Allure of the Mean Friend | This American Life | Episode 245

Key Takeaway

Audit where you are overinvesting to win approval from demanding people. Today, pick one relationship or obligation in which you are “knocking yourself out,” define the baseline service or care you can offer without resentment, and stop adding unpaid extras for a week. The waitresses’ experiment suggests that extra emotional labor is not reliably rewarded; being efficient, clear, and pleasant can protect energy while still meeting your responsibility.

Episode Overview

This American Life examines why cruel, socially powerful people can remain magnetic—and what it costs to orbit them. Through childhood memories, a restaurant tipping experiment, a satirical portrait of backhanded friendship, and a father’s punitive bill to his son, the episode explores status, conditional belonging, transactional care, and the lingering pull of contempt.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Allure of the Mean Friend | This American Life | Episode 245 from This American Life. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

In a way, the story is always the same. There was this kid. She was mean. She was popular. It's such a fixture of childhood. You can just walk up to a kid on the sidewalk or at a public pool and they'll tell you. The popularist is this girl. She's um in my grade. She's really mean and she has a lot of friends. I wanted to play with her and then she had no friends so she said yeah. The other day I wanted to play with her again and her friends were there and she said, "Get lost." Sometimes she she be being mean to my sister and I don't like that.

She always telling somebody what they can and can't do. She act like she the boss of people. She real bossy. She She think she got the rhythm in her gear. I'm mostly the popular one in my class, but I have a lot of other popular friends. Um, this boy in my class, he liked me and every time he would come by me, I would tell him to get out of my way. Everybody says that he's the like the nerdiest boy in our class. He'll start bothering me and me and my friends.

I'll tell him to leave us alone. My friends even tell him, "Don't even look at her." I talked to a high school sophomore about all this, Lily Allison, 15, in Woodsole, Massachusetts. And she said in high school anyway, it's kind of like the laws of nature. Someone always will end up on top. Cuz there's always going to be the girls who are the most popular and then that the guys look at the most and then get the friends because they're so pretty. There's always going to be those girls.

Hm. And um I think once people get the the idea that they have that power, they're going to use it and they know that they can be mean to people and still be loved by everyone. You have nothing to lose. So why don't you go ahead and be mean to everybody that's not as good as you. In Lily's class, the girls like that, the popular ones have been her best friends. When I became friends with them, it was in seventh grade and there was none of that.

It was before like it was before the superlatives. It was before there wasn't most attractive, right? Like I'll admit I was one of those girls until the first time they kicked me out of their little group and then I saw how it really is. That's what we were. We were the four blondes. And what was it like to be one of those girls? Um it was fun, you know? I mean the the attention is kind of fun. Look at them looking at us. It's fun. It makes you feel powerful.

I mean like part of being one of the four blondes is that everybody does the same thing. shaves their legs every day, has a perfect matching outfit. You know what I mean? Yeah. Makeup always has to be perfect. Not too much, not too little, suck up to the teachers. Like I remember I went like two weeks without wearing a skirt and one of them called me and was like, "You have to wear a skirt tomorrow. You've worn pants too many days in a row." And if you don't fit that, then you get a you get kicked out for a little while.

Lily got kicked out at the beginning of the summer. She made a mistake. She didn't do what the other girls wanted at some party. So, they called her up to kick her out. One of them is like she's the mean one. It's kind of like the Spice Girls. We all have our own little like identity. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's like the tough one, the cute one, the smart one. You know what I mean? And the mean one. Yeah. And so when we all got in this fight, they called me up and they put the mean one on the phone.

They'd tell her what to say what to say. She'd say it to me, then put me on hold, figure out what else they wanted her to say, and then say it. Wait, they they put you on hold, so you just sit there on hold, waiting for them to come up with the next mean thing. That's right. And they didn't even realize how mean it was. Of course, it doesn't always end in high school. And this isn't just about teenage girls. There are popular bullies in business and in politics.

Some very successful ones in politics. Our movies and TV shows are full of them. Today in our show, the allure of the mean friend and what is so alluring about them in the first place explained from WBEZ Chicago, it's this American life. Am Ira Glass? Our show today in four acts. Act one, return to the scene of the crime. In that act, Jonathan Goldstein interrogates the girls, now grown up, and terrorized him and his classmates years ago in school, and finds that they can be just as scary as ever.

Act two, does neness pay? In that act, we conduct a little scientific experiment on tape with hidden microphones about whether niceness can triumph and be rewarded in a normal business setting, a setting that will surely be familiar to you. Act three, and what's going on with you? A case study in every word out of a friend's mouth, meaning its exact opposite. Act four, keeping it in the family. In that act, Bernard Cooper's amazing story about the bill that he got from his own father for well, the entire cost of his childhood.

Stay with us. This is American Life. Today's program is a rerun. Act one, return to the scene of the crime. It wasn't hard for Jonathan Goldstein to find the girl who terrorized him in high school. Up until a year ago, they were roommates. Sometimes when I'm talking with my friend Jackie Cohen, I will suddenly stop and just look at her. I look at her as though I have only just then realized who it is I am sitting there talking with. Jackie Cohen, I will say, shaking my head in disbelief.

Jackie Cohen. For you see, Jackie Cohen was the meanest, most popular girl in our junior high, a shepherd among sheep. Nowadays, Jackie Cohen and I are friends, good friends. In fact, for 2 years we were roommates, during which time she was a very nurturing figure in my life, cooking for me, taking care of the bills, and doing most if not all of the cleaning. My domestic role was confined to stuff like drinking Jim Beam and keeping her up past her bedtime with my impression of Robert Dairo and Edith Bunker doing the lobster scene from Annie Hall.

