Why be nice when you can can get the same by being cruel

[Sasaki Kojiro]

It ultimately depends on the situation. Being nice is one thing, but being a push over is something else completely. You can be nice and not a pushover at the same time. There are also the cases of "cruel-to-be-nice" where you do an action which by itself might seem cruel, but with further reasoning and wider-insight, is seen as being very beneficial and nice.

Now, there was another example where some one did really bad service, and he went and asked me for a tip, and I replied "Give up your job and apply some where else, this line of work is not your forté." Was I cruel or was I being nice to the person? After all, I gave him the best tip that night, with that comment.

Cruel and nice don't cover everything. You weren't being cruel or nice in the waiting situation.

As for Sasaki's example, I was nice to the waiter at the restaurant (it had nice food at a good price as well), next time I went in, there was a queue, so I was going to walk away, and he stopped me and went "I saved you a table, come in.", so I ended up skipping the queue, and pretty much got "VIP" treatment. Obviously ended up tipping him, but he frankly deserved it.

If you had known you would never be back at the restaurant, wouldn't it have been right to be nice to the waiter in the same way? What's the word for people who are nice with their own gain in their sights (like your waiter possibly), schmoozers?

[Beskar]

If you had known you would never be back at the restaurant, wouldn't it have been right to be nice to the waiter in the same way? What's the word for people who are nice with their own gain in their sights (like your waiter possibly), schmoozers?

Well, the whole career of waiter is a professional schmoozer, basically.