MY OLD MAN used to say that a great problem in this world was the nice fellow. He said he guessed the nice fellow was as much responsible for the troubles that beset humanity as any other single agency.
My old man said you take his own case for instance. He said that at various times in his life he had gone into business enterprises of one kind and another with nice fellows and that invariably they had busted him.
He said he often saw that his associates were dumb or inefficient and that they were making mistakes that would lead to ruin, and sometimes he would make suggestions to them to that effect. The suggestions never did any good, however.
He said, of course, what he should have done was to have gotten right drastic about the matter and stepped in and taken charge, and thus averted disaster, but he said his partners were always such nice fellows that he did not want to hurt their feelings. He said he could never bear to hurt a nice fellow’s feelings.
My old man said that was always his trouble on the few occasions when he rose to the position of boss of some department of his profession. He said he generally found under him a nice fellow who was totally incompetent. He said he realized he should forthwith fire that incompetent but that he could never bring himself to do that to a nice fellow.
My old man said, as a result he generally got fired himself. The department would bog down and a higher boss would come looking around to see what was the difficulty, and naturally he would blame the head of the department. My old man said never in all his life had he been able to protect himself against nice fellows.
He said he had got himself in many a jam going on notes for nice fellows or vouching for them in other ways. He said he had muffed many a chance in life because it might infringe in some manner on a nice fellow. He said he was not knocking nice fellows as a general proposition, because this would be a terrible world if there were no nice fellows in it, but that he just could not get away from the fact that a nice fellow was often a distinct menace.
My old man said a bad fellow was comparatively easy to deal with. By bad fellows he did not mean criminals or tough fellows. He meant fellows who had mean dispositions and were without consideration for their fellow men. He meant fellows who had no business scruples. He said bad fellows might be poor company from a social standpoint but at least you knew where they stood.
My old man said, for example, you would not be likely to sign a note for a bad fellow or do him any other favor that entailed responsibility on your part. He said you could refuse a bad fellow a favor without feeling any twinges of conscience about it. If you were in business with a bad fellow you could talk turkey to him without caring whether you hurt his feelings.
My old man said it was not necessary to worry about infringing on a bad fellow, like taking a deal away from him, or firing him out of a job. He said you were always likely to be on your guard against a bad fellow, while, on the other hand, you generally took a nice fellow too much for granted just because he was a nice fellow.
My old man said the nice fellow was the cause of a terrible sight of discontent and unhappiness in marriage in this country. He said many a married lady went along for years and years enduring shiftlessness in a husband because he was a nice fellow.
He said he knew married ladies right there in our old home town of Pueblo who were putting up with meagre incomes and downright privation from husbands who were such nice fellows that the ladies could not bring themselves to getting rid of them.
My old man said now if those husbands were only bad fellows along with being shiftless, their ladies would probably chuck them out on their ears in no time, but he said it was an odd thing about bad fellows that most of them seemed to be pretty good providers at home.
He said the trouble with the nice fellow is that you know he means all right in whatever he does, and that there is no malice behind any of his mistakes or shortcomings. He said that knowledge leaves you helpless. You cannot get sore at a fellow that you know means well, even though he unwittingly brings you to harm.
My old man said the nice fellow always believes firmly that he is going to fulfill any promise he makes and that at the moment of making it he really intends fulfilling it. He said that no one was ever more regretful than the nice fellow when his good intentions went to add to the thoroughfares of that place they say is paved with good intentions.