Extreme Etiquette (cont.)

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 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 becoming 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 invariably people of cultivation and worldly knowledge, who have not only perfect manners but a perfect manner.” Meaning 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 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 capitulation. Anna Post begs to disagree. “If your boss is worth half his salt, and he’s thinking 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 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.)

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 showing 4:20. (As consolation, my daughter, who waited tables to help pay for college, didn’t know this.)

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