98 | Spirit
A relentless,
competitive business strategy:Being Nice.
{ Extreme Etiquette }BY JAY HEINR ICHS
PHOTOGR APHY BY CEDR IC ANGELE S
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Spirit | 99
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Not that Anna or any other Post would
stoop to humiliate anyone. Their mis-
sion in life is to put everyone at ease,
and make everyone put everyone else
at ease. But I don’t know that yet. I’ve
even borrowed my wife’s Prius, the
politest car in America, instead of driv-
ing my own beat-up, reeking SUV. Can’t
be too careful, I think. I have a lot to
learn. (As we shall see, it turns out that
you can be too careful.)
The Emily Post Institute authors Emily
Post’s indispensable Etiquette, now in
its 17th edition, along with books on
business manners, manners for men,
and coping strategies for brides and
young singles. It’s a family business:
Seven Posts currently work there full-
time, comprising more than half of the
employee roster. Anna and her younger
sister, Lizzie, both in their twenties,
represent the youngest generation, and
the one that will take the Post manners
juggernaut well into this cantankerous
century. Anna has served as a spokes-
person for the Web phone service
Skype and for Hyatt Place hotels, telling
people how to be polite to each other
in their phone calls and travels. She her-
self travels a couple dozen times a year,
conducting business politeness semi-
nars, teaching brides the formalities,
and doing media interviews. She’s living
proof that in our lives and business, eti-
quette is alive and well.
Either that or she’s living proof that
we all desperately need some.
WHEN I WALK through the door of the
Institute—a suite of brick-walled offices
in a former school building—I startle at
the sight of several dogs of the Labrador
and German Shepherd variety. Would
Emily have approved? Still, I’ve never
seen politer dogs. One black lab rises to
a sitting position and pants in greeting.
It waits hopefully for me to pat it on the
head. I wonder if the Posts also have this
effect on humans.
A F T E R PA R K I N G at the Emily Post Institute in Burlington, Vermont, I check my teeth in the mirror, make sure my hair isn’t sticking out, and brush potato-chip crumbs off my lap. I’m about to meet Anna Post, great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post, the woman who did for American manners what Noah Webster did for dictionaries.
100 | Spirit
I M P R O V E M E N T
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Emily Posed Anna bears the portrait,
and genes, of her aristocratic ancestor.
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102 | Spirit
beets in a restaurant. “Emily Post would
eat her beets!” the grandmother said.
Anna says she responded by throwing
up on her dinner plate. You have to love
this woman.
When Anna was in elementary
school, an occasional student would
tease her on the playground by mak-
ing slurping noises with an imaginary
spoon. After graduating from the Uni-
versity of Vermont, Anna went to work
for Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy in
Washington. A job at the Motion Pic-
Anna comes out of her office with
the sort of smile someone gives an old
friend. Tall, dark-haired young women
like Anna never smile at a guy like me
unless I’ve given them a big tip in a res-
taurant. As she introduces me around,
I get a warmer reception than I have at
some weddings. They all have perfect
posture, great smiles, direct eye contact,
firm but not crushing handshakes, and,
most of all, an interest in their visitor—
or at least the appearance of it.
All that can be taught, but then I
notice something deeper. Early on in
our conversation, Anna and I are talking
about rudeness in movie theaters when
she brings up a good example. “I saw
March of the Penguins,” she says, “and
there was a woman in the row in front of
me filing her nails with an emery board.
She probably had OCD.” Talk about
sympathy for others: Some woman adds
a rasp rasp rasp to the cute-penguin
soundtrack, and Anna manages to spec-
ulate that the obnoxious jerk has a psy-
chological condition. “People are rude
because they’re unaware or because
they feel justified,” she says. “‘I’m run-
ning late because my sitter was late so
I’m going to cut you off.’ Or, ‘I didn’t
sleep well.’” Talk about sympathy.
Anna herself grew up in a family
that ensured she would never, ever be
unaware. When she was a little girl her
Aunt Peggy asked what she wanted to
be when she grew up, and she said, “I
want to be Emily Post.” Not that she was
the perfect little lady herself. Her grand-
mother once tried to make Anna eat
You’re Welcome Anna, Lizzie, and father Peter pro-fessionally put people at ease from their Ver-mont HQ (left).
Emily and her descendents are right. Etiquette is not about the rules. It’s about
adaptation to any environ-ment. Survival of the fi ttest.
