One of the greatest skill sets we possess as human beings is our social interaction, how we treat one another. Social etiquette, if you will. Social etiquette has been with us since time immemorial.
You probably remember when you were a very young person, someone treated you with great kindness, great deference, even though you were still a child. And you continue to remember that person to this very day.
This occurred with me when I went to the table of my grandfather when I was four or five years old. He was always quite formally dressed. He wore a tie, if I remember to dinner.
And everyone stood up and waited for the women to sit down. He held the chair for my grandmother. We all sat down.
The requisite napkin came off the table onto the lap, and dinner then began. You know, for a child, it was really quite stunning. And this, of course, didn’t occur at every family dinner, but enough of the times that it seemed to really matter to me.
It left an impression on me. And I read that this aspect of social etiquette is slowly but surely slipping away.
And I always tell my students, whenever you’re introduced to someone, make sure that you stand up, look at their eyes, and shake their hand fairly firmly. And I get these curious looks, like why should I possibly want to stand up?
I mean, I don’t care. Unfortunately, the boss does stand up, and he certainly knows what’s going on. And I think I’ve told you this story more than once before about an interview.
And a really good company that I taught at, the president wanted to hire two salesmen, and they found the absolute best MBAs. Their resumes, their CVs were hot, burning in his hands.
The girl arrived, and she chewed gum throughout the whole interview, chewed gum. And the young man arrived, no business suit, dirty clothes, didn’t stand up, didn’t pro-offer his hand. To say the least, neither got the jobs.
And you say to yourself, my God Almighty, where are the parents? Or where are the schools? Or gosh, doesn’t anyone know?
I had another experience that was equally as shocking. One day in class, I said, well, I’ll teach everyone how to tie a tie, a necktie. Does everyone know how to tie a necktie?
Of course, nobody did. So I said, no problem. You bring a necktie from home, and those that don’t have a necktie, I’ll bring some of my own.
And this was a class of 30 kids, 30 students, grade 10, not a single child had a necktie, not one. Their parents didn’t own a single necktie. And I mean, these weren’t all blue color children.
A lot of them were well-educated from well-educated families, the rest of it. And I thought to myself, wow, we’ve gone way too informal. What happens when you actually have to go to a business meeting that requires a tie?
Are you just going to say I don’t have a tie, or are you going to go to some store that they have a fake tie so you won’t have to tie it? Really shocking, really shocking. And this extends to the dinner table, doesn’t it?
I was invited out to dinner at a very formal company, and, gosh, everything was perfect.
Everyone stood up until, you know, the more important people sat down, the ladies, of course, in this particular case, and, jeez, everything was served, a lot of cutlery was being used.
And throughout the course of the dinner, this young woman who was sitting across from me looked at me, and she gave me one of those I know that you know kind of looks, and I looked back. I mean, I don’t know what you know.
I was a little bit embarrassed, but then I realized there was only one other foreigner that was actually at this gathering, and he was using his knife and fork backwards.
What I mean by this, in the European context, you always keep your knife in your right hand and your fork in your left hand to eat, but because he was left handed, he was using it in the opposite way.
Now the Americans, for sure, the North Americans, for that matter, don’t really care, and they just use it arbitrarily, but this is not correct.
And if you’re going to travel internationally, you’ve got to follow the European standard and then know what the American style is as well. I mean, this is very simple stuff. All you have to do is to go to emilypost.com.
But I would like to go on a little bit further when it comes to social etiquette. And that is about controlling your temper, controlling your moods. And this, of course, we’ve seen this in traffic.
People jump out of cars when there’s a minor accident and people scream. I saw an instance once, I think I mentioned before, that this powerful young man jumped out of his car, braided an old man who would, I think, maybe nudge the back of his car.
Unnecessarily, for sure.
So you think to yourself, if you want to be a good functional human being, learn your table manners, learn how to dress, how to dress properly, learn when to stand up, when you’re introduced to stand up and shake a person’s hand correctly, when
someone invites you to their home, bring a small gift, when you do business, send a note back, a physical note back, and of course then that ties in to dancing. If you’re asked to dance at some formal ball, never refuse.
Even if you dance poorly, you must dance. And just be gracious, because many people are socially below us, right? In the modern world, many of us today are advantaged.
We come from good homes, we have some money, we’ve been to really good schools, but there’s a big difference between getting a formal education and being truly educated in the ways of social etiquette and dealing with human beings.
Eight billion of us on this planet, we’ve got to learn to talk to one another without violence. Absolutely. Otherwise, gosh, where’s our civilization going to go?
And you know what they say, you know what they say, social etiquette is everything because it is the glue that binds us as a civilization, as a community, and critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care. God bless.
Bye-bye.