Monthly Archives: February 2009

Being nice.

It’s not as hard as it sounds, really.  But if you watch people today, many of them would seem like either they do not remember how to, or chose not to be nice to others.

Where I see the best examples of this is in the retail arena.  Working retail is hard enough, I know, I spent the about twelve years in retail and had the pleasure of seeing almost every type of personality.  The good, the bad and the ugly, they are all people that crossed my path through the course of my retail career, thus giving me a point of view that not everyone has.

I try to be nice to most people, even those that are rude to me.  Granted, I do have my breaking point where when a person is continuously rude or hateful to me, I will crack and return the feelings.  The problem with that, when you reach that point, you have lost.  You are no longer controlling the situation and there is no way to truly recover the control.

More often than not, anymore, I will try and counter the situation with humor or irony.  Most of the time those are invaluable weapons to use against a person that is obviously in a bad or bitter mood, but unlike anger, it will sometimes cause the other person to see their own problem as being a little less important or, maybe, cause them to laugh at themselves.

I like to talk to people that are having a bad day, it is almost as though I see them as a challenge that needs to be won.  A good example of this is a time I was going through drive through at a local Burger King.  When I got to the window, the lady was in a very sour mood.  After I got my food and change, I decided to try something, so I sat there.  She came back to the window and asked if there was something else that I needed.  I said “I know you are having a bad day, so if I give you a smile, will you share it with others?”  She looked at me funny, then I told her a joke… “A horse walks into a bar and up to the counter.  The Bar Tender look at him and asked ‘What’s with the long face?’”

She gave me a genuine laugh and thanked me.  This was the first time I tried something like that, and it worked.  I am not normally that outward, but I taught myself a lesson and I helped someones day get a little better.

To be fair, it is hard to be nice to people that are in a bad mood.  It is hard to be nice to people that are having a bad day or are in the funks.  I know this from personal experience.  That is why I think that the BEING nice part is an art.  You have to learn to be nice in situations that you normally would not be.

So… the next time you are out there, and someone has an attitude… try something new… try and make them laugh at themselves or at you.