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Spirit | 103
1. Should you ask a top executive who clearly outranks you for his business card?
A) Yes. B) No.
2. Which of these chivalries are gender-free?
A) Holding a door. B) Getting off an elevator. C) Helping put on a coat. D) Paying for a meal. E) Shaking hands. F) Helping to carry something.
3. Is it all right to call a fellow employee “Sweetie”?
A) Yes. B) No.
4. How far away should you be when you talk face to face with someone?
A) One foot. B) 18 inches. C) Two feet. D) The next state.
5. Can you wear white suede pumps in November?
A) Yes. B) No.
6. Which topics should you steer away from at a business social occasion?
A) Your educational background. B) Golf. C) Politics. D) Sex. E) Religion.
7. Which way should you pass food?
A) To your left. B) To your right. C) What are you doing passing food in the first place?
8. Can you tip your soup bowl or cup?
A) Yes. B) No.
9. What should you do if you have something in your mouth you want to remove?
A) Bring your napkin to your mouth and quietly spit the item out. B) Raise your fork or spoon to your lips and gently push the offending article onto the utensil. Then deposit it on the edge of your plate. c) Discreetly remove the thing with your fin-gers and place it on the edge of your plate.
10. How far should you fill a glass of red wine?
A) Half full. B) Two-thirds full. C) One-third full. D) To one inch below the rim. E) To the brim
Quiz answers are on page 110.
Are You Polite Enough for Business?Test your etiquette prowess. (Answers adapted from The Etiquette Advantage in Business by Peggy Post and Peter Post)
ture Association of America followed,
until the call of etiquette drew her back
to Vermont. Anna has big ideas for
the Post Institute, involving etiquette
around the world. She embraces the
Web; both Anna and Lizzie keep blogs.
THE POST WHO BEGAT all the others
grew up in New York society, where
anyone who was anyone knew every-
one, and everyone kept vigilant for
the slightest nuances that determined
where one stood. (Anna’s grandparents
made the move to Vermont.) Born Emily
Price in 1872, she was the daughter
of a famous architect. She attended
finishing school and married a rich
stockbroker at age 19. A life-sized oil
portrait, painted about that time, hangs
in the Post Institute. She was—forgive
me, Emily—a babe: dark hair, brilliant
gray-blue eyes, and a figure that must
have caused whiplash on Park Avenue.
She had two sons in rapid succession,
but her marriage was a disappointment
and her husband, Edwin, often absent.
Emily took up writing, and family con-
nections landed her her first magazine
story. She would pen novels that had
such comfy titles as Purple and Fine Linen and Woven in the Tapestry. Edwin
had affairs with fledgling actresses and
chorus girls; in 1905, a gossip sheet tried
to blackmail him to keep one particular
indiscretion silent. The Posts refused to
pay and instead helped to expose the
scheme that had netted other society
folk; the sting turned the incident into
a public scandal. By 1906, Emily found
herself a divorcee.
Please try to digest this. Emily Post,
the woman who taught America how
to live gracefully, divorced her husband
after a public scandal. Emily later wrote
that “the man who publicly besmirches
his wife’s name, besmirches still more
his own, and proves that he is not, was
not, and never will be, a gentleman.”
(Edith Wharton, also no stranger to
New York society, would have been a
consolation: “A New York divorce is in
itself a diploma of virtue,” she wrote.)
An editor friend at Vanity Fair, Frank
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Crowninshield, talked her into writing
a book on etiquette. And in 1922, Funk
and Wagnalls published Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home—all 627 pages of it. It turned
out to be one of the most revolutionary
books in American history.
Emily Post’s book allowed millions
of Americans to dream of becoming
an aristocrat by dint of their manners,
even while telling them that becom-
ing an aristocrat wasn’t important.
Whereas in Europe good manners
would get you nowhere unless you
were an aristocrat by birth, in America,
so the hope went, an aspiring lady or
gentleman could earn membership in
the “Best Society” simply by behaving
as if she or he belonged in it. And just
what was Best Society? Emily described
it as “an unlimited brotherhood which
spreads over the entire surface of the
globe, the members of which are invari-
ably people of cultivation and worldly
knowledge, who have not only perfect
manners but a perfect manner.” Mean-
ing that you don’t just want to know the
rules but to do and say “those things
only which will be agreeable to others.”
