Etiquette for Condoms and STDs

Since the dawn of time, human relationships of a physical nature could be complex. Adding to that complexity throughout time, have been sexually transmitted diseases. Etiquette is necessary when it comes to this particular subject, as these issues must be discussed in order to keep oneself safe and healthy. 

A Touchy Subject from a 1990’s Survey of Four Etiquette Authorities

How do you ask a man to wear a condom?

Letitia Baldridge: You can say to him, “I’m very sorry, but if you don’t use a condom, there’s just no way we can be together.” You can then give him some, or tell him where the nearest drugstore is, or tell him, “Let’s have dinner another night,” and send him away.

Judith Martin: If you know the person well enough to make that necessary, you ought to be able to say anything. What amuses me is when people shift into prudery. If you are on intimate terms with somebody, surely you can ask them intimate questions.

Charlotte Ford: I’d be a little bit embarrassed and a little bit shy and say, “Listen, I hope you’ve taken some sort of protection because I don’t want to contract any diseases, and I’m sure you don’t either.”

Sydney Biddle Barrows: It is not seemly, nor necessary, to smile on the first date and say, “Love your dress. By the way, will you be giving me a fatal disease?” Instead, allow time to pass - that’s what these dates are for, after all. By the time sex seems a possibility, you will have necessarily both crossed that line beyond which these sensitive issues may be discussed.

If you’re giving a dinner party and invite someone who has AIDS, should you tell your other guests?

Letitia Baldridge: I don’t think you tell anybody that the person has AIDS. Because frankly the guests are not catching AIDS from that person. It really isn’t relevant.

Judith Martin: It depends on the activity of the dinner party. At most respectable dinner parties, there wouldn’t be any activity where you would catch AIDS, so I don’t see why should have to tell people. Would you tell your guests that one of them had cancer? But if you were giving an orgy, I think you should tell people.

Charlotte Ford: I don’t know that I would invite somebody to dinner knowing they have AIDS, simply because I think it would make everybody very uncomfortable. But I think it all depends on the situation. If you are going to do that, I think you have to be very careful how you do it and whom you invite.

Sydney Biddle Barrows: Yes. Most people will know that they cannot contract the disease by being seated at a dinner table with a carrier. But it is a courtesy to all to let them know ahead of time.

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Dinner Party Manners and Diet

Not so long ago, people with special dietary needs politely (and quietly) made do at dinner parties. But today, the dictum ''eat what's on your plate'' is rapidly being eclipsed by a ''have it your way'' mentality, and the changing social order poses questions of etiquette and presents new quandaries in entertaining.

'I Don't Eat … ' Plays Havoc With Parties

CHICAGO'S premier caterer, John Calihan, still remembers the nightmare. It was to be a dinner party a la Gatsby, a black-tie evening for 20 of the local Jays and Daisys. The hostess, a Chicago socialite, had enlisted Mr. Calihan to prepare her family bouillabaisse recipe. Spare no expense!

Mr. Calihan arranged for the proper species of seafood to be flown in from France, Maine and Nantucket. While the engraved sterling silver place cards were being polished and the flowers fussed over, the caterer (and six cooks hired for the occasion) painstakingly prepared the fish stew. It was a perfect bouillabaisse. And it was a perfect disaster. ''I'm allergic to shellfish,'' announced a guest as the waiter attempted to ladle the stew from a steaming tureen. The next guest said, ''I don't eat fish.'' Another said, ''I don't like fish.'' Two others demurred with a shake of the head. ''The hostess nearly fainted,'' Mr. Calihan recalled.

This happens at the finest tables these days. The national preoccupation with dietary restrictions - born of food allergies, health concerns or religious constraints - is changing the American dinner party. Mr. Calihan and caterers and hosts from other cities say guests have become more vocal about their food preferences, and an a la carte attitude is encroaching on the the last preserve of the communal feast.

Not so long ago, people with special dietary needs politely (and quietly) made do at dinner parties. But today, the dictum ''eat what's on your plate'' is rapidly being eclipsed by a ''have it your way'' mentality, and the changing social order poses questions of etiquette and presents new quandaries in entertaining.

Not long ago, hosts routinely called guests to discuss dress and seating arrangements. Today, ''those who wish to entertain practically have to ask for a medical history when inviting people to dinner,'' said Gail Banks, a Boston hostess.

Divergent diets complicate menu planning for the host. ''Mrs. Burlingham can't eat salt, the Jaynes are on Pritikin and the Hirschorns keep kosher,'' said Michael J. Anderson of New London, Conn., a 37-year-old lawyer who is planning a dinner party for October. ''What am I? A cafeteria line?''

Manners mavens agree that guests should inform hosts ahead of time of severe allergies or life-threatening medical conditions and that hosts should accommodate these, as well as religious restrictions, to the best of their abilities.

The ever-widening ethnic mix at dinner parties poses new cultural considerations. And by adapting to these, as well as to food allergies (which range from the potentially lethal to very mild), lactose intolerance, high cholesterol, hypertension and vegetarian and kosher restrictions, the modern host may have opened the floodgates for more idiosyncratic concerns about consumption.

Letitia Baldrige, the author of ''Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to the New Manners for the 90's,'' to be published by Rawson next year, recently dined in the home of friends who offered fresh-caught swordfish for dinner. As the fish was served, a fellow guest appraised the menu. ''I'm surprised,'' he murmured. ''The waters around here are polluted.'' The comment, Ms. Baldrige said, ''took the joy out of the dish and focused all the attention on one person.''

Not long ago, hosts routinely called guests to discuss dress and seating arrangements. Today, ''those who wish to entertain practically have to ask for a medical history when inviting people to dinner,'' said Gail Banks, a Boston hostess.

''No matter what the menu is, we don't go to a party without plenty of extra-virgin olive oil, vegetables, fish and plain fruit,'' she said. This holistic ammunition, she said, ''really cools out everybody with special dietary needs.''

But Mr. Savoca, the New York caterer, believes that a la carte accommodations erode the communal nature of the dinner party. ''The best host figures out how to accommodate special needs on one menu,'' he said.

Along with other inveterate dinner-givers, he outlines the parameters of inoffensive dinner party fare: avoid pork, shellfish, duck, lamb and fried food. Emphasize starch, whether pasta, potatoes or bread. Focus on salad and vegetables. Exercise restraint in the use of butter, animal fat, eggs and salt. Fruit should always be offered in addition to a very rich dessert. Always have mineral water on the table and freshly brewed decaffeinated coffee on hand.

Impressive menus can be created within these restrictions, but some hosts say meals designed to be inoffensive are boring. ''I call them dry-cleaned menus,'' Mr. Calihan said. ''They sound interesting, but they all end up tasting the same.'' Hosts, he said, can battle the blands with interesting garnishes and dramatic presentations.

