I try to be kind, upbeat, etc in my interactions with other people, especially at work. I want to treat others well, work together peacefully, and leave the project happy. I’ve noticed that some people (particularly more curmudgeonly folks) seem to read that attitude as naïveté, and feel like they can walk all over me or treat me like I don’t know what I’m talking about. Why is that?
I treat people being overly kind as deceptive.
Why is that?
Some people use kindness as deception.
Being overly kind or love bombing is manipulation tactic number one employed by a narcissist.
It’s a common manipulation tactic and one unintelligent people tend to fall for hook, line, and sinker.
I use it all the time at work to lull people into a sense of safety to make them relax and fall back into the behavior I want to nail them for.
Oftentimes a person will do something they’re not supposed to do, but won’t do it around the manager. I’m the assistant manager and for whatever reason, people will do something they’re NOT supposed to do around me and then wonder how the manager keeps finding out. I never let them know it was me and neither does my boss and people simply do not catch on for whatever reason.
I don’t seek out people to report them, but I do have a duty to my manager and the company to make sure everyone does what they’re supposed to. Even had one idiot stealing drinks and offer me one. Don’t steal, it’s not worth your job.
More like Dagwood_Snitchwich.
They’re the assistant manager, it’s literally their job to help manage the team. Don’t do stupid shit in front of management and you won’t get in shit, it’s not rocket science.
I do my job. They do their job and there’s no problem. My job is to take over for the manager when he’s not there and to be his extra set of eyes and ears.
There are many things at play in situations such as you describe. One of which is often a form of jealousy “I don’t feel happy, so you shouldn’t either”. People often don’t even realize they do this, sub conscious.
They probably don’t intend to be negative, just haven’t found a way to better be.
Likely because they were once upbeat and positive people too and it didn’t get them what they want so they have changed their ways to be less positive.
So anybody who is still positive, in their experience, hasn’t learned yet that that isn’t going to get them what they want.
It might be a defense mechanism. They were taken advantage of when they were more open and positive.
It might just be bad learned behavior. The people who have what they want aren’t very positive to them.
It is also not easy to stay positive so a lot of people choose not to. Sometimes we like to make excuses for why people are able to do the harder things that we’re not doing. “Oh I would volunteer too if I had as much time as them.”. “Oh I am just not naive enough to be that positive”
I was gonna say something similar, it’s not so much about being nice, it’s about being happy.
Some people were taught that being an asshole is good; hence, being nice is bad.
Finna git mine. 💰💵🌐🪣🦀🔪🔫
I support your endeavours!
I mean the reason you have to ask is kind of… why
We’re in mostly a capitalistic world. Capitalism makes utilitarianism seem easy since it becomes easy to assign a “value” to everything. That kind of thinking quickly gets you to naive cynicism. We’re conditioned to think certain things are more valuable than others - mental wellbeing and community have been steadily devalued.
There’s a saying “behind every cynic there’s a disappointed idealist”. We’re in a world where a lot of people grew up in a time of amazing technological advancement, but have been bitterly disappointed by how the world is today. These people are now getting to that age where they may have been working the same job for a while (if they got lucky with job security) and they just want to get the job done and not exert any more effort than necessary (since by their experience, it doesn’t “pay off”).
Let them be them, you do your thing. They don’t owe you any kind of behavior really, though it would be expected and polite of them to keep things at professional level of course. You don’t owe them either so you don’t have to let them bring you down. Don’t take it personally though because it really, really isn’t.
Obvs just my view. If you really want to know, you can try to just ask what they value and if you can work in a way that aligns with that while not disregarding your own values.
People sometimes have difficulty walking the line between being nice and being a doormat and let people take advantage of their kindness. This bitters some people and they start to see their own kindness as a weakness.
When this happens they tend to think people who are kind just haven’t had that bad experience yet and that they’re naive about the way the world “really works”.
I think there might be a kind of tragedy of the commons thinking there, as in “Somebody is going to take advantage of this naive person, it may as well be me.”
It’s funny, but I feel like I strive to be kind because I’m aware of how the world really works. Like, I’ve been let down by reality and know the world can be a nightmare already, so why would I want to pile even more on someone and make their life harder, you know?
You sound very sweet, OP. Never change. A lot of people are just miserable themselves and want company being miserable.
Oh, sweet summer child
/s
“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
Assholes like to rationalise their assholery by painting their victims as weak and somehow deserving it. You can very much see that in present day politics but you’ll also meet people like that in real life.
Classic wolf vs sheep paranoid reality of toxic individualism.
These people cannot fathom humanity being bigger than “strong kill weak” or “predator / prey / competitor” classifications.
Many men hold this worldview as their reality as the bro culture and toxic masculinity plays right into it.
I don’t know but sorry this is happening to you. Do not give up. It is certainly not naive, you can be most kind and firm with people, you can be kind and competent. You don’t need to be an asshole to get things done (I’m sure you have figured that out already) and I find that seeing the best in people works out better more of the time, anyway.
I’d bet that there is a lot of overlap between “people who are kind” and “people who are easily taken advantage of”.
And also thus them being stupid.
But the converse is true as well, for example the political situation in the UK with Brexit and USA with Republicans showed, that there is also a big overlap between “people who are assholes” and “people who are easily taken advantage of”.
So I think it’s rather humans are easily taken advantage of, if you know how.
There are different kinds of kindness. The people-pleasing kind may come across as being naive and triggers some people. Another kind of kindness is to actually care and be curious about others and that usually comes across better.
I’m a fan of the line from Ted Lasso: be curious, not judgmental. I try approach things from the perspective of “how can we solve this problem”, since I don’t see any good in finger pointing. You can’t change the past.
I’ll admit, I am a people pleaser at times, but it’s something I’ve worked on - identifying the line when I start to be too much of a pushover.
That’s a good quote.
Also props for recognizing your own people-pleasing tendencies. And I’m glad to hear you’ve worked on it. It takes time to understand what causes us to be like that. It might be out of fear of rejection or some other unwanted outcome. And it could be based on some irrational assumptions or beliefs.
To be able to accept any outcome in any situation is very difficult, but a strong foundation for confidence and inner peace.
Because the world is a horrible place full of horrible people that need to convince themselves that they’re not horrible people.
Or that everyone else is just as horrible as they are, so they’d feel justified in being a sloppy fart of a person.
More and more I think it’s this one. A lot of people have just convinced themselves that nobody’s perfect so it’s okay for them to be a massive piece of shit, too. There’s a lot of people who are not trying to grow or improve
Pessimists, like everyone else, feel that their way is the right way, and if you aren’t as miserable as them, you must not be doing something right.
I mean no one walks over me but I do get the sorta. oh thats cute. Im not so sure im kind though as much as polite and looking at things in terms of what works and whats right.
They think you’re easy to take advantage of. If you assume that humans are innately evil (which I don’t agree with), you’d also have to assume that kindness is a weakness.
