for Reasons I had 9 minutes to get to the post office with these orders before it closed at 4:00pm…usually not a problem bc the way I do my shipping, the labels are already on the packages and serve as de facto receipts so I don't need to stand in line, and the closest post office is 5 mins away (🙌)
so, as you can probably guess, this would be that I hit almost every single red light + got stuck behind a tractor-trailer on a street where I couldn't pass them
careen (genteely, following all road rules ofc 😇) into the post office parking lot, 3:59pm on the dot
"fuck"
I figure, fuck it, might as well just see—
—sign on the inner door has flipped, reads "Closed"
Oh well, fair enough, I turn around to go back and try the further away post office that closes at 4:30pm
tapping on the glass
It's the postal worker who's almost always there when I drop off, he opens the door and lets me dash in and drop off my orders whilst unleashing a monologue of panicked gratitude (note: by which I mean "omg thank you I was thinking that truck had got me thank you so much I am so grateful, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week!!!", it took maybe 30 seconds)
I don't know that there's a point to this story, other than it left me extremely 🥺
rambling, not the point of the story but something the story made me think about:
I also think that the more "kind vs nice" becomes Recognized Discourse, the less meaning either term really has. "Kind" and "nice" are descriptors we use for subjective experiences, many times what's "kindness" to one person is "just niceness" to another, but we don't recognize that. The Disk Horse wants these terms to be semantically static so we can use them to further clothe ourselves in perceived morality like some kind of fucked up mbti scale. Sometimes I feel like the internet is the Emperor's New Clothes if the clothes were made up of buzzwords.
(Yes yes if I had to choose I would also say being kind is better than being nice, but much like OP I have a very "¿por qué no los dos?" attitude about it in most cases. Also if you're using "kind vs nice" in a discussion about tone policing, please stop, it doesn't apply there, tone policing is about power dynamics.)
9 times out of 10 "kind vs nice" is just a shortcut for people to say "helping materially is better than helping superficially," so just say that. Especially since a lot of "kind vs nice" people would not actually want people to be "kind" in cruel ways to them?
It's wild to me to see that a lot of people who act like you have to choose between "kind" and "nice" (and say that "kind" is better) also have RSD and have a tough time when they think people dislike them even when there isn't any reason to. How does enforcing this fake dichotomy serve them or anyone else? Why does it feel weirdly controversial to say "I think you can be both and if circumstances allow, we should try?"
While we might have finite resources of either on a day-to-day basis, being "kind" and being "nice" are technically "renewable resources"
And ime, using them helps them replenish faster (within reason, don't empty yourself out for others and also, some people are just jerks and you shouldn't be nice OR kind to them unless it's for your survival).