Yet what most likely made Etiquette
such a success—it was an instant best
seller—was not people’s desire to make
themselves more agreeable. People
bought the book in hope that they
Petiquette Even the dogs practice the polite art at the Institute.
104 | Spirit
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It’s Fine to Wear Very Few Clothes:The Wisdom of Emily Post From Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home (1922)
SKIN IN THE GAMEThat young people of today prefer games to conversation scarcely proves degenera-tion. That they wear very few clothes is not a symptom of decline. There have always been recurring cycles of undress, followed by muffling from shoe-soles to chin.
MONE Y TALKMost of those thrown much in contact with millionaires will agree that an attitude of infallibility is typical of a fair majority.
HIGHER LEARNINGEducation that does not confer flexibility of mind is an obviously limited education; the man of broadest education tunes himself in unison with whomever he happens to be. The more subjects he knows about, the more people he is in sympathy with, and therefore the more customers or associates or constituents he is sure to have.
WA SSUPThe fact that slang is apt and forceful makes its use irresistibly tempting. Coarse or pro-fane slang is beside the mark, but “flivver,” “taxi,” the “movies,” “deadly” (meaning dull), “feeling fit,” “feeling blue,” “grafter,” a “fake,” “grouch,” “hunch,” and “right o!” are typical of words that it would make our spoken language stilted to exclude.
POKER FACINGA gentleman does not lose control of his temper. In fact, in his own self-control under difficult or dangerous circumstances, lies his chief ascendancy over others who impul-sively betray every emotion which animates them. Exhibitions of anger, fear, hatred, embarrassment, ardor, or hilarity are all bad form in public.
SHINING EX AMPLEAt the same time it is no idle boast that the world is at present looking toward America; and whatever we become is bound to lower or raise the standards of life. The other countries are old, we are youth personified! We have all youth’s glorious beauty and strength and vitality and courage. If we can keep these attributes and add finish and understanding and perfect taste in living and thinking, we need not dwell on the Golden Age that is past, but believe in the Golden Age that is sure to be.
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managed to flub six rules of etiquette—
at least the 1952 version that my wife
uses as her social bible:
1. Don’t blow your nose at the table. (I
thought turning and doing it discreetly
was enough. Anna, on the other hand,
had a cold, and not once did I see her
blow her nose.)
could join the social elite, or at least not
condemn themselves to social Siberia.
In England they used to say that a person
who failed to comport himself properly
was “not quite the thing.” Emily Post gave
Americans hope that they could become
quite the thing.
But let’s suppose I don’t care a fig for
social success, or even consideration. In
business, you could argue, consideration
and respect for others can seem like
unilateral disarmament—or capitula-
tion. Anna Post begs to disagree. “If your
boss is worth half his salt, and he’s think-
ing of two employees to send out—the
pig or the nice one—which would you
choose?” Not only that, but etiquette can
be crucial in a job interview, she says.
She recounts the legend that McDonald’s
founder Ray Kroc would take executive
prospects out to lunch, “and he would
judge them by whether they salted their
food before tasting it.”
You’re not supposed to salt your food?
“Not before tasting it,” Anna said.
Sounds like a prudent strategy, but
what does that have to do with etiquette?
“Salting your food insults the cook.
It shows you assume it won’t be to your
taste.”
The topic made me hungry, and so
began my greatest etiquette test of all,
eating out.
During lunch at an outdoor café, I
Now Read the Book A great yarn about the politest revoluionary.
The woman who revolution-ized American manners was born seven years before the end of the Civil War and became one of the early radio celebrities. She used the base of the Statue of Liberty as a personal play-house. When she was a girl,
she aspired to be an actress and was, accord-ing to one newspaper, “perhaps the best banjoist in fashionable society.” She thought slang such as “swell” and “you betcha” were fine, but insisted on calling a tomato a “tomahto.” And she knew practically every-body who was anybody.
The absorbing new biography of Emily Post by Laura Claridge contains plenty of eyebrow raising facts like these. But the book goes far beyond a woman’s life, or even etiquette. Clar-idge, a former English professor at the Naval Academy, uses Emily Post to drill a fascinating cross-section through American culture—from the Gilded Age right up to the swinging Sixties. (Oh, behave!)
In the midst of it all stood one of history’s most remarkable women, a reassuring light-house on the rocky shore of human conduct.
