If you listened to episode #10 of the Planet Hawkins podcast that I did with Karen Straughan, one of the things you may have particularly enjoyed hearing us talk about was “nice guys.” If you want to know why being a “nice guy” doesn’t work with women, this slightly edited transcript of our conversation about nice guys will explain it.
John Hawkins: Now I’m getting close to closing out here and there’s one of your videos I particularly liked. It’s called Look out! It’s a nice guy. Destroy Him! 11! I think it had over a million views. It’s very popular, very entertaining. I thought it was an interesting subject in that pretty much everybody craps on nice guys. And you told a really entertaining story about Jane and Scott. I guess those are pseudonyms and tied it into nice guys. Could you maybe tell that story here and take a couple of minutes to talk about nice guys?
Karen Straughan: Well, Jane was 18 when she started working at where I work and Scott was, I believe 19 and he was always sort of the prankster of the restaurant and really got along with everybody. But he was so sweet on her. She had a boyfriend who was older than her, who made a lot of money. I remember her coming in one day and complaining about the $800 her boyfriend had spent on her hair. She’d gone and gotten it straightened, cut, hair extensions, dye, and all this stuff – and she was just not satisfied with it. She just thought it didn’t look good. And I’m thinking to myself what the….like this 800 bucks on your hair.
So anyway, Scott would just trip over himself to do her work. You know, servers have side work to do. You don’t just wait tables and collect money and pocket tips. You actually have some other work cleaning duties. Restocking and stuff. He would be there to help her. One day when she didn’t realize he was standing within earshot, she says to me, Scott’s doing all my work for me. He’s totally my b*tch. Yeah. And he just quit and walked out.