Several recent changes in serving customs also help soothe the Me-Me dinner guest. Platter service, for instance, is being revived across the country. ''This allows guests to select discreetly,'' Mr. Savoca said. A renaissance of dinner buffets allows the same latitude for both picky and medically restricted eaters. Choice is the most gracious response to dietary restrictions.

But setting aside the white gloves and cream sauces will not placate the truly food rude. With them, Ms. Baldrige said, a host ''must hang tough.''

Pamela Black, a 28-year-old fund-raiser for the Children's Aid Society in Manhattan, learned that lesson when she gave her first sit-down dinner party. Ms. Black was familiar with the diets of each of her 12 guests and spent three days marinating a leg of lamb, preparing ratatouille, cleaning lettuce and making a peach tart. When she presented the platter fanned with rosy slices of lamb, one guest arched an eyebrow. ''Bambi,'' he said. Ms. Black corrected him. ''Mary's little lamb,'' she said, ''followed by salad from Peter Rabbit's patch.'' You Name It, It's Off Limits For Someone 

HERE is a list of caveats for the sensitive host, based on suggestions from caterers and others. Items that may cause allergic reactions: 

• Shellfish 
• Nuts 
• Red wine 
• Cheese 
• Tomatoes, eggplant and other members of nightshade family
• Garlic 
• Monosodium glutamate 

Items that may be proscribed by religion: 

• Shellfish 
• Pork 
• Meat and dairy products in combination 
• Caviar 
• Meats 
• Alcoholic beverages 

Items health-conscious people may try to avoid: 

• Animal and saturated fats 
• Sweets 
• Dairy products 
• Starches and breads 
• Fried foods 
• Beef and other red meat 
• Sauces 
• Butter 
• Caffeine 
• Alcoholic beverages 

Items that people may avoid for social or political reasons:

• Veal 
• Meat in general 
• Any food targeted for boycotts 

Foods some people do not like to think about eating: 

• Rabbit 
• Squid 
• Snails 
• Sweetbreads 
• Venison 
• Organ meats 
• Snake 

Foods that people may be embarrassed to eat at a party because they are messy: 

• Bony fish 
• Artichokes 
• Corn on the cob 
• Fried chicken 
• Soups 
• Ribs 
• Poultry with bones 
• Spaghetti or other long pasta 
• Tacos 
• Lobster. – By Molly O'Neill, Sept. 13, 1989

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Letitia Baldrige on Executive Etiquette

There is, for example, the matter of etiquette on corporate jets. Given the pressure to take off on time, “guests should arrive early,” Miss Baldrige said, “and they should be very polite to the crew.” The host's obligation is to serve “healthy, good food - not cold quiche” and to have an up-to-date annual report on board. “There are little details that make corporate jets exceptional,” she said.

You arrive early at a restaurant for a business lunch to which you've been invited by a fellow executive. Do you take a table? If you take a table, should you order a drink? And if your host never arrives, what do you do?

Take the table, but not the drink, because "It looks sloppy," says Letitia Baldrige, the former White House social secretary and an authority on etiquette. Nor should you eat the bread sticks: "It gets the table all crumbed up." If the host fails to arrive after 40 minutes, tip the waiter $5 or $10 and let the other executive know, so that you can be reimbursed. "A host is a host," Miss Baldrige said.

This month Miss Baldrige, who heads her own public relations and marketing company, is starting a "corporate manners" division to educate men and women on the nicer points that are often overlooked in the business world. There is a desperate need for such training, she said in an needs, Mr. Korda said, "is efficiency, excellence and caring about your work."

Whatever the value of corporate manners, few people would seem better prepared to instill them than Miss Baldrige. A Vassar graduate, she has spent a lifetime advising others on etiquette, as social secretary to the late Ambassador and Mrs. David Bruce in Paris, to the former Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce in Rome and to Jacqueline Kennedy in the White House. In 1978, Miss Baldrige revised "The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette," and she is currently writing a book on corporate etiquette, to be published next year.

The vice president of Miss Baldrige's new division, Lily Lodge, has a pedigree at least as impressive. Miss Lodge is a Wellesley alumna, niece of the late Henry Cabot Lodge and daughter of John Davis Lodge, the United States Ambassador to Switzerland. Miss Lodge, a speech teacher, will bring her talents to "a business world punctuated with dissonant voices, harsh accents and unpleasant tones,” Miss Baldridge said.

Miss Lodge has already helped modulate voices at Revlon, Citibank and the Ford Foundation. "I've worked with lots of women climbing up the corporate ladder who have shrill, high voices, so that what they in their companies," she said, while "middle managers are fascinated" with the subject. Clients have included Dean Witter Reynolds, where she was a director before the brokerage house was acquired by Sears, Roebuck.

Corporate manners training will encompass the usual niceties of the non business world: How to make an introduction; how to be a good host or guest; how to become a good conversationalist. But it will also cover a range of subjects particularly relevant to corporate life: when to use office stationery for extracurricular matters; how to act at a meeting; how to behave at a business lunch.

There is, for example, the matter of etiquette on corporate jets. Given the pressure to take off on time, "guests should arrive early," Miss Baldrige said, "and they should be very polite to the crew." The host's obligation is to serve "healthy, good food - not cold quiche" and to have an up-to-date annual report on board. "There are little details that make corporate jets exceptional," she said.

The quality of a company's stationery can be telltale, too. "A really first class company uses really fine stationery," Miss Baldrige said. From the chairman's office down to the executive vice president level, genuine engraved stationery is de rigueur. "Fake engraved stationery is like fake furs," she said.

She is enthusiastic about letter-writing for joyful occasions (a colleague's daughter is admitted to Harvard) or somber events (family illness). If an executive has just emerged from a meeting at which he came under fire, Miss Baldrige said, a well-mannered colleague peer or subordinate - should drop him a solicitous line: "Dear George, I understand that you had a tough time, and hope your spirits are up."

In the cutthroat corporate world, admittedly, such commiseration might be regarded a trifle suspiciously. "I'd kill anybody who did that to me," Mr. Korda said. "First of all, who needs it? Secondly, maybe the man deserved to have a tough time."

While he is "in favor of good manners," Mr. Korda insisted, he doubts that social niceties can be transferred to business. "Manners in corporations are for people in positions of power so that they don't misuse their power," he said. "For the rest, I'm not sure it comes up. Business is not necessarily nice. It's competitive and harsh, it has to do with excellence and self-interest."