–J.H.Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mis-tress of American Manners, by Laura Claridge. (Random House, $30.)
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2. Wipe your mouth before drinking from
a glass. (What can I say? Any boss of
mine wouldn’t have sent me.)
3. Don’t discuss business right away.
Make chitchat first. (I immediately
raised the subject of officemates who
smell bad.)
4. Let the host pay. Never insist. (Anna
proposed the restaurant and took me
there, but I demanded to pay.)
5. Loosely fold your napkin and leave
it to the left of your plate before you
leave for the bathroom. (Sheesh.)
6. When you want the waiter to clear
your plate, place your knife and fork
on it as if they were clock hands show-
ing 4:20. (As consolation, my daughter,
who waited tables to help pay for col-
lege, didn’t know this.)
I learned all that from a seminar Anna
gave that evening, not from her grimaces
during the meal. To illustrate just how
polite Anna is, she told me later that
I hadn’t broken any really important
rules—just esoteric ones that don’t mean
that much today. How kind of her to say
so. You can tell who’s truly polite by how
they handle unruly types like me. Still,
some rules—what to do with an oyster
fork, for example—make me want to eat
with my hands. I think it’s possible to be
polite to the point of rudeness. The Posts
would doubtless agree. Anna tells a story
that the Institute received on its website.
“A man who was new to the office called
men by their first names and women
‘Mrs. Jones.’ He said his mother taught
him that,” Anna says. This old-school
approach understandably upset some of
his officemates. “In strange situations, it’s
best to err on the formal side,” she says.
“But when you do know people’s prefer-
ences, their wishes should be respected.”
It’s the rules that make people buy
etiquette books, and the rules that
make people ridicule etiquette. In the
1980s, the wonderfully snarky writer P.J.
O’Rourke wrote a book making fun of
the whole topic. Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People asserts
that etiquette is “a combination of intelli-
gence, education, taste, and style mixed
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be fashionably late,” she said to the stu-
dents later.
Like a good executive, she showed
PowerPoint slides. One said, “Etiquette
= Manners + Principles.” She illustrated
the importance of rules that everyone fol-
lows by having a student stand up. Anna
extended her hand and told the student
not to shake. Her hand lingered in
space, and an awkward silence ensued.
“There’s a tension out there,” she said,
and the students nodded. Anna showed
another slide, this one of a 2005 poll
asking Americans if they frequently saw
people using their cell phones rudely.
Fifty-five percent said yes. (The other 45
percent clearly don’t use mass transpor-
tation.) But only 8 percent admitted to
being rude with their cell phones them-
selves.
“Etiquette gives us a code for how to
together so that you don’t need any of
those things.” His book contains handy
tips like these:
“Never do anything to your partner with your teeth that you wouldn’t do to an expensive waterproof wristwatch.”
“If your drink runs up your nose, you may be lying on the floor.”
“Most men do not look trustworthy with their pants off.”
“Never wear anything that panics the cat.”“A hat should be taken off when you greet
a lady and left off for the rest of your life.”
One might think that the Posts would feel
insulted by the book, but the person who
put me onto it was Anna Post herself.
Nonetheless, etiquette instruction
remains in high demand. That’s because
we have rules for a reason. If we didn’t
have them, then people would walk
around doing clueless things. “Look at
cellphones,” Anna said. “A few years ago,
they were out of control. That’s because
there weren’t any standards for behavior.
Now things are far from perfect, but I
think it’s gotten a little better.”
The rules also remain important for
young people aspiring to employment.
Anna often teaches proper comportment
to executive wannabes. I got to see her
in action during a rare event near her
office. The University of Vermont holds
intensive two-week seminars to prepare
liberal arts majors for the business world.
Besides resume work, job hunting strate-
gies, and field trips to nearby companies,
the students spend an evening with
Anna.
She appeared in a tailored jacket in a
hot, spare meeting room on campus. The
students—some 20 of them—arrived five
minutes early, a feat that may be unprec-
edented in the history of academia and
one that pleased Anna. “It’s not good to
Maybe this is what Heaven is like: a place where consider-ation has been elevated to the sacred. If so, I’m doomed.
