Confessions of a Former Nice Guy

Have you ever noticed how the guy who makes the most noise and is the most abusive seems to get the best service? I mean, I’m an easy-going guy and I like to get along with people. I try not to offend others. I try to make people feel good. I try to instill positive vibrations into my surroundings. I try not to kill people. And I’m pretty damn good at these things, for the most part.

If I have a problem at a checkout in some store or other, I keep my cool. I’m all Mr. Effing Smiley Face. I smile all over the store. I drip grins into the nooks and crannies of retail sales. People in the line say: “Everything’s OK, dear. See the smile on the gentleman with the big nose and noticeable absence of balls?” My smile releases a plethora of goody-goody beams and bathes my environment with well-wishing. I adamantly refuse to call the clerk who has just picked up her cell phone and has to console her best friend whose boyfriend just dropped her. I mean, I’m only buying eggs and coffee cream. They won’t drop me.

This happened to me once. I waited five minutes, trying not to show my displeasure, trying to be a decent human being. When the clerk finished her conversation, she didn’t even apologize for making me wait. That’s when I got pissed. That’s when I stopped smiling. That’s when I went straight to the store’s administration office and told the manager (a mousy little guy with what looked like a permanent scowl) that he should tell his clerks to leave their effing cell phones at home. I pivoted on one foot and left him looking confused.

It felt good.

And after that, I started watching line-ups in stores, and restaurants, the post office, the service department at my car dealership. I noticed something very disturbing.

I noticed that clerks, managers, sales reps – just about anybody who works behind a counter, the aisles, or in a kiosk all have one thing in common: they give the best to the worst.

I saw it first at my car dealership. I won’t mention the name of the dealership because I’m guessing they’re all the same. Here’s what happened. I waited outside the dealership with two other people. The doors opened, we entered. I was second in line. I wanted an oil change. I was told that my car would be ready in an hour. I thought that was a long time to wait for an oil change, especially since I was second in line and they must have had five or six mechanics on duty. But then I thought, hmm, maybe they’re working on cars that were brought in the day before.

I took a seat and started reading my favorite waiting-for-my-oil-change literature: brochures about all the great features in this year’s models now that I own last year’s model. About ten minutes later, an unsmiling man in an overcoat entered. He was tall and looked slightly overweight. He was wearing a suit and tie under the overcoat. He spoke to the service rep. Their voices were just under the I-can-hear-every-word-you’re-saying-while-I-read-my-brochures threshold. And suddenly Mr. Overcoat’s voice rose: “I don’t have an hour. I need it in half an hour.” An exchange went back and forth with Mr. Overcoat not yelling, but by no means speaking politely. The service rep was flushed. He fought valiantly for, oh, about a minute. Mr. Overcoat won.

That bastard got his car back before any of the three of us who were there when the place opened.

That’s when I learned nice guys don’t finish last, they just don’t finish. They die in a garbage heap of smiles and good wishes. They polite themselves to death. They trip over their patience and fall face-first into an iron maiden of acceptable behavior. The door slams shut, the nice guys get spiked and the bastards of the world run grumbling and victorious across the finish line.

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Here I sit – my engine idling quietly – waiting for the dealership to close, waiting for the service rep to leave the building, waiting to cross the finish line.