Alvie, a lobster crawled into my place. Just the same, sometimes when I feel like it, I can see her through the eyes of my grade seven self. And when I do that and say the words Jackie Cohen, it is as though it is no longer just a name of the woman before me, but a name for something famous like a soft drink or a rock band. If I could go back in time and tell the young Jonathan Goldstein that one day he would be friends with the most popular girl at Western Laval Junior High, that young Jonathan Goldstein, taking in the utter absurdity of such a proposition, would laugh convulsively until his nose produced mucus and his eyeglasses needed adjusting.

Let me explain to you the power that was Jackie Cohen's. So great was her authority that in grade seven, my best friend, Robert Colic, wore a three-piece suit to school with the intention of asking her out for Sulaki. I'll never forget the exhilarated look on his face as he ran back to our locker bank to tell me that while Jackie Cohen had turned him down, she did say that they could be high by friends. This meant that when they saw each other in the halls, they could nod to each other, "Hi and bye." Robert loosened his neck tie like a middle-aged ad exec who had just closed an important account.

Another thing was that Jackie Cohen didn't like bad smells. She liked nice smells like perfumed fancy erasers or freshly mimographed sheets of paper. So if someone's smell was not to her taste, she would leave a note on their desk. The note would read, "You smell. use deodorant. Jackie Cohen would call it being honest. Jackie Cohen was also the only 13-year-old girl in school who could actually pull off a successful withering look. There was a month where I sat behind her and one time during a French dictation, I was seized with an uncontrollable attack of coughing.

It would later be diagnosed as a whooping cough that would leave me in bed for a week with a fever of 103. But at that moment, it was nothing more, nothing less than a nuisance to Jackie. She let me know this by whipping her head around, her straight brown hair lashing about like a thousand throwing stars and witheringly looking me straight in the eye. Jackie turned back around and I grit my teeth, vowing not to allow a single cough to escape my mouth. My eyes tearing, I clenched my fists and I trembled.

I knew objectively speaking that Jackie Cohen's dictacion was more important than my own health. I knew that. The teacher, finally seeing my condition, sent me out to get some water. At the fountain, just as I was about to drink, my knees buckled and I began to throw up. I wasn't the kind of kid who vomited much, and the experience felt very personal, sort of like crying in your underwear. The special ed teacher in the room next to the bathroom came out and walked me back to my class.

Jackie, who sat beside the door, as was the want and responsibility of the most popular, let me in. Seeing me, she gave me this look. Not the withering look I had grown accustomed to, but another look, a look that until then I had only seen on the face of adults. It was a look of profound pity. I saw in that look a sorrow for everything she had ever put me through. And for years, I held that look close to my heart. Jackie had really good hair.

This is Mary Clode. She was Jackie's best friend all through school and they're still best friends now. Very good hair, nicely layered, kind of feathered, and she had a special technique. Well, first of all, she always walked around with a comb in her back pocket that stuck out for all to see. And uh we'd go to the bathroom. A big part of the day, of course, was going to the bathroom. And she had a special technique. She'd bend her head over. She'd count one, two, three, and then take her two index fingers and say flip and flip her hair back.

And then it would fall like the feathers would all fall beautifully in place. What was Jackie Cohen's allure? Did people like her despite the fact that she was mean, or did they like her because she was so mean? I think it was a bit of both cuz when you were with her, you felt really alive and she was so fun and she was so full of life. So, it was great being with her, but then before you knew it, you were on the outs. She was looking for a certain quality and if you didn't have it, you got kicked out, you know?

So, it was also maybe like the the fun excitement of never knowing when your turn was going to come to be on the outs, you know, and you were always trying to do your best to stay on the inside. So, it's pretty exciting. Did Did she ever Did I mean, did did my name ever come up in junior high? Did she ever did she ever mention my name? Oh, yeah. I remember a time you were new to school. You're the new kid. And uh I wanted to go over to talk to you and Jackie said, "Oh, no.

Don't go talk to him, Mary. Don't talk to him. He looks dirty." She thought I looked dirty. Yeah, she did. That That was how my name came up. Yeah, that you look dirty. You were the dirty looking new kid. Okay, first of all, the new kid. The party Mary Clo is referring to was in grade six. I had been going to that school since grade three. I was in the same school as them, evidently completely unnoticed for 3 years. And second of all, dirty. Although my boyhood twelet was second to none.

And although I was facely hairless, for some strange reason, I gave off the distinct impression of having a 5:00 shadow all over my body. So, I decided to confront these slanderous accusations at their source. Ladies and gentlemen, Jackie Cohen. Jackie Cohen. John, please don't tell me the whole interview is going to be like this. I asked Jackie Cohen if she remembered calling me dirty and new to Mary Clo and she said she did. I then asked her to repeat the very line to me right to my face.

You know what I said? Come on. Why don't you say it? All right, I will. All right, fine. You said don't talk to him because he's dirty. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe I was dirty. You were and you still are. Jackie Cohen and I spent a very combative hour talking during which time she would not admit to any actual meanness. The furthest she would go in making any kind of concession was in acknowledging that back then she quote took care of business. A whole lot of business.

Listen, no one's on trial. Okay? We're here just two friends chatting. No, Jackie Cohen did not think she was mean in school. Take the whole story of Robert Cool asking her out in junior high. you know, Mr. High by and she stood firmly behind her actions. Well, Jonathan, he was wearing a three-piece suit and his voice was like several octaves too high. What am I going to say to the guy? Yes. And and not only did I tell him no, but I left him with his dignity.

