Friday, June 29, 2007

What nice are you? Updated!

No, I haven't had damage to the grammatical hemisphere of my brain. It is just that there are various ways to be nice. And in this post, I'll enumerate some of them:

Ignoring nice: This is the American way. Everybody smiles at you - not just a : but a real :), but no one really cares. So, you may see a cute girl jogging on the road, smile at you and say "How you doin'?", but don't let it brighten your day, because before you can think of something nice to tell her, she is out of audio range.

Phony nice: Similar to ignoring nice. This is the nice that is put on by people putting you down, albeit softly. The lips are drawn into a smile, but the brain hasn't changed the tone of the voice - which is usually the giveaway.

Patronising nice: This is how some brilliant people respond to ideas suggested by lesser mortals. Their upbringing won't let them be harsh or rude, and at the same time they don't want to give credence to a remark made by someone who is clearly a lesser human being. So, they smile, nod, pretend to listen, and thank you for your comments, while their brains are trying to solve a completely unrelated NP-hard problem in polynomial time.

HR Nice: This is the easiest one to understand. One of the traits taught by every management school to every HR major, HR nicety is keeping a large smile on your face, saying "Hail Caesar" with a really sweet voice, while stabbing Caesar in the back. Beware of the HR smile. It usually means "I'm screwing you" or "I'm making you screw yourself". Note how the HR smile is never accompanied by a "no". You could call the HR person a jerk, a whatchagonnacallit, but he or she won't lose the smile. The one drawback of this smile is that it is universally employed, and therefore can be detected with the greatest ease, while putting up the smile facade expends enormous amounts of energy.

You know of any more? Post them in the comments section.

PS: While you are at it, try looking for an "updated" logo on the net. Some picture with the "Updated" text in it. It should expose a lot of the limitations of today's search engines :)

2 comments:

Samarth said...

Oh, so now I know how you were so nice!

Raghu Kuvempunagar said...

ನಮಸ್ಕಾರ ಸಾರ್! ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲೂ ಬ್ಲಾಗಿಸಿ ಲೈಫ್ ನಿಮ್ಮದಾಗಿಸಿ :)