Miss Baldrige disagrees. For every Machiavellian prince at a company, she maintained, there are a dozen true princes. "It's like taxi drivers," she explained. "If you take five taxis a day, one driver will be nasty and the other four are perfectly nice. You remember the nasty one. But you should remember the four who were nice. And we just have to look at corporate America that way." – By S. Salmans, 1983

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Manners Nudging a 1980’s Comeback

The 1980’s was a decade of contradictions in etiquette and manners... Most saw etiquette and manners in the United Staes to still in be in a free fall of decline, following the pattens set in the 1960s and 1970s. That did not stop people, however, from writing and buying books in large numbers on etiquette and manners. This phenomenon became a lead up to “the 1990’s Etiquette Era.”

–––––––––––––––––––––– 

“Although Clare Boothe Luce has no plans to write an etiquette book, she has observed social mores from the time when, she says, life was ‘much more ceremonial.’ Manners today except for official life in Washington have, she believes, ‘virtually disappeared,’ and she sees ‘no signs of a renaissance.’ For Luce, ‘good manners is treating others with a certain distance and formality until a friendship is formed.’ As for the current American interest in manners and etiquette, ‘I do hope,’ Luce says, ‘they buy all the books they can.’ – Helping a young lady into her chair at the table, from Marjabelle Stewart’s book, “Stand Up, Shake Hands, Say ‘How Do You Do’”

NEW YORK - America, if the social soothsayers are accurate in their predictions, is about to become a land of kindness and courtesy. This is not merely because “Tiffany's Table Manners for Teen-Agers,” the paperback by Walter Hoving first published 21 years ago, is, according to Tiffany, “suddenly selling like croissants.” Rather, it is largely because of the burst of books on manners and etiquette – subjects that in the past inspired works from such concerned citizens as George Washington and Eleanor Roosevelt – which have recently been, or are about to be published. There are courses and lectures on the same subject for which people are lining up as if they were waiting to see “Conan the Barbarian.” Americans, these authors and teachers are saying, are currently craving tradition and hungering for the rules of proper behavior in social situations. 

Mary Susan Miller, who is working with Elizabeth L. Post, the granddaughter of Emily Post, on updating “The New Emily Post’s Etiquette,” said, “People have become so horrified, hurt and disgusted by rudeness” that a resurgence of manners was inevitable. Manners, says Miller, “are not a set of rules that someone out there arbitrarily says follow. Manners are to make other people, as well as yourself, comfortable.” She is currently teaching corporate executives, among others, to be comfortable. 

When Marjabelle Stewart was at the Waldorf Astoria recently to conduct a class on dining for children from the United Nations International School, it was yet one more stop in her constant etiquette campaign. Stewart, who has made manners her cottage industry, has written several books on the subject (“Marjabelle Stewart's, Book of Modern Table Manners,” the most recent, was published last year). Her children's etiquette classes (seven weeks, $65, graduation ceremony and tea party included) are franchised in 476 cities throughout the country. “Everyone wants to be upper crust today,” says Stewart, who also conducts courses (“Eating Your Way to the Top”) for both executives and college students. 

Ann Buchwald, a Washingtonian who is married to Art Buchwald and was Stewart’s co-author on such books as “White Gloves and Party Manners” and “Stand Up, Shake Hands, Say ‘How Do You Do,’” finds further evidence that manners are staging a comeback. “Women are wearing gloves for the first time in years, and there's a return to dresses,” she said. “How people look has a lot to do with the way they behave.” It was President and Mrs. Reagan, Buchwald adds, who “put the cap on the bottle.” Many of the parents who are most concerned about teaching their children good manners, Buchwald has found, were students who demonstrated in the 60's and 70's. “When they locked up the dean, they didn't much care about where glasses go on the dinner table,” she said, “but they now want their children to care.” 

For those who, like him, grew up in the 60s and 70s, P. J. O'Rourke is writing “Modern Manners: Etiquette for Extremely Rude People.” “We never learned how to dress properly or give cocktail parties,” O'Rourke says. “It was an era, when people erased the tapes on how to behave.” It is the family that is or should be the unit that teaches manners to youngsters, according to Letitia Baldrige, who revised and expanded the most recent edition of “The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette.” “The many young people who grew up having dinner in front of the television set instead of the dining, table never did learn table manners,” Baldrige says. “Besides that, their parents were divorced and were never home to advise them.”

Another title, scheduled for publication later this year, is George Mazzei's “The New Office Etiquette,” which he says he wrote because “there's been a breakdown in business manners, and people are realizing they can no longer deal with the constant rudeness which became a part of the business world when crude young people became superstars.” Mazzei's book deals with “the new etiquette toward women in business" and sets guidelines for such business behavior as who should go through a revolving door first (the woman still does) and the correct way to deal with your boss's in-office lover (smile, nod, and don't talk about the affair). The book is scheduled for publication later this year. 

One can learn “How to Eat an Artichoke and Other Trying, Troublesome, Hard-to-Get-At Foods” in Rochelle Udell's just-published book. Udell wrote it, she says, “because food is so often a barrier to socializing across the dinner table.” She got the idea for her book, she says, while observing “someone's cherry tomato squirt across a dining room.” Although Clare Boothe Luce has no plans to write an etiquette book, she has observed social mores from the time when, she says, life was “much more ceremonial.” Manners today except for official life in Washington have, she believes, “virtually disappeared,” and she sees “no signs of a renaissance.” For Luce, “good manners is treating others with a certain distance and formality until a friendship is formed.” As for the current American interest in manners and etiquette, “I do hope,” Luce says, “they buy all the books they can.” – NYT News Service, 1982

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Vintage Etiquette Advice for Executives

 

What’s New in Executive Etiquette, 

circa 1985

LETITIA BALDRIGE remembers them well.

The night she neglected to attend a black tie dinner given in her honor because she had written down the wrong date. The day she prepared a five-course meal for a Mormon Cabinet member who could not touch the food because every dish contained alcohol. The time she greeted a top Washington official and forgot his name.

“I've learned from my mistakes,” said Miss Baldrige in an interview at her Park Avenue apartment.

She wants others to do as well. This week marks the appearance of “Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to Executive Manners,” published by Rawson Associates. It is a book of rules and tips culled from the former White House social secretary's experiences and observations. Based on the theory that good manners are the cornerstone of a successful company, the book is geared toward helping individuals attain poise and confidence within the workplace and outside it.

As a desk-top compendium of social savvy, it covers the basics - how to make an introduction, how to become a good conversationalist, how to be a good host or guest. Several chapters are devoted to quirky matters, such as “Divorce Etiquette in the Office” and “Using Nicknames in the Workplace.”

But the book's meat and potatoes stem from classic corporate protocol - conducting annual meetings, evaluating subordinates, entertaining out-of-town clients and making public appearances.

Say, for example, a high-powered executive is invited to a gala fund-raising benefit and asked to sit on the dais, beside the guest of honor. What if the day before the gala, he is called out of town unexpectedly to attend an important sales meeting? Should he send an assistant to take his place at the benefit?