I actually had him thinking that we had a good thing going. We're going to be high bye friends. So, so what you're saying is that you're you're defending it. You're saying it was actually it's it's a it's a nice thing that you did. It was very nice. Wasn't he very happy when he came into the room? He was happy, but I mean, he didn't know any better. Exactly. You want me to go on a date with that guy? Feel the way that laugh shivers you down to your toes.

The way it taunts as it entices. That is the effect of a popular mean girl's laughter. The truth is that Jackie Cohen is no longer a popular mean girl at all. She's actually a doctor who works with the homeless. She's a really good person. But I still can't help relating to her as though the old Jackie Cohen is still somewhere buried inside of her. Let me ask you this. Mhm. What What What happens to the mean girl? Is Is the mean always there? John, these questions are boring, man.

No, you don't like that one. That's okay. Okay, let's let's say okay. Okay, let's do a little bit of role playing, shall we? Okay, now you're going to be the grade eight Jackie Cohen and I'm going to be the grade eight Jonathan Goldstein. Okay, and I'm in the uh you know I'm in the Western Laval Junior High Radio Club and I'm I'm sitting there to interview you. All right. Okay, here we go. Okay. Um Jackie. Yeah. Can I can I have um can I have a bit of your time to interview you?

Uh no. Why? I'm busy. But you're just But thank you. But you're just leaning against the locker. You're not But thank you, Jonathan. I'm really not interested. No, you see, you wouldn't even You wouldn't even be that polite. You're right. Honestly, I would have laughed and walked away. You see, this was the Jackie Cohen that I never got to talk to anymore. She's never like this. I mean, sure, she's always eager to let me know when someone in the room smells better than me, and she's quick to point out that my pasty white gut jiggles when I play air guitar, but it always feels like a mere taste of the greatness that once was.

So, we continued to parry and thrust our way along. Is this over yet? And eventually, the subject came around to Jackie's older sister, Moren. Now, let me just explain to you Moren. As mean and popular as Jackie Cohen was, Moren Cohen was more mean and more popular. Well, my sister definitely taught me some of the tricks of the trade by being very, very, very cruel with me, very bossy, very demanding. She would say that really she was doing me a big favor because without her, I would never have made it in this world, that I was just such a boring, nice little kid.

And, you know, she added a lot of spice to my life. In the pursuit of my mean popular girl scholarship, I knew I now had to talk with Moren. I was not in the same city as her, so I asked my friend Joshua Karpati if he would be good enough to go to her house and hold a mic to her while we talked on the phone. Josh has been scared of Moren for years. And here he was sitting with her in her living room while her seven-year-old played on the floor at their feet.

As Meen provided a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of her thoughts and actions, Josh sat just a few inches from her, a microphone gripped in his sweaty, nervous hand. And as I talked with her, Moren acknowledged that she had been mean in high school. She made no bones about it. And to her, there was nothing to regret. It was high school, and that's just how people acted. The way you had this image of me of being really mean all the time, but in an alluring way. You know what I mean?

Like people crave it somehow. Like obviously it works. Well, some people like to be abused and you just sort of like tap into it, you know? Right. And then you and you satisfy that craving that they're not even entirely aware of. That's right. Well, how do you detect that? I don't know. You you talk to someone and you you you you just you feel whether or not you know you can play with them or not. Like I think Josh loves the fact that I pay that kind of attention to him.

Josh, the young man who's holding the microphone for you right now. Yeah, he's so scared he won't even look at me. At this point, I started to get worried for Joshua. He had been reluctant even to go to Morin's house. So, I knew that at that point, as Moren spoke his name, he was a shaky, disoriented mess. Can you ask Josh if he's nervous with you right now? Josh, are you nervous around me right now? He doesn't want to answer because I'm here. Uh, can you just put him on the phone for one second so I can ask him?

Yeah. Here. Hold on. He wants to ask you a question. Hello. Can you Are you afraid to talk in front of her? You know, you're afraid. Just say yes if you're afraid. Yes. Okay. Has she got you on your guard? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. When I was finished speaking with Moren, I called Josh up on his cell phone and he talked with me from his car. It's so hot in this car. I tell you, man, you know, you should be paying me extra. So, what was it like in there?

Uh, I got to tell you, it was a little intimidating. There's a certain type of woman uh you know, usually uh either Jackie or related to Jackie that really um you know, they know how to put me in my place. So when she says that that that people there are some people who crave to be abused, you would be one of those people. She was looking directly at me when she said that. She was looking directly at me and she was pointing at me with her index finger.

You know, not a lot of mystery there. But why this allure? Why why are we so drawn to these to these uh mean girls? Because they know. They look at you and they know. other other women who are nice or who are too timid, they try to pretend that you're not who you are, which is garbage. But someone like Moren or Jackie, they they look right at you and say, "I know you're garbage. You know you're garbage. Why pretend? You know, I'm I'm never going with you.

I'm marrying the dentist. I'm not even going to look at you. And uh you're going to come over to my house, which is the biggest house I've ever seen in my entire life. And you're going to say, "You see this garbage? This is what a real man provides for me." You know, you come here and you tape me for your stupid friend's radio show and then you get the hell out while I pick up my children whom I got through having sex with my dentist husband in my big house.

Now get the out, garbage out. Well, I mean, with you, she thinks of you as a harmless eccentric, you know, like a like a 90-year-old English guy pottering about in his garden. Me, she sees like a like an unwelcome dog turd, you know, that somebody's tucked in from outside. And it's it it hurts me. It really hurts me. I mean, I think it would be too strong to say that I love Moren, but I I love Moren. I you know, I I Yeah, want equals fear.

