I am sitting here in my office, thinking to myself that I have a pretty good job. If I break it down, I get paid to stand in front of people and teach them. I come to work at 7:30 a.m. and leave most days by 5:30 p.m. I do some freelance consulting on the side and make a decent living. I think I work pretty hard…but I do not think I have the greatest job in the world.
I think the most wonderful, feel good job would be getting paid to be nice. However, I am having a hard time finding practical use for the potential position. Maybe I could sell myself to corporations as being a freelance nice person. I will come in, treat your staff nicely and get paid for it. I will even conduct an experiment - with the free help of my students of course - and run a survey on the corporation to see if being nice to them over time has any effect on their productivity and performance.
I wonder…how else could people get paid to be nice?
It is. Most people get off to some extent on being nice for free. That is why doing a good deed feels so good, and has a high probability of being repeated, or passed on.
For the purposes of of this thread, I am talking about actually getting paid for being nice.
In a way, I already do that. I just wish it counted for more. I’m Customer Service Manager at a Wal-place which means I’m a glorified flunky who supervises cashiers & takes management’s crap, and one of the damned nicest ones around to the cashiers & to customers.
If I could get paid JUST for being nice, I’d just be myself & let the money roll in!
Of course, a lot would roll out as I’d be helping people with it, but my niceness would supply me with more than enough to live on. L
The other day, I was at Software Etc. in the mall, looking through the games for something interesting. There was this woman there with a small child, looking for a game for him. They looked at several titles, and always checked the ESRB rating. After some time, I went and picked up Ape Escape 2, then approached the lady and said “Excuse me, but can I recommend this? It got very good reviews, and as you can see, it’s rated E for Everyone.” After a little back-and-forth between mother and son, they left with it.
That’s something I could get paid for–working in a video game store. Not paid very well,. mind you, but it’d still be a paying job.
I get paid AND I’m very much encouraged to be nice. I get cookies(movie passes) if I’m caught being nice and if I’m repeatedly nice, I get bigger and better cookies. (Gift certs for fancy dinners, day spas, that sort of thing) Since I am naturally nice, I get as many cookies as I can use.
Being nice would be difficult though. Sometimes, to be nice in the long run, you must be mean in the short term. As a throw out example, I’m thinking of a doctor giving a child a shot. To the child, she certainly is not nice. But when that kid isn’t puking his guts out because Bobbie had the flu and sneezed all over him, then the doctor’s actions certainly were nice.
I’d say that part of my job is being paid to be nice. We have an aspect of customer service in our office and I try to bend over backwards to make things easier for our “customers”. (They are a captive market so they don’t have a real choice but I try to accommodate them as far as absolutely possible.) I wouldn’t have to (previous person was much more of a hardliner) but to me part of success is knowing that people regard me as someone they look forward to approaching with issues, etc., because our interactions have been positive ones.
I often volunteer to do free mammogram testing at the local hospital. They often return my charity by giving me a free ride in the back of a police car…