Absolutely not, Miss Baldrige advises. Never send a substitute. It is the host's responsibility to find another guest or to eliminate the place setting. And never fail to let the host know you will not be coming - the empty seat “will look like a front tooth missing in someone's smile.”

Doing the “correct” thing in this and other touchy situations is not only polite, Miss Baldrige says - it is good business. “Good manners are cost-effective,” she maintains. “They play a major role in helping to generate sales and profits.”

Miss Baldrige is eminently qualified to hold forth on acquiring social savvy. For 37 years, she has been polishing the manners of diplomats, corporate big-wigs and budding entrepreneurs. A Vassar alumna, she served as an aide to the United States Ambassador at the American Embassies in Paris and Rome and as Jacqueline Kennedy's social secretary in the White House. Since forming her own public relations and marketing company three years ago, she has served as a consultant to 60 companies, including Hill & Knowlton, Christie's and Mark Cross.

“I've watched the little fish swimming around the big fish. I've seen the politicking that goes on,” she said. “I've found that people who are well-mannered and supportive of others tend to rise to the top.”

There is another school of thought, however, that dictates that niceties are extraneous in the competitive world of big business. Company officials who scale the corporate ladder, these doubters say, are often ill-mannered and occasionally downright rude.

To which the doyenne of the social graces responds: “For every rude executive who makes it to the top there are nine successful executives with good manners.” Following are exerpts from the book.

Riding to the Top on Good Manners 

Going Through Doors Our grandparents were taught that ladies should always walk through the door first. Not so in today's workplace. Common sense and efficiency dictate that whoever arrives at the door first, male or female, should hold it open for the others directly behind and keep it open until all have passed through. However, younger executives should still defer to very senior ones - by managing to get to the door fast, ahead of the others, to hold it open. And the executive the outside people have come to see should act as their host, including opening doors for them and motioning them to walk ahead.

Business and Small Talk

The more at ease you become in conversation, the better at small talk you become. It's a good way to survive common sticky social situations like being seated at dinner between two people whom you have never met, don't care about ever meeting again, and have absolutely nothing in common with except that you happen to work in the same company or industry as one of them.

The following are examples of topics suited to small talk: Landscape gardening, passing the bar exams, Princess Diana, Luciano Pavarotti, the use of hypnotism to stop smoking, robots doing housework, and how to write an on-target resume.

Screening Calls

The best advice one can give on screening calls is not to do it. When your secretary asks a caller, ''May I ask what this call is about?'' there is always disappointment and often hostility on the other end of the line. The caller feels as though he is deemed inadequate, unimportant, and unworthy of speaking directly to the person seated in splendor behind his executive desk. Jacket Etiquette

* A double-breasted jacket on a man or woman is meant to be left buttoned and not hang open.

* A man who often works without his jacket in an office should never wear short-sleeved shirts.

* If you are working without your jacket in the office and the big boss comes in, put on your jacket and keep it on for as long as he or she is present.

Designing the Business Card

The standard size of a business card is 3 1/2'' x 2'' or variations thereof. Cards may be made in unusual shapes to represent certain types of businesses. (I have seen clever cards in the shape of a hamburger, automobile, French poodle and typewriter.) If you have cards of this nature made for you, remember that what you gain in cleverness, you may lose in one respect: People cannot easily put an odd-shaped card in their wallets or card cases.

Going for Coffee

The “going for coffee syndrome” has been blown out of all proportion.

In my opinion, a secretary should use her precious energy to improve her position with the company in a constructive manner, not waste it fighting requests to serve coffee or tea. However, the boss should go fetch the coffee for everyone on the office staff from time to time, too, just to show that he or she shares responsibility for the comfort as well as the work of the staff. Congratulating Those You Know Well . . .Great news! You are climbing the ladder of success so fast that I'm dizzy looking up and trying to keep you in view. We're all celebrating for you. Congratulating Those You Don't Know Well . . .Your new position is certainly a recognition of your contributions to this company during the past few years. No one is more deserving of the promotion and the added responsibilities it brings. We all wish you great luck.

Place Cards

Elsa Maxwell, the late and internationally famous party-giver, once stated that ''the most certain route to chaos at a dinner party is not having place cards telling everyone where to go.''

A place card, either flat or folded, sits on top of the napkin, on the tablecloth, propped against a glass, or placed above the plate at the place setting.

Invitation to a Single Person

Some single people think it is perfectly all right to show up at a cocktail party with a date (or even with members of their family). If the place where the party is being given is small, the host may have had to pare down his or her guest list carefully. Your showing up with someone who was not invited can cause hostility in your beleaguered host's mind. Care of an Out-of-Town V.I.P. Here are some things to remember:

He (or she) should be met at the airport by someone of sufficiently high rank, such as a company vice-president.

The guest should be provided with a complete schedule of events for his stay.

The V.I.P. should be given a carefully annotated guest list for every meeting and every business and social event, so that the V.I.P. will be well-briefed on the cast of characters.

When Someone Is Put Down

If you hear a colleague being criticized unfairly - even in cocktail party chitchat -speak up. Defend the victim calmly, not aggressively; ''I don't think that's fair. I know him well and work with him every day. That's not the way I see him.'' Or, ''I really don't think you're giving the whole picture.'' Or, ''Why don't you make those accusations to his face, instead of behind his back?''— By Beth Sherman, New York Times, Oct. 13, 1985

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Late 20th C. State of U.S. Etiquette

If you’re part of the Generation X crowd or younger, you can thank your parents for your lacking decorum. (Is there nothing that parents can’t be blamed for?) Manners mavens say the hippie ‘60s— when everything conventional was rejected— was the start of the decline. Etiquette experts say the deterioration continued into the 1970s and ‘80s, when people were too busy or just didn’t care about their behavior.

With the holiday season soon in full swing, chances are you’ve experienced —or will— this dining play-by-play:

It begins with a fellow diner attacking a meal, grunting as he spears and saws his way through a piece of meat. Painfully, it continues as he heaves gobs of mashed potatoes into his gaping mouth, stopping only to savor the defining moment of gustatory satisfaction— a big, juicy buuurrrp.

Where were these table barbarians reared? Perhaps in the Land of Piggy-Piggy. You know, that place where chewing open-mouthed, using the back of the hand as a napkin and employing a toothpick to catch any after-dinner treats are celebrated activities.

The fact is, a large portion of our adult population lacks some of the basic social skills that separate human from beast. And their children are following by example.

Shocked by the way little Johnny downs his lime Jell-O or mashes meatballs into his mouth? Well, don’t be too appalled. Chances are the tyke got some of his best lessons at home.

“Ninety percent of manners is role modeling,” says Joan K. Hopper, who holds etiquette programs for children, adults and the business community.