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behave so we can focus on more impor-
tant things,” Anna said. It’s like being an
experienced driver. “We drive everyday,
so we don’t have to think about it, letting
us think and use the radio, hopefully
without crashing into one another.” Eti-
quette also helps us avoid looking like
pigs. “When you think about it, eating is
gross,” she continued. “Etiquette keeps
us from grossing each other out.”
She got the biggest student buzz when
she demonstrated how to hold a knife
and fork. As students practiced, the clat-
ter of dropped silverware filled the room.
“If you can’t do it, just do the best you
can,” Anna said. “I don’t want to see food
flying across the table Pretty Woman
style.” To my surprise, Anna herself uses
the European style, eating with the left
hand after cutting her food. Turns out
Emily herself did this, preferring the
method to what she called “zig-zag eat-
ing.” Anna’s other tips to the students:
If you get lousy service in a restaurant,
leave a tip anyway. “You can leave less
than 15%, but talk to management.
Otherwise it doesn’t resolve anything.”
When the wine steward hands you the
cork, just look at it. If the wine is more
than halfway up the cork, it hasn’t
been sealed properly.
Pass the bread bowl to the right after
offering to the left.
Eat cherry tomatoes with a fork. “Better
to squirt someone from your plate than
from your mouth.”
If you see spinach on someone’s teeth,
tell them by discreetly pointing to your
own teeth. (“Or you could text mes-
sage them,” one student says pragmati-
cally.)
Anna insists, though, that the rules
should help us, not restrict us. “Worlds
won’t end if you do it differently,” she told
the students. “Sometimes the rules get in
the way, because people follow the letter
of the law. Short of putting your face on
the plate, you really can’t go wrong. But
if you wouldn’t be comfortable seeing
yourself do something on video after-
ward, then you shouldn’t do it.”
Etiquette takes on particular impor-
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Quiz Answers From the Emily Post Institute
If you got 8 or more correct, kind sir or madam, we thank you for your extraordinary polite-ness. If you got 5–7 correct, you might want to study up on your etiquette books. If you got less than 5 correct, would you mind eating at the next table?
1. (b) If a senior person wants your card, or wants you to have hers, she will tell you so.2. All are gender-free. The first person to the door, and anyone who is encountering dif-ficulty, take precedence. And whoever invites does the paying.3. (b) The simplest test is, if he or she wouldn’t say it to a man, he/she shouldn’t say it to a woman. 4. (b) About 18 inches is reasonable.5. (a) These days, the old seasonal injunction against the color white no longer applies. The determinant applies only to white fabrics and materials—and loosely, at that. White suede pumps in November? Sure, if they go with your outfit.6. (c), (d), and (e). These are potential argu-
ment-starters that can backfire on you.7. (b) Practicality comes into play here, how-ever: If someone nearby to your left asks you for an item, it’s perfectly okay to take the shorter route and pass the item to your left.8. (a) Yes, it is acceptable to tip the bowl—but only for the last drop or two. Again, tip the bowl away from you rather than toward you” so as “to avoid inadvertently directing a drip into your lap.9. (b) Believe it or not, the easiest—and most appropriate—thing to do is to raise the uten-sil you are using to your lips and gently push the offending article onto the utensil. Then deposit it on the edge of your plate.10. (a) White wine glass: about two-thirds full. Red wine glass: about one-half full.
field—whatever that field is.
It’s nice to think about a world in
which everyone followed the Posts. If
everyone suddenly turned polite, dicta-
tors would issue a formal apology for
tance in the business world because
business is more formal than most of the
rest of our lives. And being formal means
you follow the “forms”: suitable dress and
behavior. This has always been true. The
ancient Romans published books about
decorum, the art of fitting in with the rul-
ing elite. They meant “fitting in” not just
socially but in a Darwinian sense as well:
only the fittest, the ones who most close-
ly fit themselves into their social environ-
ment, thrived. Cicero said that decorum
was the most important, as well as the
most difficult, of all leadership skills.
He himself was a novus homo, a “new
man” who rose to the top rank by talent
and etiquette. He was clearly not alone:
Books on manners followed through the
centuries. Many of the books published
in nineteenth century America were
about elocution—the skill of speaking
like a lady or gentleman.
AND THAT’S RE ALLY what etiquette
is all about, I have come to realize: the
art of fitting in. Emily and her descen-
dents are right. It’s not about the rules.
It’s about adapting to any environment.
Survival of the fittest. In that sense, Eti-quette is a manual for surviving in the
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