Wait, wait. Is it the fear that that that um Look, John, I'm not a sociologist. I I I don't know what's going on. I'm a piece of garbage to her and it makes me want to just crawl up next to her and you know like like a like a flea on a tick on a dog, you know? I I just want some of that good good blood, you know, even if it's my own blood. What about when Jackie said that like like that like saying that you could be high by friends is actually a nice thing.

What what do you think of that to that guy who asked her out? Hi by friends. You know, you know, you know, you know what high friends really means? It means that when that guy went home later that night and hang and hanged himself. This is that's the sound the rope made. My my Jackie Cohen. Jackie Cohen. Do you um do you miss that that that that person that was able to do those kinds of things? No, but I think you do. I think you miss the mean Jackie Cohen.

I think you really do. You inquire about her a lot. I think you do. Is the sky that unleashes a bolt of lightning into the forehead of a friendly woodsman mean? Is it mean of the ravenous lion to devour the frightened zebra? As the first terrible bite sink into his legs and stomach, does the zebra look into the lion's eyes as though to say, "Why are you doing this to me, friend? And why, by my very nature, have I demanded it?" When I bring all this up with Jackie, I realize that only the zebra would do a story like this.

The lion could care less. Jonathan Goldstein, his podcast Heavyweight, will be returning this fall for a ninth season. Now, with Pushkin Industries, there are already some new episodes in their feed. You can find it wherever you get your podcast. Fact two. Does niceness pay? Okay, sure, niceness might not get you the most friends in high school. Niceness might not help your career in the NFL or on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange or in any super competitive line of work. But you would think that there might be a place for it somewhere, like for instance, waitressing.

The whole point of the job is to help somebody else. Well, consider this story. A waitress in Chicago named Troy Morris was working a Friday night shift with another waitress, Amy Regali. Here's Troy. I work with her Friday night and she was almost in tears because the tips just for the last week have been horrible, horrible, horrible. Like she's getting less than 15%. And so she couldn't stop thinking about it and just every check she'd look at it and just be like, "I can't believe it." And she's just like, "I can't do this anymore.

Look at people hate me. This is Amy. Like, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm trying so hard to do everything perfect and all of these people are tipping me below. It made no sense. She'd been there 4 years, longer than anybody. Knew the menu better. Give very quick service. And on the niceness scale, here's the word Troy uses to describe Amy. Super helpful. She's the sweetest person and smiles and just patient and um caring. On Sunday, Amy worked again and this time Amy says her attitude was different.

I definitely went into it with this attitude of kind of giving up. Just like I wash my hands of this. I'm just going to serve them and walk away cuz I cuz I was so frustrated. And what happened to your tips? They were great. There were a lot of them over 20%. It was wild. And I came in cuz we switch shifts like she's getting off and I'm coming on and she's just like totally beaming really happy. I made great tips. She's like, I can't believe it.

Now I know what to do. Not be as nice. Yeah. Just not care. We can actually quantify exactly how much niceness was costing Amy. The difference between 15% tips and 20% tips works out to around $50 per shift. Is it possible that any waitress could make more money by being less nice? We decided to do a little experiment to find out. We would wire two waitresses with hidden microphones and then have them be super nice to half their tables and cool, aloof with the other half.

They'd give equally good service to both tables. We did our experiment at the restaurant where Troy and Amy work, Lula Cafe in Chicago's Logan Square. It's the kind of place that everybody always wants to have in their neighborhood. Small, wonderful food that's not expensive. Today's show is a rerun, but back in 2003 when we did this experiment, half the entre cost six bucks or less. There was Moroccan couscous. There was vegetarian sushi. There were lots of carefully made sandwiches. Amy had no interest in being wired for sound, but Troy was game.

Like most of the staff, she's younglook. She wore a neon zebra skirt and calf high boots to work. Her arms were bare, so you could see her tattoos. Okay, that's that is really good. It's a little bit of a lighter, like brighter flavor. Here she is with one of the tables that she's being nice to. Table number four, winning them off a glass of wine that she thinks won't go with her meal. So, just so you know, it's like a little bit on the sweet side.

You want like something fuller? Is that what you're thinking? In 2 minutes, Troy has their whole story. They're visiting from out of town. They seem to be falling in love, and they found this very non-ouristy, out of the way place through careful research. She praises them on their homework. Good job, you guys. Nice is her usual style as a waitress. She recommends specials. She chats. She's a sweetheart. Being aloof, took a little more effort for her. So, um, table two that just sat down. Normally, I would have already talked to them, but I make him wait a little while.

When she finally goes to table two, which has three serious looking people in their 40s, she doesn't ask them how they are or if they have any questions about the menu. She doesn't recommend the sturgeon, which is her favorite, or anything else. These are her first and practically only words to table. Hello. Have you guys decided? When they ask her to recommend a wine, she swallows and tells them, "You know what? All those red wines will go good with what you're getting." Quite honestly. And then there was the guy sitting at the bar alone, noticeably good-looking, reading the New York Times.

Troy gave me the rundown. He's regular guy that always sits there and orders a lot and he never tips great. who always tips like just exactly 15%. Perfect for the experiment. Usually Troy liked talking with him. If she played it aloof, would her tip go up? She walked over and he asked her what she was up to these days. Oh, you know, working. Did you change your hair? He said, "Is it different?" "Maybe I washed it." And so, hours pass. People finish their meals. And when Troy starts collecting their money, the early results all seem to point in one direction.