If you’re part of the Generation X crowd or younger, you can thank your parents for your lacking decorum. (Is there nothing that parents can’t be blamed for?) Manners mavens say the hippie ‘60s— when everything conventional was rejected— was the start of the decline. Etiquette experts say the deterioration continued into the 1970s and ‘80s, when people were too busy or just didn’t care about their behavior.

“For the past 20 years, I’ve watched the decline of human behavior,” says Letitia Baldrige, an expert on manners who has served as social secretary at the U.S. embassies in Paris and Rome. “It’s just amazing— amazing!— the things people think are acceptable at the table and even in other parts of our lives.”

A decline in the importance the country places on table manners has led to a generation that believes eating with fingers is cute and that placing elbows on the table is OK if you’re really tired.

“Good manners should have never gone away,” Hopper says. “Now we have to play catch-up.”

In defense of those who rebelled against social decorum, there are other reasons for the manners mess. The ever-more-rushed pace of society and increasing number of single-parent households where the parent works most of the time and the children often eat in front of a TV or computer are also to blame for our diminishing demeanor.

Of course, few people are willing to admit they have poor manners. But practically everyone has a friend who does.

Etiquette experts say social skills can give a person an upper hand in the job market. “People judge each other on how they carry and present themselves,” Hopper says. “That includes potential friends and employers.”

The good news? Etiquette consultants say more people want to learn. “I’m especially seeing it within the business community,” Hopper says. “Companies are really concerned about setting a good example when traveling abroad.”

“I expect things to change for the better,” Baldrige says. “I really think we should expect a social revolution.” — Helen Ubinas, Times, 1995

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Handling Faux Pas in Public

The social circuit is a breeding ground for embarrassing moments. There are names to remember, table manners to watch, dress codes to adhere to. Perhaps nowhere else in life are we under as much scrutiny as we are during social occasions. People can go a long way toward reducing awkward moments by remembering to “think of someone other than yourself,” says Letitia Baldrige, author of a ‘90s guide to manners.
— Photo, Etiquipedia’s private library

There’s No Pas Like a Faux Pas in Society

A CEO wipes his mouth with a tablecloth. A community leader mistakes a man’s second wife for the daughter of his first. A socialite backs into a pool.

These are some of the gaffes that have been played out on the Orange County social scene.

And no wonder, say the blunderers, since stepping out is what they love to do, sometimes as often as five times a week.

“I’m out so much, I’m bound to make mistakes,” says Thomas Penn Jones, CEO and president of Children’s Hospital of Orange County. “I just try to laugh them off.”

Jones bemoaned his faux pas out loud at the Pacific Club in Newport Beach. After realizing he had wiped his mouth with a portion of the tablecloth, he told table-mates: “Why can’t they make dinner napkins and tablecloths in different colors? This isn’t the first time I’ve done this!”

Janice Johnson of Laguna Beach still blushes when she recalls “that luncheon.” She attended a fund-raising home tour and admired a lovely hostess--a young mother with two small children.

A week later, she was seated at a luncheon next to a mature woman whose married name was the same as the woman she had met earlier.

Striking up conversation, she said: “I met your lovely daughter and your two grandchildren last week

She quickly learned that the young woman was the new wife of her lunch partner’s ex. Says a wiser Johnson: “Before you open your mouth, think!”

Vesta Curry of Laguna Beach recalls with embarrassment the luncheon where she took pictures of friends: “I was snapping away and backed right into the pool. Thank God it was the shallow end. I can’t swim!”

The social circuit is a breeding ground for embarrassing moments. There are names to remember, table manners to watch, dress codes to adhere to. Perhaps nowhere else in life are we under as much scrutiny as we are during social occasions.

People can go a long way toward reducing awkward moments by remembering to “think of someone other than yourself,” says Letitia Baldrige, author of a ‘90s guide to manners.

Deferring to others is the foundation of social etiquette. One of the reasons you place your knife and fork together on your plate after a meal, for example, is to assist the waiter during his trek back to the kitchen.

But if you do blow it, Baldrige says, the best way to recover is to make a joke.

“Everyone else is dying, so you need to break the tension. Of course, you apologize if you ruin a tablecloth or break someone’s prized Dresden centerpiece.

“But if it’s a burp you couldn’t help, you apologize, then say, ‘It didn’t exactly sound like the symphony orchestra, did it? I’ll try to do better next time.’ ”

Even an etiquette guru has red-faced moments. One of her worst, Baldrige recalls, was the night a couple arrived at her door for Sunday supper. She had forgotten she issued the invitation.

“There we were, my husband smoking a cigar, me in a nightgown, and the doorbell rings.”

She teased the guests about being so formally dressed, rushed into the kitchen, threw some frozen beef stew into a pot and drenched it with wine. “We made it through the evening. My husband thinks they were being polite, but I don’t think they knew the difference.”

As chairwoman of dozens of Orange County social events, Catherine Thyen of Corona del Mar has seen her share of excruciating moments. The worst came at an awards banquet.

“As a woman walked up to receive an award, her slip fell to the floor. She stepped right out of it, left it in a little pool. She never went back to retrieve it. I was impressed by her grace.”

To survive the demands of the polite life, Thyen has developed her own list of do’s and don’ts. “Do drink lots of water,” she advises. “It’s a good way to avoid coated coffee tongue and champagne breath.

“Don’t eat much, especially hors d’oeuvres. It can be very embarrassing to have someone come up to you when your mouth is full.”

And, do a run-through in new attire before attending a gala. “Get the kinks out around the house. You need to rehearse sitting in a bustle or dancing in a strapless gown.”

When Mark Johnson of Tustin received an invitation to a private party with a dress code that read: “Black Tie, Fun” he was confused.

So he called upon a new friend, Tom Tucker of Irvine Cove, who told him it meant having fun with his penguin suit. “He told me to wear black tie and whatever else I wanted,” said Johnson, chairman of the Orange County Performing Arts Center. “He said he was wearing Bermudas with his tux jacket and that others would dress equally crazy.”

Johnson didn’t know his friend was a prankster, that the invitation really meant to wear a fun-looking black tie. So he wore Reeboks and Levi 501’s with his tux.

“I arrive, feeling like I’m going to fit right in,” Johnson said. “And everybody is in form! I was embarrassed, but I had more fun than I’ve ever had when I was dressed like everybody else.”

Tucker, a center board member, remembers dressing for a black-tie gala and leaving his jacket at home. He was mortified when he walked into the event. “But after I had a glass of wine I decided it wasn’t worth driving home for,” he said.

Becoming embarrassed in social situations is common for adults, says Linda Algazi, a Corona del Mar psychotherapist. “However, when it becomes excessive and uncomfortable, it becomes something in psychology we call social phobia.”

