Happy & Healthy

ARE YOU NICE AT WORK?

A super nice one who brings you coffee, but just the way you like it when you come out of the traffic jam. Or she who sacrifices fifteen enormous minutes of her break to listen to your whining about that terrible morning. This specious list takes you in, takes care of you, and never lets you go. The sweetest among the sweet colleagues, that's who I mean. But there’s something going on with that, and it has EVERYTHING to do with the bank account. Strange but true.

Do you remember I told you that being nice affects your paycheck? Well, hold on tight. If you are nice or kind in the workplace, then you most likely earn less. Huh? Yes indeed. The European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology wrote about it based on a study... Conducted in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands yes, think about that for a moment. In our supposedly equal little country, exactly there. If you are nice and kind, then you are extra intensely in trouble, I tell you.

“Are you such a nice guy?”

In the Dutch electricity company in question, the focus was on 375 women. The dominant and a bit aggressive ladies saw that reflected in the numbers, in a ‘KASSAAA’ kind of way. And the sweethearts? They got less, but actually thought they got too much. Waaaaaaaat, how can that be? By the way, we forget about men, because they get about double for the same work. I could write a book about it, I find it so ridiculous. Crying with a cap on is what it is. One reassurance: the good guys at work also take home a bit less euros than the guys. In that sense, it’s not Mars and Venus.

But those nice ladies with the same disposition are meanwhile being put down. Day in and day out you pamper those colleagues, you get less. Isn’t that unfair? I suggest we should also be a bit nicer to them ourselves. And are you such a nice guy? Grow some balls and get some backbone, let someone bring you coffee and don’t take it. Really, the atmosphere in your office garden is immediately going to hell, but you do see it reflected on your payslip.