It never pays to be decent..........never!

It has been my experience in life thus far, that, it never pays to be decent. The others always consider you to be weak or timid and therefore, can be taken liberties with. I remember, quite a long time ago, a sailor telling me when I’d just joined the navy and was raring to go, that the sailors categorized their officers into two – the first who were mean, rode roughshod over anyone and everyone who came their way, was foulmouthed who were called the ‘b*******’ and the second who were genuinely nice, empathized with others, were reasonable being nice to one and all, never lost their cool who were termed as the ‘c****’( actually, he’d used their ‘Hindi’ equivalents, which however cannot be used in the circumstances, for obvious reasons!). Paradoxically, it was the former who almost, always got everything they wanted – the fear psychosis in their subordinates, notwithstanding! And the latter, despite their good intentions, missed deadlines, or stopped short of absolute achievement much to the derision of their superiors and got ‘lost out’ in the mad race that life is all about!!
When such bitter experiences befall one in the workplace, where one’s working with strangers or even acquaintances, one shrugs it off as something inevitable and blames the time and space, for being out of sync with one’s luck and moves on. But when similar bitter experiences are courtesy people, whom one considers close and as one’s own, then disillusionment sets in and a seething anger sets in.
Why does it happen? Is it because the others take one for granted, think that one's gullible or dim-witted like a cretin with an incredibly short memory or even a bumbling fool who'd lap up anything that's doled out as an afterthought or an excuse, I wonder? Just beats me and I don't think I shall ever fathom that.
What does one do in the circumstances? Become a b****** and join the crowd - easier said than done as it’s difficult to go against one’s grain. So, then the only other alternative is to continue to be what one is, take the pain in one’s stride and convert it as another experience of life and move on the road of life that’s less travelled!