People with the condition experience anxiety symptoms, stomach problems, muscular tension and confusion. “It can develop into a full-blown panic attack,” she says. “We all worry about being appropriately dressed, saying something dumb. Only when it becomes excessive does it become a real phobia.”

Embarrassing moments happen to everyone, Baldrige believes. Forgetting someone’s name is probably the most common cause of social humiliation. “If you’re smart, you will own up to it and say something like, ‘I can’t even remember my mother’s name.’ ”

In her research, Baldrige has come upon dozens of interesting incidents. A favorite stands out: “It was at the White House during the Eisenhower era. A woman guest lost her panties while she stood at a party.

“You only had elastic around the waist in those days. She was horrified, and stepped out of them. A White House aide whisked them up and put them in his pocket.” — By Ann Conway, 1997

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Letitia Baldrige’s White House Memories

In 1961, Baldrige moved from public relations director of Tiffany & Co. in New York to the job as Mrs. Kennedy’s chief of staff. Baldrige remembered how that First Lady turned the White House into a warm, festive place— abandoning a large U-shaped table used for state dinners and substituting round tables of eight so guests found it easier to converse.

The Late-Letitia Baldrige Shared a Houseful of Memories

Letitia Baldrige, who was Jackie Kennedy’s chief of staff at the White House, shared her memories of the First Ladies.

Baldrige spoke at the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda on “The Evolving Role of the First Lady” as part of the library’s seven-part Distinguished Speaker series, “The Lady of the House: Great Wives of Great Presidents.” About 300 guests, most of them women, paid $8.50 each for the talk and tea.

White House Days

Wearing a gold blazer and Barbara Bush-style pearls, Baldrige began her talk by praising the “magnificent library” that “brings back so many memories.”

Baldrige’s association with the White House dates back to her childhood. As the daughter of Malcolm Baldrige, once a Nebraska congressman, she was invited to the White House Easter egg hunt at age 4 during the last year of the Hoover Administration. “I’ve had a charmed life,” she said.

In 1961, Baldrige moved from public relations director of Tiffany & Co. in New York to the job as Mrs. Kennedy’s chief of staff. Baldrige remembered how that First Lady turned the White House into a warm, festive place— abandoning a large U-shaped table used for state dinners and substituting round tables of eight so guests found it easier to converse.

“Young America started to copy, copy, copy. We received countless letters from women saying, ‘Everyone tells me I look exactly like Mrs. Kennedy,’ ” Baldrige said. Many wanted to know how the First Lady did her hair.

First Ladies’ Clout

“The First Lady has a lot of power,” Baldrige said. “I hope Hillary Clinton realizes that.”

A Republican who switched parties during the Kennedy years and later switched back again, Baldrige has not yet been called on by Clinton for advice, as she has for four previous First Ladies.

“I’m all for Hillary Clinton. I want her to avoid the barbs of women who hate women who work,” she says. “But I’m known as a Republican in Washington. I’m probably the last person she’d call.”

The author of 12 books including “The Complete Guide to New Manners for the ‘90s,” Baldrige held to one of the golden rules of etiquette and never spoke ill of anyone.

On Rosalynn Carter: “She had beautiful manners and wrote wonderful notes.”

On Nancy Reagan: “She had a tremendous flair . . . and was given a bad rap by the press.”

On Pat Nixon: “She did a tremendous amount for the White House.”

“All of the First Ladies were good, creative and strong,” she said. “I’ve always said they should be paid.”

Tea Time

After the talk, guests sampled tea and scones in the library’s lobby and stood in line to meet Baldrige. Clara Jane Nixon, sister-in-law to Richard Nixon, had never met Baldrige until the tea but said her talk brought back memories of her own visits to the White House. “The talk let me relive a few experiences,” she said. “We used to visit the White House, and we even stayed in the queen’s bedroom.”

Guests also visited the library’s exhibit, “White House Style: Formal Gowns of the First Ladies,” which featured 22 inaugural and other gowns reproduced from the Smithsonian’s collection of originals.

— By Kathryn Bold, Jan. 1993

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Profiles in Etiquette – Letitia Baldrige

Known as the ‘doyenne of decorum’ and as a social secretary to American First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, Letitia Baldrige was one of the chief arbiters of good manners in modern America. Described in a 1978 Time Magazine profile as a “superbly energetic amalgam of feminist and Tasteful Lady.” Baldrige embarked on a career that took her from diplomatic cirlcles, to the White House and on to a long career advising business executives on the finer points of etiquette and social graces, all starting decades before women talked about “having it all,” and at a time when many of her female colleagues were afforded few professional opportunities. She authored numerous books and articles on etiquette and social graces over her long career. “Discourtesy and arrogance were not requirements for a career of similar accomplishment,” she would later advise executives in her role as a maven of etiquette. Baldrige died in 2012, at the age of 86.

     On Social Etiquette

If you ever find yourself sitting across the dinner table from Jacqueline Onassis or Robert Redford, don’t ask about a job for your n'er-do-well cousin. That’s one of the worst things you can say to a celebrity, says Letitia Baldrige, social secretary at the Kennedy White House, in the new edition of "The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette" (Doubleday). 

Here’s more advice from Baldrige on keeping your foot out of your mouth in such situations: 

1. Don’t be a critic. Say something nice about the celebrity's latest movie, play, TV appearance or corporation.
2. If you can say something intelligent about the person’s profession, by all means come out with it.
3. Discuss the celebrity's outside interests, including charitable activities.
4. That does not include the person’s outside amatory or pecuniary interests. Never pry into a celebrity's personal life with questions on such subjects as marriage or income. 
5. If speaking with an actor or actress, suggest a character from a great book that the person could play well. 
6. Never tell the celebrity that he or she looks much younger and thinner in real life than on stage or screen. ("You will make him think he looks old and fat to the people who see him on camera and on the stage ”) 
7. Never criticize the person’s colleagues or fellow performers. ("Even if he agrees with you, he will have to come out in their ardent defense.") 
8. Don’t make the person feel inadequate or unprepared by posing questions on subjects outside his or her areas of expertise. ("If he is a performing artist, don't ask him some intricate question on international foreign affairs... Likewise, one does not ask a Cabinet officer what he thinks of the latest underground movie one may have seen.")– 1978

Etiquette and Manners Have Differences

NEW YORK (AP) Could you differentiate between “etiquette” and “manners”? Letitia Baldrige in her revised book on etiquette says, "Etiquette has to do with when you wear white gloves and how to unfold a napkin on your lap. 

