Sucking up

Sucking up, Brown nosing, Butt kissing, it has many names and many different forms. It can be noticed and go unnoticed. It can be effective and it can be ineffective. It can draw ridicule and it can draw praise and I would like to write about it a little. As of recent, I have thought about sucking up and how I feel about it. Some forms of sucking up I hate with a passion and some forms I enjoy. But for the most part I hate sucking up. Every day that I age I hate it more and more. I don't hate getting sucked up to, I hate sucking up. I have to confess, I probably suck up more than the average man. I hate doing it but I believe it is one of those necessary evils.

The Riddle dictionary defines sucking up as: To be overly nice to a person or persons to enable a smooth accomplishment of a goal.

I would like share with you five key points to my theory of sucking up.

1. Sucking up is not effective until you realise that your end purpose is to no longer have to suck up to ANYONE.


I think that we all want to get to point in life where we don't have to suck up to anyone. Take for instance a president of the United States. He spends his whole life sucking up to everyone to get to where they are until they reach the goal of a second term. After that, the gloves are off and they finally do what they want. It has to feel good.

I love to talk to old men that have retired. They say it like it is and don't sugar coat things they don't suck up because they don't have to. Spending time with an old man is a good way to get a good honest self evaluation. My Grandpa for example, he was kind of rough character, and he didn't suck up to anyone. If he thought you were a sicko he told you. If he liked you he told you, If he thought you looked bad he told you, If he felt like having you pull his finger he would ask you. A person always knew how he felt about them because he had no reason to sugar coat. What was a person going to do if they did have their feelings hurt, take away his beer? Heck no, he'd just rack that person over the head with his cane, and he would enjoy that more than much more his beer.
That is the end goal in life. To not have to suck up to anyone.


2. Good friendships do not require sucking up.


If you are with a good friend, they truly like you for who you are. You can tell them the truth, you can be yourself, you can tell them anything and it doesn't change the way they feel about you. This does not rule out courtesy and being nice. With good friends you are courteous and nice because you love them and enjoy being courteous and nice to them. With a good friend you never feel like you are being "fake" nice, and if you give them a little crap, they laugh it off.

If you find yourself in the company of a person, and find yourself not having to suck up. You can be assured that that person is a good friend.


3. Sometimes it is OK to abruptly end the sucking up for a moment of truth.


In a fight the person who throws the first punch is generally the person charged with the crime or takes the blame. Moments of truth are the same way. Though it can be very advantageous to throw the first punch, you have to be darn sure you are going to get away with it. Otherwise, if you don't want a lawsuit, it's a good idea to wait until the first punch is thrown, then and only then comeback with with hell fire. The same concept applies when dropping the sucking up wall for a moment of truth. About 6 months ago while working on a project, I rejected a contractors work because it didn't meet a specification that I had told him over and over that he needed to meet. Through the whole job he sucked up to me and I sucked up to him. We both had a job to accomplish, so it worked for us to be overly nice to one another. Until that day of rejection. He lost it, screaming, ranting, raving calling me names. It was his moment of truth. Bad timing though because he still needed me to sign off for payment of $500,000 dollars worth of work. After he was done, I left the site calmly, and expected him to show up to my office with an apology. (500G's will always bring an apology) Sure enough the next morning he showed up to my office with an apology. He had his hat in hand taking back every thing that was said. He even thanked me for not loosing my temper. I then knew it was the proper time to throw my punch. I told him that I would never loose my temper on a job, I pointed at the picture of my wife and kid on the desk and told him that feeding them was more important. I then said in a low quiet, serious voice, looking him in the eyes, "just so you know, if you would have talked to me like that out on the ranch, I would have knocked every one of your fricken teeth out". He looked at me with a little shock. I accepted his apology, and invited him out to dinner on the Ranch. He declined saying," hell no, I'm not going out to your ranch." It was perfect timing to a moment of truth. I felt better, and there was no consequence.


4. Men can and will always be better and more effective suck ups.


Throughout time, as men were the hunters and gatherers, they learned to adapt. They learned to put food on the table by any means possible, that included sucking up. Women on the other hand stayed at home nurturing, taking care of the home and raising children. The women were the true masters of their domains. There was no need for sucking up. If the children got out of hand, they busted their chops and went on with it. When the man got home, she cooked a fine meal of woolly mammoth and they enjoyed it together. They put the kids to bed blew out the candles and laid down by the fire. This is a time at night where a man began to truly refine his sucking up skills. I attribute this time of the evening to the development of truly effective sucking up skills. I wont go into any more details, but needless to say, there isn't a woman alive that has ever felt out of necessity the need to give a back or a foot rub the way a man has.
I don't know if you have ever worked around women, but women (collectively, not individually) don't work well together.

Take for example an elementary school with predominantly women employees. It's a fricken war zone. Both my mother, wife are teachers, I know for a fact that that the mental trauma some women inflict on other women makes an elementary school faculty room environment comparable to Omaha beach during D-day. Throw a female principal into the mix and you have Hiroshima all over again. This is all a result of the fact that women do not, nor will they ever understand the true principles of sucking up it's just not in their nature.


5. Sucking up is an essential key to success.


If a person wants to be truly successful in life it is imperative that a person learns to suck up effectively.

In college, I took a class with a guy he was about 10 years older than I was. I wont name his name, but he absolutely refused to suck up. We actually had a number of discussions on sucking up. He argued that a man should never have to suck up. I can tell you so far, the up to date results of this man's not sucking up. He never finished college, never got married and still lives with his mom and dad. So much for not sucking up.

Sucking up has many names and there are many ways to suck up. Some good, some bad, most of the time you don't even know you are doing it.

I would submit that, If you are able to make the argument that you are and have been successful without sucking up ,more than likely you fall into one of two categories:1. You are a very attractive woman, 2. You inherited your success.

My question is: Is success truly success without having to suck up a little?