Doolies is becoming a businessperson. I’m not sure she’s happy about it. Doolies is the nicest person I know, it’s one of the things I love about her.(1) Like many nice people, Doolies enjoys when people like her. And as a businessperson, she’s finding that sometimes she needs to be unkind to people. Being unkind, of course, results in people not liking her so much.

Unkindness is one of the unwritten rules of business. If you’re too nice, people walk all over you. If you want to be successful, you need a streak of cruelty. Many people don’t want to believe this. They think that by being nice and accommodating, people will like them better and want to do business with them. They point to successes in customer relations as an example. But they are mistaken. Even the best customer relations professionals only take it so far. There are limits to what “the customer is always right” means. (The greater the potential payment, the greater are these limits.) If there were no limits, the business would be out of business. It’s about being polite but strict with rules. This strictness is what people usually mistake with unkindness.

The most successful people are not only the smartest and luckiest, they also have a streak of meanness. They know when to say no or when to fire people, or when to be an asshole to get their way. I’ve met many successful people in my career, and I know this to be true. It’s not that these people are “mean people.” Most of them are very nice. It’s just that when the time is right, they can be mean and aggressive. Meryl Streep’s character in A Devil Wears Prada is a perfect example—albeit an example of the far extreme of this type of ruthlessness (If only I could be that mean and successful).

Doolies is managing properties for her parents in Seattle. She’s beginning to learn these lessons. I stayed home today because of the snow, and after a particularly difficult phone call, Doolies rested her head on my chest and said, “I had to be mean. I don’t think they like me anymore.” I didn’t say anything. Doolies knows that if she’s not mean, the tenants will walk all over her, which will make things much worse. I held Doolies and didn’t say anything.

My mother (who I still haven’t called since I’m a mean, mean David—and because I felt like absolute crap all day today) is not a mean person when it comes to business. She’s very nice and accommodating. She hasn’t done badly being like that, but at times she makes decisions that make me want to pull my hair out. But she is who she is and she’s happy with it. That’s the good part about being a businessperson. You get to choose your meanness appetite. There are costs involved, of course. Well-placed meanness always has benefits. But if you believe in karma or the next life or a moral life, sometimes you’re willing to pay those costs.

(1) As opposed to David, who—to make it seem nicer by speaking about him in the third person—is mean and grouchy and whiny. Doolies finally realized I was whiny today. We were sitting at the dinner table and I was lamenting that we had made four pierogies instead of two because she had said she wanted two. (She didn’t want her two because they were undercooked.) As I lamented, she turned to me and said, “You’re whining. You’re whining like a monster! You’re just a child. I knew it!” I then gave her the silent treatment to show her that I wasn’t a child. Luckily we’ve already spent too much money on the wedding to call it off. That was all part of my Machiavelli strategy. That David is always two steps ahead of the game. Two very mean and aggressive steps.