Real manners are being thoughtful toward others and doing nice things for others. “Manners really matter, they stem from kindness. Etiquette can be a bit starchy,” she said. – The Desert Sun, 1981

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Differing Etiquette and Continents

Europeans hold the fork in the left hand and the knife in the right and, when food is cut, it is carried to the mouth by the left hand. The knife is always in use, not only for cutting, but also for pushing and for dabbing gravy onto the potatoes and other such useful functions. There are some differences between the English and the Continentals, for though both keep forks in the left hand, the English keep the tines turned over and pile food onto the back of the fork. Beginning with meat as a platform, they may smooth on potatoes into which they press peas and then transport the whole mouthful at once.

Why are American manners different?

Because most American customs and rules of etiquette are drawn from those of Europe, any that differ are of special interest. How did the differences come about and what do they represent, if anything? I have always wondered, for example, why Americans who greet one another by kissing do so with a single kiss on one cheek, while Europeans always buss both cheeks, and sometimes do so twice, for a total of four kisses. Are we less affectionate than Europeans, or merely busier and so anxious to cut our kissing time in half? Similarly and equally inexplicably, Americans differ from Europeans in their use of the knife and fork. 

Europeans hold the fork in the left hand and the knife in the right and, when food is cut, it is carried to the mouth by the left hand. The knife is always in use, not only for cutting, but also for pushing and for dabbing gravy onto the potatoes and other such useful functions. There are some differences between the English and the Continentals, for though both keep forks in the left hand, the English keep the tines turned over and pile food onto the back of the fork. Beginning with meat as a platform, they may smooth on potatoes into which they press peas and then transport the whole mouthful at once. Other Europeans turn the tines over after cutting and push food onto the fork with a knife. But for many years American etiquette dictated that the fork must be switched to the right hand after the food is cut, and that the knife should rest on the edge of the plate. During actual eating, the left hand was supposed to lie idle on the lap. 

This cumbersome and awkward switching of hands continues today even though it was declared out of date as far back as 1948 in “Vogue’s Book of Etiquette,” written by Millicent Fenwick, who was then an associate editor of Vogue and is now the United States representative to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome. After describing the old rule, Mrs. Fenwick wrote, “Today, it is reversed so commonly that the left-handed method is almost preferred to the other. Both are perfectly good usage, but it is now axiomatic that whenever food is cut with a knife, the left hand can quite naturally carry it up to the mouth.” Even though the European method is smoother and more efficient, as any time-motion study would prove, most Americans persist in this “zig-zag” method, as it is described in “The New Emily Post’s Etiquette” by Elizabeth L. Post. The author suggests that Americans are reluctant to follow the European method because they feel it would be “putting on airs to adopt a foreign way of eating.” Mrs. Post advises, “I can see nothing wrong in adopting a custom that seems more practical than your own.” 

Letitia Baldrige, who revised “The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette,” also considers the Continental style more “sensible.” In preparing this book, which was published in 1978, Miss Baldrige tried in vain to discover how the zig-zag method developed in the United States. “I even called the Library of Congress but they could not come up with anything,” she said. “English nannies,” she continued, “always teach children to pile food up on the back of the fork because that is the quickest way to get the meal over with. Also, the food tastes delicious that way.” (Miss Baldrige also said she had been told that double kissing was meant to bless both sides of the brain.) 

Perhaps in the early days of our country, the change in rules was a populist protest against royalists. Or, as a European friend suggested, onehanded eating may be a holdover from frontier days, when it was necessary to keep one hand at the ready for self defense. Left-handed Americans have, perhaps, the best of both worlds. Those I know hold the fork in the right hand, cut with the knife in the left hand and eat without changing hands. – By Mimi Sheraton, N.Y. Times News Service, 1983

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber,is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette and Swigging Drinks

Paper drinking straws are the ideal means and manner with which to sip beverages in their original containers.When drinking a beverage through a straw, hold the straw with one hand while holding the bottle or a glass with the other. In this manner, carbonated beverages are less likely to fly out from the top of the straw, when placing a bottle or glass back down on a countertop or tabletop.

Swigging is Not a Smart Habit and 

Not Good Manners 

“To me, just about the tackiest thing a cocktail party guests can do is to roam around, beer bottle or can in hand, swigging from it at will, when a bar glass is close at hand. Here comes a sexist remark: I think it's even tackier when a woman does it than a man.” -Letitia Baldrige

Many teenage youngsters believe that “swigging” soft drinks directly from the bottle is the thing to do. This mistaken notion is not only bad practice from the standpoint of good etiquette, but can be downright dangerous. Paper drinking straws, which eliminate the necessity of the lips touching the mouth of the bottle, are the ideal means and manners with which to sip beverages in their original containers. – San Bernardino Sun, 1948

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia  

Dining Style Etiquette History

“For Americans, it is more proper to eat American-style and it looks silly to eat European-style if you were not born in Europe. I'm a firm believer, for which I get a great deal of hate mail, that the American style is more dignified, slower, more complicated, as opposed to a quick shove-it-in method. People who use the European style point out that it is more efficient. But I say efficiency is not a virtue when it comes to stuffing food in your face. It is not proper etiquette or good for your health. Doctors don't ever say: ‘You're not eating fast enough.’ I am a great believer in American etiquette for Americans on all counts. Our forefathers wanted an American etiquette that would reflect the egalitarianism of America and not Europe, that was based on court life. My feelings get stirred up when I hear people arguing vehemently for aping European ways when we have a much more sophisticated and aesthetically pleasing American standard of our own. I agree with Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who wrote that Americans should have a dignified American etiquette.”– Miss Manners

Continental Dining  vs American Dining  

I admit, I am part of the American minority that refuses to juggle my eating utensils. I cut, hack and slash with the knife in my right hand and sling the food to my gaping mouth with the fork in my left hand. This makes me both a no-nonsense and continental kind of guy. Or so I've been told by no less an authority than myself. But what do the professional etiquette experts say about the conflicting techniques– the American way and the way the rest of us chow down? Before I get into that, I have learned that being a professional etiquette arbiter is a tougher job than it used to be.

Listen to Letitia Baldrige, the renowned author of eight etiquette books, who says: “Social manners have changed dramatically. Kids today and for the last 20 years have held the fork and knife in unbelievable ways. They hold the fork with a fist and the knife like a saw and they shovel it in. It doesn't matter to them which way they hold their knife and fork. They eat every which way. I'm amazed they get food into their mouths at all.” As for Ms. Baldrige's personal preference, she's on my side and prefers the labor-efficient continental approach.

“It is a much easier way to eat. It is much neater and there is no banging of flatware. Eating American-style, you put the knife down and clang. Continental is silent and efficient. But some people think it is faddish and elitist. We're the only people in the world who eat this way, putting the knife down and changing the fork from the left to the right hand.” Why do we do it? The custom of American eating was the way everyone ate until about 1840. In 1852 it came out in a French etiquette book that if you wanted to eat in a more fashionable manner, you would not switch the fork to the other hand. Before long, Europeans of all classes started using that style. In certain business sectors, if you don't eat continental-style, you look as if you just got off the cabbage truck. A strong believer in the American style is Judith Martin, who has written the Miss Manners column since 1978 and is author of four Miss Manners books.

