Nice Girl

I am often described as a "nice girl." I'm the girl you can depend on when your tire has blown on the side of the road. I'll always offer a shoulder for anyone to cry on. I'm empathetic, compassionate, and the kind of girl that parents never worried about their kids hanging around. All of these qualities will make me a great nurse, and I like being liked, so it works out for me most of the time. But sometimes, I just wish I could be a little bit meaner.

You know the saying "nice guys finish last"? Well, that goes for girls too. Sometimes I care so much about others' feelings that my own get thrown away. There are also always people who will see how much I will do to help them out just because I'm a nice girl and generally don't mind doing favors for people in my life. It really hurts my feelings though when this happens, and for a brief amount of time, I tried out what it was like to be a little bit tougher. I changed my attitude to "tough shit" instead of "I'm sorry."

Most of this applied to work, by the way. In my personal life, I was still the same girl, but at work (where I felt most taken for granted), I became more like a machine. You see, in my job, there's this weird tight rope I need to walk. As a restaurant hostess, I need to seat the restaurant quickly and efficiently, but I also need to be fair to all of the servers, but I also need to recognize which servers can handle large or difficult parties. At the end of the night, I decide when and who can go home. So you see, servers often spill their sob stories to me to get cut. "Oh Caroline I just worked 2 doubles in a row and I'm exhausted. Please don't seat me anymore" or "I just went on vacation and I'm in debt! Please give me some good parties." So, anyway, for this brief amount of time, I basically was a huge bitch and didn't care about anyone. Everything was business. My feelings never got hurt. I didn't worry about how people thought of me.

But I wasn't happy.

So now I'm trying to figure out a happy medium of not letting people take advantage of me while also listening to individual needs. I guess part of opening up to people is taking a chance of getting hurt by them. It's weird to have both a working dynamic and a friend dynamic with most of my coworkers. While no one holds work-related shit against me, I can't handle any sort of sour feelings.

Well, I was reflecting on all of this tonight when I got undercharged by different places twice in a week. I really believe that people either consciously or subconsciously will favor someone who treats them well. Smile to the lady who checks you out at Wal-Mart. Laugh at your waiter's jokes. Say "have a nice day" to the bank teller. You just never know. And at the very least, you're making someone feel a little more appreciated.

I know I jumped around a lot (per usual), but I guess the point is there are pros and cons to everything and there is also a happy medium to everything. So now I just need to figure out my happy medium. I think I'm off to a good start though. Maybe nice girls don't need to finish first or last... maybe it's just somewhere in the middle.