Take table two. The table she barely spoke with. Troy handed me their check. How does it look? Okay, doing a little math here. Table two, you're 17.6% is what they tipped. Oh, really? And I wasn't nice to them at all. And yet they tipped over 15%, which is good. Oh, I can't wait to see what table five tipped. Let me look. Table five was the hardest table by far. Very demanding. And she was very attentive. Check this out. Okay, table five. You were sucking up too.

Like I've never I've never seen crazy. I got them to go food. I picked out their wine. I helped them figure out what food they wanted. And look, it was $84 and I got $13 tip. And I was so nice to them. So that's just a little over 15. Wow. And he they were the most demanding and I spent the most time with them than anybody. But the biggest revelation of the night came when Troy retrieved the check from that guy who was sitting at the bar.

I can't believe this. Look at this. Okay, remember the guy who I said I'm always nice to him, but he always tips like the minimal most. He tipped 20%. I was mean to him for the first time. Look it. Can you believe that? Wow. He tips five five bucks. Over 20% never. That's never happened. And it totally I can't believe it. That's hilarious. But That's really disturbing. I have to be mean to him now anymore. By the end of the first night, it seemed pretty clear aloofness pays.

But then when I came back a second night and hooked up a second waitress with a hidden wireless microphone, I got very different results. The second waitress, Cali Roach, is 23 with super short hair. She laughs at a local restaurant reviewer referred to her in the paper as a waifress. And on her night, everyone tipped 20%. Or even a touch more. That was true of the regulars who she was aloof to. It was true of the man who Cali doted on who was taking his grown daughter out to dinner.

It was true of the couple who Calli joked around with about their difficult to open bottle of wine after the struggle. Yeah, I got like little hand higgies. I'm like, jeez, this is even the other waitress working on Wednesday, Natalie, who does not have an aloof bone in her body, was getting 20% and more from every table. And the more I talked to Cali and Troy and Amy and the rest of the staff, the more everyone agreed. The majority of their customers are just set in their ways.

They'll give whatever they always give in any restaurant like this to any server. Sure, you get a handful of customers like the guy Troy waited on at the bar who you can nudge this way or that through force of personality, but it's just a few tables every shift. And that's all Troy and I were seeing that first night. This is Natalie. 50% of the people will tip exactly the same whether they get great service or, you know, they might tip a little less for lousy service, but most people they tip what they're going to tip or, you know, I've noticed a lot of people just look at the first two numbers on the check and and and we'll double it or round down.

You know, there's there's a pattern and people tip the same. I think generally if you're not chatty and overly nice, you'll still get the same tip. Here's Callie. You can just tell that people are going to tip you 18% cuz they got their food when they wanted it. And it doesn't matter how much you're, you know, giggling and inquisitive. Like Sundays, Sundays, I usually get tipped $4 or5 every table. Doesn't matter what I do. Because of this, she says she has a policy. And she's only half joking as she says this, but she tries to limit the number of times that she smiles at customers or shows her approval to exactly two times.

Two times. First time when they place their order, she always tells them what a very fine choice they made. And then she smiles. And then at the end of the meal, she drops off the check and she smiles a second time. As if to say, you see, I do like you. Because done wrong, she says, friendliness not only will not pay, friendliness can cost you. Um because if you're nice and enjoying yourself, they don't need to make you feel any better. They already think you're having a good time.

That's my theory is they already think you're having a good time. Why? They're going to tip you for having fun. You know, if you're like, you know, if you're doing it just to get through it, you know, they know that you're working. Troy and Amy have also decided that niceness has its limits. for the first time in their years of waitressing. Because of these discussions in the last two weeks, they have both stopped knocking themselves out running around for their most demanding tables. They're efficient. They're pleasant.

But that's it. This is what they've learned. It's not that aloofness pays. It's that niceness doesn't pay. Thanks to the owners of the Lula Cafe who want to assure you that this is a rerun you're hearing and that they no longer let radio shows conduct experiments on their customers. In fact, in 2024, they won a James Beard Award specifically for outstanding hospitality. Those waitresses, Amy, Troy, and Cali, are no longer at Lula. Troy and one of the owners of the cafe, Leah Childs, were in a Chicago band called Tula.

This song is from the band's album, Step into the Stars. She knows where she's going. She's on time. She's in time. Coming up. If You seem so nice. Why do I feel so bad? And more. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This is American Life from Myra Glass. Each week in our program, of course, we choose some theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, the allure of the mean friend. What is it about?

We've arrived at act three of our show. Act three. And what's going on with you? We have this from Mike Albo. You're here early. Oh my god. Do you have my scarf? Did you bring it? No, that's okay. No, it's just that I got it in India when I was there and it's just this really beautiful thing and I really treasure it. It's just really important to me. It's not like the cheaply made Barney's Co-op stuff that you buy. I don't mean you buy. I mean you buy.

Oh, I wish you would have remembered. No, that's okay. You're so flaky. Are you sick? You look sort of tired. Is there something wrong? Oh, you went out drinking last night. It's so great how you can still do that. You're so crazy. Did you throw up? Oh, no. I just mouth throw up for a second. Okay. So, I didn't want you to hear this from someone else, but I just made $2 million. Yeah. So, I'm pretty happy about it. My agent's pretty happy about it. It's just really lucky cuz, you know, like with the recession, it's like I made my money before the apocalypse and I'll be able to live comfortably.