“For Americans, it is more proper to eat American-style and it looks silly to eat European-style if you were not born in Europe. I'm a firm believer, for which I get a great deal of hate mail, that the American style is more dignified, slower, more complicated, as opposed to a quick shove-it-in method. People who use the European style point out that it is more efficient. But I say efficiency is not a virtue when it comes to stuffing food in your face. It is not proper etiquette or good for your health. Doctors don't ever say: ‘You're not eating fast enough.’ I am a great believer in American etiquette for Americans on all counts. Our forefathers wanted an American etiquette that would reflect the egalitarianism of America and not Europe, that was based on court life.

“My feelings get stirred up when I hear people arguing vehemently for aping European ways when we have a much more sophisticated and aesthetically pleasing American standard of our own. I agree with Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who wrote that Americans should have a dignified American etiquette.” Well, thanks a lot, Ms. Martin. Here we are, talking about how to get grub from the plate to our chompers, and you make me feel like a subversive. 

The final comment I leave for Ms. Baldrige, who offered this nugget of indisputable wisdom: “It is most important to eat neatly. You are a dining success if you don't get food on your clothes.” The next time we consider etiquette, we will look into the question of the proper way to share table scraps with our dog. Do you let it get up on the table, as I prefer? Or do you just toss the tidbits over your shoulder and let the lively little creature make a leaping catch, as my wife enjoys doing? No, no, I meant that the dog makes a leaping catch, not my wife. See? I just can't avoid conflict. - From a 1996 article by Mike Royko for the Chicago Tribune

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Retro Voices on the Etiquette of Call Waiting and Voicemail

"No. We're not busy.  We've just been sitting here screening our calls on the answering machine.  Hysterically funny!  What are you up to, dear?"

'Call Waiting' and Other Conundrums of Telephone Etiquette

The telephone was an ornery object even when it was simple and ugly. Now that its shape has been streamlined, its colors lightened and brightened, and its works programmed to be as complicated as a jet aircraft, its arrogance knows no bounds. It is rude, intrusive and demanding. It beeps in the middle of a conversation and expects understanding and forgiveness. 

Now that telephones are not only everywhere - showers, airplanes, boats and gardens - but have become increasingly complicated, telephone manners are, quite naturally, becoming equally complicated. Assume that one makes a call and hears splashing water at the other end. Should one pretend that it's perfectly normal to talk to a naked person in a shower, or make a comment about it? Is it time for jokes, embarrassment or savoir-faire? 

''It's unchic to make a big deal out of it; you have to adopt an 'oh yes, so what' attitude,'' one caller said. ''There's no question that you subsconsciously visualize what that person looks like in the buff, but you've got to present yourself as calm, unruffled and unsurprised.'' 

The innovation most resented by most people is ''call waiting,'' a service or disservice formerly available only on telephones with several lines, and now possible on single-line instruments. This development punctuates a call with a beep, or beeps, if someone else is tying to get through while a conversation is going on. When this happens, the person already on the line is almost always asked to hold while the second call is answered.               

"Amazing!  This thing actually works! Oh wait... There's another call coming in.  Hang on. Let me see who that is..." Two of the country's leading etiquette experts were appalled at the concept of call waiting in the 1980s.  Most still are.

''It's last come, first served, an incredibly rude idea,'' said Judith Martin, who is also known as ''Miss Manners.'' ''It's an invention of the devil,'' said the late-Letitia Baldrige, the author of the revised ''Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette'' and ''Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to Executive Manners.'' 

''Let them call again,'' she said. ''For years people have re-dialed when the line was busy. They waited their turn. When I'm put on hold, I always hope that as my revenge, their other call will be someone wanting to sell them something.'' 

Mrs. Martin compared call-waiting to ''standing at a cocktail party and not paying attention to the person you're with, waiting for a more important person.'' 

A number of people not in the etiquette business also dislike call-waiting. ''I had it but I gave it up because I think it's terribly rude,'' said a singer-pianist. ''You either had to take that second call or keep on being interrupted by those beeps.'' One woman said she was of two minds about call-waiting, although she herself refused to have it. But, she said, most of the young people she works with, who are on the junior benefit committees for the Youth Counseling League, have the service. 

''I don't know which is more offensive, having your call broken into by another, or to keep calling and get a busy signal,'' she said. ''The only way to handle call-waiting with any kind of manners,'' she added, ''is to excuse yourself for a moment, answer the second call, take the number and return immediately to the original call.''

What's the etiquette of taking a telephone call in a car? 

The publisher of one magazine, said her own car had a speaker-phone but that she never used it if there were other people traveling with her. ''It's just plain manners,'' she said. However, she said, she always hires cars with telephones, and she frequently makes calls from airplanes, she said. She not only didn't agree with people who considered it gauche to announce that they were calling from a car or a plane, but she often found it useful. 

''I might tell them, 'It's costing me 50 cents a second from the car, and let's get down to business,' '' she said. ''And if I call from a plane, I always tell them where I am. People love it, they get a real high, and they always take the call.'' 

As for Mrs. Martin, her feelings about the telephone and its innovations go beyond call-waiting. Of one thing she's certain: She's not going to live at its beck and call. She has no ''ringing'' telephone in her home, she said. She said she manages very well with a 24-hour ''live'' answering service, and she returns calls at her convenience. ''The telephone demands to be attended to when it feels like it, regardless of what anyone is doing - and my husband and I have simply eliminated that,'' she said. ''We do not need to be reached day and night.'' 

''The fact is if more business was conducted by mail, the world would go around a lot faster,'' she said. ''The illusion that the telephone speeds up communication is ridiculous. You can spend days with messages back and forth.'' 

Mrs. Martin was considering updating the calling card routine once practiced by the tonier types of every city. Her idea was to institute ''telephone hours'' at home, where one could be ''in'' for calls between certain hours and ''not receive'' the rest of the time. 

She did, however, consider the answering machine a convenience, although it had one drawback. ''People get very angry because there is a deep-down belief that you should be available 24 hours a day,'' she said. ''The trouble with answering machines is that you're almost forced to return calls,'' said another woman. ''The excuse that your machine is, or was, on the blink can only be used once or twice.'' 

She also pointed out the trap of using the machine to screen calls - picking up only if it's someone you want to talk to. 

''Once they start doing that, their friends never believe that they're really out,'' she said. ''They are convinced that the person is really there but not picking up. The whole thing gets unbelievably convoluted.''

This originally was published in the NY Times, by Enid Nemy


Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia