LA Times-Washington Post (1997)

Etiquette expert Dorothea Johnson tells the story of the businessman who came to her for help after losing out on a plum assignment.

At a lunch meeting with a senior executive in the company, he sat down and immediately started eating the salad in front of him. He looked up to see his boss, who hadn't picked up his fork yet, staring at him.

"I knew right then they weren't going to send me out," he said.

If only he had taken a dining tutorial offered by Johnson's Protocol School of Washington before his lunch, he would have known to wait until his host started eating.

In this era of take-out food and dress-down Fridays, etiquette is making a surprising comeback. There is a growing sense that bad manners are strong evidence of - or perhaps the first step toward - societal breakdown.

Last year, a U.S. News & World Report/Bozell survey found that 78 percent of Americans feel that incivility has worsened in the last 10 years. Most of the people surveyed believed incivility has contributed to violence, divided national community and eroded values.

Bookstore shelves are filled with best sellers on modern problems such as multicultural faux pas, gay etiquette and e-mail manners (not to mention more traditional volumes, such as this year's 75th anniversary edition of "Emily Post's Etiquette" and an endless number of Miss Manners books).

Business has never been brisker for etiquette classes. Companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for seminars and workshops with names such as "Business Basics for Professional Polish" and "Customs and Protocol for Doing Business in the Global Marketplace."

Colleges and universities have jumped on the bandwagon to give their graduates a competitive edge in the job market. The University of Virginia, for instance, offers Corporate Etiquette Dinners to seniors who want to learn the ins and outs of power dining.

Joanne Mahanes, the career counselor who organized the dinners, explains: "Recruiters have not offered jobs to candidates who salt their food before tasting (it shows a tendency toward hasty decision making), or who order filet mignon."

But why now, as the 20th century winds down? Why does it suddenly matter again to so many people that we don't know how to hold a wine glass, aren't sure when to send handwritten thank you notes and need someone to tell us what gift would be appropriate for the host or hostess at a dinner party?

No one is quite sure why good manners are relevant again - or at least why etiquette experts are making a lot of money on classes, tutorials and books.

Today's parents are realizing that while good manners will help their children get along in life, they aren't the ones to teach them.

Page created 10/21/97 11:02 PM
Copyright 1997 Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

Some material copyright 1997 The Associated Press.

Excerpt from: LubbockOnline (Texas)

Source: http://www.lubbockonline.com/news/102297/ux1516.htm

Office Etiquette (continued). . .