'Nice' vs. 'decent'

I finally found author Steve Dublanica's blog Waiter Rant, and he has a good post up on the difference between nice and decent, and what we're teaching our children by example. An excerpt:

Nice is overrated. Nice is very often a lie. We’ve all been stabbed in the back, exploited, and robbed by people who look “nice.” Con artists are often “nice.” Nice is easy.Decency is hard. Over the years I’ve run into people who weren’t exactly nice but were decent. Even though they appeared unpleasant at first they would do the right thing, very often at expense to themselves. Nice and decent are light years apart. Nice is just smiling and showing a minimum of social graces. Sure it helps make life go a bit smoother, but decency would do far, far more.

My therapist once apologized for maybe not being nice enough on occasion. I told him to save the nice for outside of his office; inside, I expected honesty. (Painful though it sometimes is.) I'll take decent or honest over nice any day....