Being "too nice" makes everything worse

My husband came home from work last week with a story that felt all too familiar: a coworker had a meeting with higher-ups due to complaints coming in from clients who worked with him, specifically related to his misleading definition of a product he sold them. They asked him to repeat his description, and quickly discovered that he could not get his own story straight - tripping over his words in a murky attempt at explaining the confusion, defining the product, and in turn, confusing everyone more. They scolded him. They said to "work on your clarity."

What they didn't say, which is true, is that "this is the fourth time we've had to speak to you about this issue, after countless previous customer complaints before this. We are putting you on an improvement plan, which, if you cannot follow through on in the coming months, we will have to terminate you to preserve the integrity of the company." So the coworker left that interaction feeling perhaps chided, perhaps a little uncomfortable, but not as if he had committed a fourth strike.

I am in no way defending corporate capitalism here, okay? I am not trying to echo the Kardashian sentiment that "no one wants to work these days," or insinuate that everyone is lazy and bad at their jobs. In fact, the fault I'm picking at is not on the employee in this situation at all, but on the people who have the power - because they're not utilizing it. Instead, they smile and nod and, after the employee leaves, hope and pray that this fourth, fifth, sixth time will be the time he'll learn and not repeat the mistake. They'll continue to talk shit about him, resent him, and receive customer complaints. They'll continue to let the company look bad because they're too afraid of the dirty work of firing, of replacing, of having to clean up the mess.

This avoidance is not only a problem within the workplace, nor is it something we get to escape the blame for. We all do it: laugh at a severely unfunny and insulting joke, let someone continue to cheat at trivia or on their partner just to save face, just because the discomfort of calling them out is a little stronger than the discomfort of letting the injustice take place. We have to stop doing this to ourselves and one another. We have to stop thinking that "being nice" is a good look.

You've surely heard before that niceness is not the same thing as kindness. You've maybe even seen the meme-y quadrant split of the US map that proposes levels of niceness vs. kindness in different areas (I love it and think it's mostly accurate). But for the sake of this conversation, let's distinguish: being "too nice" is refusing to introduce any friction to a situation that desperately needs it - not because you don't mind what's happening, but because you're afraid of what could happen if you caused even a wrinkle of dissonance. It's people-pleasing rebranded as virtue. And particularly unfortunate for women: if you aren't nice with others, you're at best labeled difficult or stuffy - at worst, you're a bitch. For this reason, among others, frighteningly few of us are incentivized to be honest. It's better to be civil, even if it means shoving down how we really feel and what we really want to say.

So we go to other people in our lives and talk shit about the person we have a problem with, displacing our anger onto someone who doesn't deserve it. That person gets to keep their job and their relationships without so much as a doubt of whether what they're doing is wrong. When no one calls out bad behavior, the person behaving badly simply continues while everyone around them suffers through it. And while we stay being too nice to them to say anything, we accumulate resentment that will inevitably surface in ugly ways, almost never toward the person or situation it was built from. Relationships persist in agony from these slow leakages of unspoken things. Everyone loses.

Aside from the fear and discomfort, why are we like this? It isn't only soft-spoken women terrified of the B-word that live with this chronic habit; it's anyone who doesn't want to be ousted or feared themselves. Because there is an undeniable social punishment for being the person who causes friction, even when it's warranted. The consequences for prioritizing agreeableness over honesty aren't usually obvious, but they will quietly erode our social fabric. The same conditioning that breeds jadedness and distrust in others by the time we hit true adulthood is the one that encourages us to keep our heads down, to "sleep on it," to not take it personally, to not report assault.

There's another trope I've seen recently: "Become a bitch or develop an autoimmune disease." I don't personally know how true this is or how well medical data can prove it, but I'd certainly entertain the idea that it has merit. The funny thing is, in this turn of phrase, "bitch" doesn't mean what we've collectively come to think of it as. It's not being belligerent or unreasonable or excessively mean. It's refusing to tolerate mistreatment and not sugarcoating a response to it. It's allowing our needs to be more important than someone else's discomfort when making them clear. And yes, there will still be pushback, because fawning, apologizing, belittling our needs is the norm, rather than holding firm. No one makes the switch flawlessly. Most of us at least trying to hold high expectations of others are still going to accept less than what we're asking for, because at least it's a start. But there are a few tiny steps we can take to slowly stop being the one who's always "too nice."

• Say something, and don't confuse it with saying everything. You might genuinely hate this person, but they don't need to know that - and calling them out on one action doesn't require you to comment on anything else. Share the grievance, even if it's been a while since it happened. "Hey, remember when we talked about [x] and you said [y]? I've been thinking about it, and I don't like how that went down." It can be that simple.

• Timing and tone can completely change a conversation. Again, you might be fuming. You might be envisioning a back-alley brawl or a screaming match in which you'll totally dominate. But often, even if we're seriously hurt by something, the conversation that follows doesn't need to match that energy. It just needs to be firm. Find an appropriate time to have the conversation if you can, and give yourself enough time before it to think through what you want to say and how you'll say it. Stand ten toes down on what you believe, and make it known.

• There's a difference between "calling out" and "calling in" - and different situations call for each. Someone was abusive, harmful, hateful, or completely out of line? Call them out. Assure them that they will not get past you with that behavior. Someone has been fucking up, but you have faith in them to do better? Call them in. Let them know you'll be there to both help them grow and hold them accountable.

Shutting down problematic patterns in others, when done with care, is an act of respect all around. It's giving them an open opportunity to grow. It's standing firm in your own integrity and refusing to betray it. It ripples out into the lives of your mutuals and into the environments you interact in. Rejecting niceness is in itself an act of true kindness - a fundamentally different thing. It says: You're capable of better, and I want better for you. I want better for me. I want better for us all.