Nice
Why we keep trying to be and when we should stop
As well as being an occasional novelist and Substacker, I still work in a takeaway and take orders on the phone. For years now, I’ve been speaking to one of our regulars who places her order like this:
Me: Hello
Regular Female Customer: Oh hello, Julie, I was wondering if it might, possibly, be all right for me to place an order?
Me: Of course, what would you like?
RFC: Could I maybe get a sweet and sour chicken balls . . . if it’s not too much trouble?
Me: Yes, that’s fine.
RFC: And then, possibly, if it’s all right with you, could I get a king prawn curry and chips. Is that okay? It’s not too much to have it without any onions in it, is it?
Me: No problem. Anything else?
RFC: Oh, thanks so much. And if it’s not too much trouble, could I possibly, maybe, have some fried rice. Would that be okay?
Me: Mmm hmm..
It goes on like this for much longer which I can’t bear to reproduce here. I find it hard to endure at the time, to honest, but I’ve learnt to, by breathing deeply and stabbing the order pad with my biro.
You see, the problem with Regular Female Customer is she’s too nice. Is there really such a thing as being too nice? Yes there bloody is.
Do you know why it drives me so mad?
Because I used to be too nice. I would hold the door open after me and still be holding it for the next six or seven people to stroll through, several of them not even acknowledging my existence.
I would buy leaving gifts for colleagues (back in my corporate days) based on what others told me they planned to put in the kitty and end up paying for 70% of the leaving pressie myself.
I would miss the film I wanted to see because I bumped into an acquaintance outside the cinema, eager to share the waffling details of their recent holiday. Fortunately, I live close to the cinema so was just able to go home for a couple of hours until the next time it was on.
Why was I so bloody nice about bloody everything? Well, it was clearly because I wanted everyone to like me.
‘Oh, that Julie,’ they’d say. ‘I never have to worry about her slamming the door in my face even if there is a clear 10 metres between me and that door. Or bugging me for that money I owe her. Or not being interested in my bullet-pointed list of how a Chinese takeaway in Goa is really very different from hers.’
That’s the problem with being nice, isn’t it? People will take advantage. It’s pretty much how those texts message scams work, pretending that someone you know is in trouble and you need to transfer a sum of money to them immediately. You want to be the good guy. You want to help someone out. Now where’s my credit card?
The prolix acquaintance? Well, no harm done, I saw the film and someone got to have a nice chat but why didn’t I take my chance to escape when they said ‘I’m not keeping you, am I?’
Always wanting to be liked, that’s a confidence thing really. Regular Female Customer lacks it in a big way. Otherwise she’d realise the standard agreement between a customer and a takeaway is that you order food and they provide it in exchange for money. None of it is ever really ‘too much trouble’. It’s exactly how it’s supposed to be!
I used to have a strange, cosmic sort of bugbear about being nice too. If I saw something I wanted on the shelf and it was the last one left, I wouldn’t take it. I felt that someone else should have it, someone who really needed it It was only when I mentioned this to a friend and she said ‘That’s mad. If it’s the last one, I’m definitely having it,' I realised that the someone who really needed it, well, that could be me!
I stopped wondering if a random stranger somewhere would ‘like’ me for leaving the last packet of Rolos on the shelf for them. Now, I’ll just take it. If Judi Dench reaches for them at the exact same time as me, maybe she’ll get it.
Otherwise, it’s mine.
In her brilliant memoir – Love, Nina – Nina Stibbe gives the best ever advice on how to be nice.
Most importantly, you have to be nice, without seeming to be, or over doing it.
I think I’m on top of that first one 60% of the time, every time. The other two? Hopeless but I’m working on it.
When someone wasn’t nice and got what they deserved.
This is from a recent interview with Mark Wright from The Only Way is Essex.
Hats off to the table guy!
He was only able to get that £2,000 tip because Mark Wright was so far from being nice that he didn’t care that someone else was going to get chucked out for him and his buddies.
As they used to say in the show, Hustle, ‘you can’t con an honest man.’
Oh yes, it is indeed a big problem.... I suffer from it too. It's so hard to break away from these habits of a lifetime...