likes doing it for you.  Unless he hates cleaning your pool, but then he chose to do it. Maybe he loves hating it because he appears to be so calm and content, almost in a Zen mode when he scrapes the dead mice out of the filter.  Or the air condition repair folks:  they love it when your A/C breaks down and you hate your dwindling options.

You see the tendency:  the things you love or hate are often flip sides of the same coin.  If and when you make the proper connections, you may be able to emotionally salvage plenty of nasty occurrences in the future that you’re currently writing off as lost causes. Ready?

Sit down, fasten your seat belt, and hold onto your hat: ‘How to Better Hate Your Job’ will fiercely throw you into provocative and outright shocking material.  Your human environment will never look the same.  Disturbing insights and irritating truths will push you over the cliff, only to discover new answers for yourself.

This book will not tell you what to do or what not to do.  The how-to title is deceiving.  The book contains more uncomfortable questions than easy answers.  Simplistic sugar-coated pseudo answers aren’t my style. No snake oil, no cheap satisfaction, no pleasantries. Refreshing, don’t you agree? I am rough, you may perceive me as rude, I call things by their potentially painful names ... and I won’t apologize for it. Sooner or later certain passages in my book will upset you.  That is intended because just in case there is nothing else you hate in your life, I provide you with plenty of material you can practice with.  A free bonus, sort of.

No, this book is not for average people. Mediocrity is waiting to become extinct, anyway.  And no, I did not write about positive thinking.  You have thought too positive for too long already. This material is cynical.  Funny here and there, but that doesn’t make the subject less serious. It’s probably a bit too honest for you, and too drastic. Nope, it’s not motivational. Motivational claptrap is revolting and exclusively meant to increase the output of people who hate what they do.  A legitimate interest of every employer, agreed, except it’s as outdated as the type writer. If productivity and individual happiness can be enhanced simultaneously, why would anybody pass up such window of golden opportunity?

‘How to Better Hate Your Job’ will offer you a wealth of new options, an arsenal of choices to transform what you may currently despise into enjoyable experiences.  Life doesn’t give you freedom, happiness, and individuality voluntarily. All that is valuable to you, you must claim for yourself and you have to do it every day anew. That, however, is easier than you might think...

Good Luck to you,

Egbert Sukop

P.S.:  Go and get your Paperback copy at Amazon.com!  Well, or at Barnes & Noble, if you prefer. What are you waiting for?

Readers rant about Egbert Sukop’s ballsy and irritating new book:  ‘How to Better Hate Your Job:’

”Perhaps Egbert's new book ought to be titled, The Power of Pain, and come with a warning, not intended for wimps. It is not an easy read--it will incite you, challenge your thinking and slam many of your fundamental beliefs about work, money, life. His tone is irreverent, crude and sometimes even offensive, but at the same time it offers brilliant and powerful insights on the paradox of the human condition.  Hate it or love it, if you can suffer through reading it, you may just find gold under the mud--I did.”  --Claudia B.

”We all have any number of umbilical cords connected to our most cherished beliefs, opinions, assumptions and folklore about any number of subjects, varying from money to bosses to jobs to work to wealth to poverty to  freedom to individuality to love to hate to self improvement to what it means to be alive, and more. Egbert Sukop is about to cut a few  of those cords. All of them, if you're lucky. No anesthetic, no nurse to gently squeeze your hand and wipe your brow. Fortunately he cuts  fast and precise. His weapons of choice are wit, humor, irreverence, keen observance, smartness, ruthlesness, and tons of life experience, no  doubt. This leaves you with clean wounds you can be proud of once healed, just the way you can be proud of your cute little belly button that  tells you you actually made it through the birth channel. You're a  survivor. I guarantee you'll make it through this book. If you're lucky like  me, you'll laugh a lot, grin, smile, frown, ponder, go "damn! how could I  have missed that!", and most of all, you'll be curious what will be on the next page every time you'll flip one! After that it's up to you how  you choose to live your life. Just like it has been all  along. If you like rollercoasters, 'How to  Better Hate Your Job' is your ticket to a fast, fun, exciting  and brainflipping ride!” --Jan Frijters, follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Sekoja

“Shocking. Fearless.  Revolutionary.  Every page is an Aha! moment."   --Ray Schiel

“You will undoubtedly love to hate this book and its author long before you finish reading it, and you will never be the same after being exposed to this cynical masterpiece. Beware - Sukop offers no chicken soup for your sorry soul nor does he coddle your inner child.  Rather, he cleverly and comically implies that you should build your own unique individual ass-kicking machine to snap you out of your habits, patterns, and beliefs so you can finally start having some fun and actually enjoy your miserable existence.  He pretends to write about money and jobs, but in fact he is writing about life in general. You may love to hate this book so much that you find yourself re-reading it over and over again, and buying it for your enemies that you love to hate so much.” --Tera Crisalida

“Provocative? PROVOCATIVE??? Deliciously so. Thank you, Egbert Sukop, for this book. I am definitely talking about it, and want everyone I know to read it. Some I could only take in a chunk here and there--and this writing definitely snuck by my mind--most of what was said STILL hasn't registered there! Or like a friend I loaned it too--she couldn't sleep. I think that a good thing. Egbert "approaches/ attacks/plays with" major assumptions Americans make about making a living.  The concepts offered are so "other." Short, sweet, not-so-sweet--a definite wake-up call to anyone who values out of the box living.” --Vinnie Rose

“Shockingly rude, captivating, a prying inquiry into unhappiness.  Serious yet funny, this book reminds me to wake up even more and not to let myself of the hook.  A compelling read.” --Tanya O'Connor

... and on to Egbert’s “normal” material, as if normal could describe this impertinent man:

Money by Mistake

Don’t learn from your mistakes. Repeat them frequently.

chance and lucky breaks: Measured over hundreds of millions of years, "Ninety-nine point nine nine percent of all biological species which have ever existed are now extinct." (Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail)  That's nothing to mope and mourn about, because thanks to myriads of mistakes and random selection, you and I showed up.  What on Earth rides you to think that you have the slightest chance to survive and thrive WITHOUT making mistakes frequently? Evolution is mistake-driven. Duh, and so is your individual and personal development.

Hey, how about my book:
have you ordered it yet?

And if not, why? Go and get it, will you!   I don’t have all day. On second thought, I guess I do have all day and the patience to wait even for you.  But it’s painful and I don’t have anybody but you to blame for it.  So, buy Baby, buy, buy, bye ...