The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over

Have you ever met the kind of Baby Boomer that has generally had a good and easy life, made it to the top of their corporate ladder and generally think of themselves as the proverbial, shit?

Well, that's our author, Jack Schafer to a tee. Schafer writes a book about how to win people over from the perspective of someone who would have faild upward almsot no matter what and assumes that what has worked so miraculously for him would work for anyone. All in all, a gross book, mundane "tips" and a slimy self centered author.

For example, this "tip" on how to negotiate came with the story of how one time he spent 8 hours at a car dealership "negotiating" the price of a car. At the end of the 8 hours he took out a check, wrote, as he puts it, "a ridiculously low" offer on it and handed the check to the now exhausted and exasperated sales woman who has just had an entire day wasted by this ass hat. He tells us, she finally did accept my offer as to have not sold ANY car that entire day would have been a total loss, so she had to accept my low offer.

Or, the time his FBI department got a new boss, so he spent the first couple months being rude and talking poorly about the new boss and ignoring her at the morning meetings. Then, slowly, he began to "warm up" to the new boss, being nicer and nicer, and then finally giving public compliments on how great she was. Now the boss likes him more than the others because at first he made her think that he didn't like her.

Or the time he had a suspect who was already in jail for a different crime and so had the chance to have him one-on-one every day. Every morning for a week he would bring in the inmate into an interview room, would offer him a cup of coffee and then just sit there in silence reading the newspaper calmly. MIRACULOUSLY, after just a few days the suspect was begging to talk about anything. After a few more days of just talking about whatever the suspect wanted to each day, he finally asked about the suspected crime, and MIRACULOUSLY they just started talking about it like it was any one of their other conversations!

Or the time he had a not very smart suspect in the interrogation room and had his partner leave the room, then lied to the suspect saying they had a special kind of lie detector that his partner was going to come back and use on him. When the partner came back in, they just asked him, "did you rob the bank", the guy said, "No", then the "lie detecting" partner just said, "he's lying." then the suspect said, "Wow, how'd he do that!?!". And they got him. Boom.

The guy is a sleazeball who has obviously been blinded by his life of false power in law enforcement. I'm not glad I read this book, I'm not glad that this type of person even exists. So full of himself, such an awful book.