Mr. Nice Guy

That's what can happen when you just want to be nice to people. And wasn't it, Peter pondered, that some time ago someone had told him it was so nice to see his smiling face in the shop taken that most people couldn't be bothered to even say hello. Peter had taken that to be a compliment, and although he didn't now go around smiling on purpose or even expediently, he had never expected to be so radically misunderstood.

(Microsoft Media)

The other day, when he was in a take-away café of one sort or another, he said yesterday, he engaged in a bit of small talk with the girl behind the counter who was preparing his cappuccino. Her colleague who normally served at this time of the day seemed instead not to even want to serve him and didn't even look at him, so girl number 2 was now preparing the beverage for him.

Initially, he didn't think much about it, but later the thought crossed his mind that perhaps girl number 1 had refused to serve him - which was underlined by her not even looking at him - because she might have found him creepy as if he had wanted to chat her up.

Nothing, however, was further from the truth. Peter was simply a light-hearted fellow who couldn't just stand there and wait for things to be ready for him and in the meantime look grumpily at people as if they were mere characters in a TV movie, or look at the floor or the ceiling or out the window.

(Microsoft Media)

Instead, Peter was a bit of a chatterbox in order to pass the time and in the hope of making other people feel better and more appreciated instead of simply looked at as if they were mere extensions to the cash registers or coffee machines, not worth having a decent conversation with.

How could that girl have misunderstood his motives so much? It was almost as if being publically reprimanded for making a slimy pass at a young woman who could have been Peter's daughter. How disgusting, Peter concluded. He was determined not to go there ever again. He was outright appalled and couldn't calm down about the matter any more.

He finally found solace in his decision to give that café a wide berth from then on and even decided to spend less on coffee anyway.