It's just sort of locked in. And I can't tell you about the details of the deal, but if you could just do me a huge, huge favor and just don't mention it to anyone. I know you have sort of a problem being discreet. H. Oh, order something. Oh, no. No. I'm not drinking anymore. Oh, no. Go ahead, have fun. I'm just not drinking anymore. I just realized there's a little bit more to life. But go ahead, have fun. You're so crazy. So, what's up with you?

Oh my god. When was the last time I saw you? I am totally hanging out with Toby Magguire and Ree and Ryan and David Blaine. We jokingly call it the Millionaires Club. Oh, you know that children's book I wrote really fast for no reason. It's a funny sunny day. Well, I just found out it's selling like crazy and can barely stay on the shelves. And I got another voiceover gig. It's weird. They just like my voice. I don't even have to leave home. I just call it in.

I don't know. It's I just sort of fell into it. You should try it. But it's really hard to get into. But you should try it. You're looking for a place. Good luck. God, it's so hard to find a good place right now. This guy called me and begged me to take his beautiful 4,000t loft space. It's $300, but he's actually paying me to live there forever. So, what's going on with you? I think your body looks good. It's normal. It's a normal body. Really? Well, that's too bad.

Well, I just feel like you need a little bit more confidence in yourself. You know, like like I feel like I'm a direct person. I say what I feel. You're more you're more I don't know what you are, but I have to say I don't know how you do it. I'm so glad I'm not single. It looks so hard. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I just ran into Carl. No, he looks good. He's good. He's good. Yeah, he says he hasn't talked to you. No, he seems like he's moving forward.

I mean, you guys broke up and he's just sort of moving on with his life. He's in this really good relationship right now and they just bought this huge beautiful place upstate and they're fixing it up together. We just had a really good time talking. And you know what? He's been working out. His body looks amazing. You know, when you and Carl were going out, I never really understood why you liked him, but now I totally do. So, nothing's going on with you? No, I'm I'm sorry.

I'm just remembering a funny joke that Carl told me. What? No, I'm listening. An excerpt from Mike Albo's short story, The Underminer, which he co-wrote with Virginia Hefernon. Mike is also the author of the young adult novel, Another Dimension of Us. Act four. Keeping it in the family. Of course, you can evade a mean friend. A mean relative, however, is forever. This next story is an except from a much longer work by Bernard Cooper. This story follows Cooper's father as he eventually goes to a psychiatric hospital.

But what happens in this part of the story takes place a while before that. The actor Josh Hamilton read it for us. When I was 28 years old, my father sent me a bill for his paternal services. Typed on his law firm's onion skin stationary, the bill itemized the money he'd spent on me over my lifetime. Since he hadn't kept tabs on the exact amounts he'd doled out over the years, expenditures were rounded off to the nearest dollar and labeled food, clothing, tuition, and incidentals. Beneath the tally, in the firm but detached language common to his profession, he demanded that I pay him back.

The total was somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million, an especially hefty sum in 1978. I remember being impressed by the amount. What an expensive life I'd lived. I was shocked and insulted too of course not only because my father had made such a calculation but because my life could be added up or reduced to a single figure. To see your existence in the form of a bill gives all your loves and fears and struggles the cumulative tumult of being human. About as much poignency as a check for a cup of coffee.

It read, "Your obligations to your father, the party of the first part, are considerable, and the only way to impress upon you, the party of the second part, the necessity of compensating him for the fiscal burdens he bore on your behalf, is to make his sacrifices evident in the form of the following, recorded herein as a legal and binding document. Should you fail to make payment in full, this matter will result in actions for which I advise you to hire counsel." I double-checked his signature. It was his.

All right. The letters rich with loops and convolutions. Go ahead, I thought. Let him done me. See if I pay. No parent in his right mind asks his child to reimburse him for that child's life. I didn't ask to be born, I thought melodramatically. Besides, had I known I'd be charged for my boyhood, I might have eaten fewer snacks, been easier on my shoes, more frugal with my allowance. I couldn't help but dream up a doozy of a counter claim. Its itemizations even more preposterous than my father's.

Chronic insecurity, $90,000. Narcissistic wound, $75,000. Edible complex, $7,000. Since of course these damages were psychological in nature, it was both difficult and whimsical to assign them a monetary value. But the punitive spirit of this counter claim was gratifying for a while at least. Then the whole petty endeavor depressed me and I thought, is this what we are to each other? A flurry of demands that can't be met? Hurts for which there's no restitution? During the restless days and nights that followed, I couldn't settle on a convincing or comprehensible reason to explain why my father had sent me the bill.

Though I suspected the catalyst might have had something to do with his offer a few months earlier to buy me a new car. He had made the offer on a day I'd come to visit him at his Spanish house in Hollywood, the house in which I'd grown up. As I pulled into the driveway, he was busy watering birds of paradise in his front yard, sturdy orange flowers that he'd cultivated to his constant astonishment from a bed of drab gravel. Back then, I drove a Fiat, whose paint had oxidized to the overall color and texture of rust.

The car sputtered as I shifted into park, and the sagging tailpipe, which I'd had to bind to the car's undercarriage with electrical tape, coughed a cloud of noxious exhaust. Just a year after I purchased the car with money from a small inheritance left me by my mother, it fell apart with an almost vengeful rapidity. The vinyl upholstery of the bucket seats began to rub off on passengers hands and thighs and sticky black patches. Soon the seats were nothing but lumps of raw foam, and even those were crumbling like sponge cake.

One of the rear windows no longer rolled up, the pain trapped within the door. On cold nights, a stray dog made the back seat its home, leaving behind a legion of fleas to feast on my ankles as I drove around town. It was humiliating to be seen inside the car, especially in Los Angeles. When idling at a stoplight beside a purring sports car with rear stabilizers, anodized hubcaps, and a leather interior, I had to force myself to remember that an automobile does not a man make, and that I was a writer who placed a higher value on words than on material possessions, which is to say that I cultivated a hollow sense of superiority around new cars.

