I’ve spent a lifetime being nice.  And honestly, the harder I worked and the nicer I became, the more people took advantage of my positive attitude.

“Oh she won’t mind if I promote someone else to the position she really wants.” “Oh she will be perfectly fine if I steal one of her ideas and make it my own.”

“Oh, she’ll be fine if I do a less than stellar job on a project she hired me for.”

“I mean she’s nice, I can totally take advantage of her, can’t I?”

Well guess what?  Once you hit your 40’s, you stop being so nice.  I remember having bosses who were in their 40’s and I could never understand why they could be so nasty and crazy when I worked with them but now I totally get it.  A woman in her 40’s who is used to working with colleagues who are dedicated professionals, honest, trustworthy and hard-working cannot deal with mediocrity.  While I have spent my entire career being nice to peers and colleagues, I’ve officially reached my breaking point.

I have watched time and again how nasty and cutthroat women get ahead and I now understand why. They don’t stand for people’s BS and they call people out when they are disappointed in their work. As I stand at the intersection of nice and nasty, I’m about to take a path that’s totally out of character.

Is it so wrong to expect people to have the same high standards as me?  I am tired of people taking advantage of my good nature and I want people not to make excuses for sub par work.  One and done.  That is my motto. I will be nice up to a point and if you do something that rubs me the wrong way, trust me, I will let you have it.  No more Mrs. Nice Gal.  For me, Bitch is the new Nice.