If you think you’re nice, you’re not

I’m a nice guy. Most of the time, anyway. I’m polite; I say please and thank you far too many times that after a while it sounds rude. I always queue to pay my facial wash. I am predisposed to avoid trouble because it’s too much trouble just to be in trouble. I like to think I keep chivalry alive and well. I do hold the doors for you females, you know. I am sometimes too effusive in my praise. I am known to be glib at the most inopportune times. Which brings me to this:

I can’t stand it when people are nice to me.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s nice when someone comes up to me, and says that hey, you’re nice a guy. It makes me go all Melinda “I think I can see it; me neck!” Doolittle, but only for awhile. But when people are very nice to me, I get uncomfortable. Agitated, even. Sometimes, the evil side of me would think that these people are fake and sycophantic. My evil side even has a name. It’s Evil Chris. Imaginative, eh?

I remember an incident in my previous life as a salesguy, one of the seniors told me to never say “Thank you” to the client at the end of a conversation. I gave him my trademark WTF + Huh? look, and asked the obvious, “Why the hell not?” He shrugged his nonexistent shoulders, cracked a wry smile, and unctuously said, “Because it means that they are doing you a favour.” I tried to digest it but since I had a pretty crappy lunch, I quickly nodded, scrunched up my face so that it looked like I totally agreed with what he said, and walked back to my station. All the way (10 metres) I called him many an impolite imbecile.

In shopping malls these days you’ll likely to encounter a helpful, sometimes annoying store help. I don’t like them. Starbucks employees have a proclivity to not say Hello! Good afternoon, sir! to me even though I’m dressed in my best singlet and shorts, but when a similarly dressed White Man who has a belly bigger than me, they’ll drop whatever and start complimenting the fellow with much aplomb. But I have to say that things are not as bad. Yes, there are still some rude bastards and even ruder mofos who think they are God’s gift to the masses out there and when you thank them they draw a blank look.

On a completely different note altogether:

I’m going back to studying next week. Woo. Pee.

Since currently my job as a freelance busybody which pays me a grand total of nothing, I reckon it was high time to go for an upgrade of sorts. The course is a five-week professional certification, which in theory, will make me highly marketable. (I hope so!) I’ve been at home for almost six months now. I have nothing but compunction for my ineptitude and the blameworthiness is entirely mine. But come next week, changes will be in order and hopefully, and I really do hope a lot, that everything will turn out according to my grand plan. Failure is not an option.

Wish me luck!

This is Chris, signing off.

PS: My new haircut makes me look like a gangster of sorts. Nice.