My father sauntered toward the Fiat as I got out, peeking through the perpetually open window, despite my attempt to block his view. Stocky and balding in a state of continual agitation, my father was also capable of a tenderness that seemed to light him from within and that stirred me like daybreak stirs a bird. "Hey," he said. "Looks like you could use a new set of wheels." "I can't afford a new car," I told him. I distinctly recall facing my father, his gardening clothes stained with grass and darkened by perspiration, and shaping my tone so that I sounded neither pitiful, I'm too poor, or petulant.

I'll never be able to buy a new car. Before I knew it, my father and I were ensconced in his white El Dorado, gliding with the frictionless speed of a dream toward a Toyota dealership in West Coina, whose ads he'd seen on TV. He pointed a stubby finger at his chest. Let me handle this, he said. I've bought plenty of cars in my life, and I know how to deal with these bastards. You watch, I'll beat them at their own game. They won't know what hit them.

On one hand, dad's braggadocio made me feel invincible, as though I were in the company of a seasoned pro. On the other hand, it relegated me to the role of admiring onlooker and suggested that I was too incompetent and naive to buy my own car, which was entirely true. I floundered when it came to the treacherous etiquette of negotiating a major sale, a feat which required, it seemed to me, a keen mistrust of one's fellow men, coupled with a barely sublimated bloodlust. I'd watched my father often enough to know that such transactions excited him into what can only be described as a rapture of antagonism.

He didn't mind yelling threats and pounding desks and generally hurling himself bodily into the arena of commerce. Still, if a new car required me to be embarrassed by his aggression, bring on the blushing. And so I let myself relax into the plush bucket seat, cradled and safe as the caddy whizzed past slower traffic, huge and unassalable, as regal as a motorized mansion. As we walked across the asphalt lot of the Toyota dealership, triangular plastic pendants rippled and snapped in the breeze. I thanked Dad in advance and told him that I didn't need white walls, an air conditioner, or a radio.

Basic transportation would be just fine. He nodded and forged ahead, his stride Marshall, his shoulders squared. Secretly, I hoped my modest expectations might endear me to him even more. Maybe he'd close the deal that very day, before his mood changed, before I said something that would inadvertently set him off, before he said crap or bastard to the dealer. My excitement was indistinguishable from panic. I wanted a beautiful new Toyota more desperately with every step. I wanted an end to the self-consciousness I felt on the road.

An end to the shameful sense that the thunderous rumbling and rank exhaust were coming from my person rather than my car. The showroom felt bracingly cool after the heat of West Coina. Highlights glittered in the flawless paint jobs of the display models. In the center of the room, a sleek new convertible turned around and around on an enormous platform as if swooning the music. The second we entered, salespeople, sensing prey, rose from their desks and converged. It occurred to me that we would be the prize for the fastest walker, the one whose handshake or hail greeting reached us first.

The victor was a skinny man whose snug black suit lent him an eel-like iridescence. Or perhaps I was just seeing him as my father might. Slippery, anxious, not to be trusted. Dad shifted his weight to meet the man's gaze. His posture erect. He kicked a tire as if to gauge through his knowing toes the vehicle's overall quality. He squinted at the sticker price. "John," said my father, reading the salesman's name tag. "Firstly, I'm an attorney. Secondly, when it comes to cars, I'm not some idiot off the street.

A cousin of mine is fleet manager of a Cadillac dealership in San Bernardino. A complete fabrication as far as I knew. If we cut through the crap, he just might make yourself a sale. My son here, I'm buying the boy a car. Doesn't need any bells or whistles. I'm Bernard, I said to the salesman. He shook my hand without taking his eyes off my father. Well, Mr. Cooper Edward, attorney at law, I got to hand it to you, Mr. Cooper. It's nice to meet a customer who knows what he wants and comes prepared to do business.

Makes my job a whole lot easier. My father shot me a sidelong glance as if to say, watch and learn. I'm going to make this painless, said the salesman. He spun on his heel and walked toward the glass door that led to the lot. We followed him outside to a veritable poppy field of new Corollas till we reached a red two-door that John claimed was the least expensive automobile on the lot. "This is the cheapest?" asked my father. Though it pains me to do so, I must add that my father's gold Star of David had loosed itself from the mid- interior of a shirt to glint conspicuously in the afternoon light, the sight of which, given my father's unabashed haggling, caused a cord of shame to vibrate inside me.

I felt compelled to explain to the salesman how my father had worked hard for everything he owned. He was a hoarder, a scrimper, a seeker of bargains who could never take his solvency for granted. And in this respect, he was like thousands of people who'd grown up poor and endured the depression, Jewish or not. But that was a lot to explain to a salesman, especially on the cusp of a deal that would change my life. And to put it bluntly, if my father was conforming to the cliche of the cheap Jew, I was that cliché's beneficiary.

I peered at the car, feigning disinterest. Quite a performance considering how I coveted that little red Corolla. "Mr. Cooper," said the salesman, "I know a shrewd man when I see one, and I'm going to do something that could put my job on the line. But before I tell you what it is, Mr. Cooper, I want you to promise that you won't say a word to my boss." I'd once heard that repeating a person's name is a way to make them feel important, to win them over.

