I subscribe to dozens of marketing and Internet marketing newsletters and read them everyday. Today I came across an email that was truly amazing and a perfect example of professional suicide.

One of the newsletters I subscribe to is from a man with a very arrogant personality. I assume he’s good at what he does because he tells me how wonderful he is in every email he sends. Today, however, I decided to cancel my subscription. Not because his information isn’t valuable, but because I couldn’t handle his, “I’m better than you” attitude any longer.

In this, the last email I received from him, he expressed his anger at the person responsible for selecting a speaker for an upcoming association meeting. Apparently, he felt he was much better qualified to give the presentation.

This so infuriated him, that he sent an email to his entire list of thousands of subscribers telling them how stupid this man was for not inviting him to speak. He went on to tell his readers that the man who had been hired to give the presentation was far inferior and that everyone should boycott the presentation.

I don’t know what he expected to accomplish by writing such an email, but I can tell you how I reacted. Not only did I unsubscribed from his list, but my parting impression of him (along with being an arrogant SOB) was that he’s a whiner, a poor looser and someone who delights in the pain of others.

With one simple click of the “Send” button, this man destroyed any relationship he had with the people at the association where he hoped to speak, and I dare say, with most of the people on his mailing list. His 15 minutes of psychopathic joy is going to turn into years of hard feelings and lost business.

If you want people to like you and reap the rewards of being liked, “Don’t be a jerk.” Who in their right mind would hire someone who is capable of acting in such a way? Not me, and unfortunately not the people who witnessed his sadistic behavior.

This is another example of likability trumping capability … and it will trump capability 100 times out of 100 times.