Dealing with Difficult People: How to deal with nasty customers, demanding bosses and uncooperative colleagues Paperback – October 25, 2013

This is a book of advice for people in any workplace who struggle coping with other people at times, whether it is coworkers, supervisors or clients. The book is divided into different chapters for easy access if the reader wants to jump to a certain situation, for example ‘dealing with difficult clients’. The book is full of real life situations that have either happened to the author, or common situations that happen day to day. The author gives advice on how to calmly handle situations in a professional manner and also improve people skills by giving prompts on how to say certain things. Different situations are going to arise in any workplace and everyone will deal with a difficult person at some point in their career and therefore this book helps to prepare us to deal with these situations or if a situation does arise this will help deal with the present situation.Some of the advice in the book is fairly obvious and other pieces of advice I would personally not take on board. For example the chapter covering dealing with difficult subordinates the author recommends that once made a supervisor, supervisors should not socialize with subordinates. Personally, I think advice can be argued that a lot of people would go on to lose respect for the person that may have previously been considered a friend, I know I would. So some pieces of advice should probably be taken with a pinch of salt, but a lot of it is good to keep in mind to resolve some workplace issues.I do recommend this book to others, not just for people who are having current issues with difficult people but for anyone at work. The book can help in situations that may arise in the future and equip the reader with prompts and other advice in a number of different situations. It is suitable for all audiences and is an easy read, even for those who don’t read books. It has many different examples that most people will relate to and engages the reader with small activities to carry out. I believe that the book on the whole is convincing and that although there is no empirical research to support the advice given, it is believable and most people can relate to the given situations. Some of the advice in the book may not suit everybody and body language and tone of voice can alter the intentions of some of the comments. However, common sense and following the author’s advice, I believe, will help most deal with difficult people.

This was a very timely book and I highly recommend it to anyone working or thinking about working in a Customer Service Related field. Retail sales or careers are very very difficult and I believe it takes a special type of person to be successful. IF you do not have the ability to work with customers from all walks of life, then I highly recommend you choose a different occupation. 95% of the people you work with are good people, the remaining 5% is where this book will help you. I recommend you buy the book, read it and keep it handy to refer to at least once every six months.

Great product

For me, the book was poorly organized and presented in a very scattered way. It felt as if I was reading a bunch of post-it notes or the rough outline instead of paragraphs and chapters of cohesive ideas. Because of this, I am sorry to say I was unable to make it through the whole book and this is why I gave it only one-star. Perhaps the author can better present her ideas when in an informal, lecture or seminar atmosphere or maybe it is simply not the style of book that is suited to me. The only positive for me was that I loaned it from my local library, so it was not money wasted.

excellent book for all ages

I do not recommend this book. The problem with this book is that is gives logical advice most people already know. I did not find any useful information in there that made it easier for me to work or deal with difficult people.The section about dealing with difficult customers is simply horrible. It sounds like a corporation has written this book in order to create better workers. Workers who still have a positive attitude if a customer humiliated them for no reason. The book points out that many people work in customer service because they have no other option. True! Then the book tells the reader: If you work in customer service and are not able to maintain a smile all day even if customers are mean and snotty then you should get out of customer service. This advice is ridiculous. Most people who work in this field have no other choice. They only make $ 7.50 an hour on average and get humiliated by rude customers. You can only make a career of this if you work on the corporate level.My advice: If you are really interested in this book and want to see for yourself, just get it from the library.

I had the pleasure of sitting in on one of Roberta's seminars and meeting this very lovely woman. This book gives you some good tips and trick on how to deal with people that you may find difficult.