And John, it seemed, had heard the same. "Mr. Cooper, I'm going to let you drive out of here for a mere $200 over the factory price. I'm going to scratch my commission on this. Frankly, I need the sales points more than I need the money. And if we can lock up this deal pronto, it'll be worth my while. And of course, worth yours. Here, metabolism obscures memory. My heart was running on all cylinders. My mouth went dry. You've got to be me, John, said my father.

I know you can give it to me under factory. I'm not paying a penny more than factory. Period. As I said, Mr. Cooper, I don't mind giving up my commission, but I can't lose money on the deal. I'm giving you the best price you're going to find in LA County in the state of California. Other customers were milling uncomfortably close to my Corolla, trying out driver's seats, adjusting rear view mirrors. I wanted to turn to my father and blurt, "Why would he lie?" "I'm not buying it," my father said sternly.

It took me a second to realize he meant the dealer story, not the car itself. I know how this game is played, and I'll play along up to a point, but we've reached that point. So, let's see what kind of deal you can give me. Shop around if you don't believe me, Mr. Cooper. Then come on back. The offer still stands. Better act quickly, though, cuz this baby isn't going to stay on the lot much longer. I guess you didn't hear me, said my father. Look at me, Mr.

Cooper. I have no reason to lead you on. My father gave John the once over, then turned to me. Let's go, he said. We're taking our business elsewhere. Before we took a step, the salesman curtly thanked my father and walked away. The two of us waited a moment with a tacid understanding that his retreat might have been a strategy to provoke my father into giving chase. Sun beat down from a cloudless sky, asphalt softening beneath our feet. I think he's basically an honest man. I mumbled.

Honest my ass. My father looked at me with something like pity. I'd never catch on. Would forever remain a sucker. A rube. Music faintly wafted from the showroom as the salesman swung the door open and walked inside. Well, Dad announced, "Show's over." and we charged across the lot toward his caddy. The drive back to Los Angeles took a good 40 minutes. My father still fumed from the encounter with the salesman, his ears and neck flushed with blood. Dad insisted that the deal was far from over.

The guy's playing hard ball, but you watch. The phone will be ringing when we get back to the house. It'll be him and he'll say, "My father launched into an imitation of John couping Mr. Cooper this and Mr. Cooper that." My father promised that when the call finally came, John would apologize for being too hasty and lower the price. I'd have my car before I knew it. One day passed, two, three. Each day I called my father on various transparent pretexts and attempted to find out whether I'd heard anything from the salesman.

On the fourth day, I steeed myself and asked him outright. "Keep your pants on," grumbled my father. "I said he'd call, didn't I?" By the end of the week, however, my pants were sagging. The car had probably been sold. In the meantime, I'd researched the prices at other Toyota dealerships around town and discovered that John's offer was the best of the bunch. And so I called my father in a lastditch effort to own the car. Dad, I said, I've done some comparative pricing. So, I think we should go for the Corolla before it sold, and if it's a matter of not wanting to pay more than the factory price, and who can blame you, I'd be happy to contribute the extra $200 myself.

The proposal had about it the pleasing hue of teamwork, and I wished I'd thought of it days ago. It's not about the 200 bucks, shouted my father. It's a waiting game. He's holding out, so I'll come running back and throw my money at him. If you can't sit tight for a while, if you have to have everything you want right when you want it, you might as well forget the whole damn thing." Before he hung up, he said, "And don't pester me anymore. I'll call you when the car is ready." The bill arrived after a month of silence.

By then, I'd given up on the car, resigned to drive the Fiat until it broke down completely, or until I could afford to make payments on a new car, whichever came first. I suspected my father might brood about our day at the dealership. But I wasn't prepared for the extremity of his reaction, if, in fact, the bill was a reaction. Whenever I tried to make a connection, the machinery of cause and effect began to break down. Perhaps in the intervening month, my father had become more offended by my offer to supplement the cost of the car, thinking I'd implied he couldn't afford it, couldn't pull off the deal on his own.

Who was I? He must have wondered, to offer him money. And yet, even taking into account the full force of my father's volatility, it seemed unlikely that my offer of $200 would result in him suing me for 2 million. As the days wore on, my longing for the car grew dimmer, while my father's no doubt deepened. My plan should have worked. That car should be ours. Thrusting him back to the deprivation he knew as a boy. The salesman's refusal to call must have undermined his notion of how the world worked, how bargains were struck by men like himself, men possessed of while and nerve.

What had happened or failed to happen defined his every paternal assurance. His promise that the phone would ring, the salesman buckle, the car become mine. How humiliated he must have been to know that I awaited his call. That he'd asked me to wait must have made it worse. My father's refusal to be in the wrong meant that I'd have to wait forever. 20 years had passed since I opened that bill. And for most of those years, I taken it for granted that at some point during our afternoon in West Coina, my father had given the dealer his telephone number.

But I've sifted through that trip a dozen times, squinting against the glare of new cars, breathing the icy air of the showroom, and I can't recall my father handing over one of his business cards or filling out a form of any sort. Even if my father had been right after all, the salesman wouldn't have known where to reach him, what number to call. Josh Hamilton reading an excerpt from a story by Bernard Cooper, which first appeared in the LA Weekly and is now part of the book, The Bill from My Father.

Well, I try not to cry. I got home where I could hide. I cry, cry, cry. Special thanks today to Adrien Leblanc, Karen Thomas, and Jay Allison. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Troy Malatia. You know, whenever I send anybody over to record him, he says, you know, you come here and you tape me for your stupid friends radio show and then you get the hell out.

I'm Eric Glass back next week with more stories of this American life. I love my heart. But when I got home, I cried. Cried, cried. Yes, I cried. Oh, yeah. I try not to cry.