Executive Etiquette from 1986

“The worst thing you can do is to go to your new boss and ask him over for dinner,” Baldrige said. “Let them do the inviting in the beginning. They need to make the first step.”

Etiquette tips for avoiding those business faux pas…

Executive etiquette. There is nothing scientific about it.

It's a question of grace, style, intuition the delicate, ever-changing nuances of social behavior that, if heeded, can make the job a whole lot easier, the employer a great deal happier and the employee perhaps a little more successful.

Enter one of the masters of manners, Letitia Baldrige, chief of staff and social secretary to Jacqueline Kennedy.

"You have to know how to play the keyboard," Baldrige began in a recent interview from her home in New York City. "When you're the new kid on the block, the main thing you have to remember is to keep your distance."

Baldrige, who recently completed "Letitia Baldrige's Guide to Executive Manners" and who delivers etiquette seminars throughout the country, is referring to the eggshell relationship that can exist between employer and employee.

There are certain things you do and certain things you do not do. Ever.

"The worst thing you can do is to go to your new boss and ask him over for dinner," Baldrige said. "Let them do the inviting in the beginning. They need to make the first step."

After feeling out one's supervisor, soaking up the office atmosphere and waiting for a proper interval of time to pass, the employee's social invitation should be made privately, Baldrige added.

"And always make sure you tell the boss's secretary not to broadcast it. That's how terrible jealousies begin. If you happen to have a lucky in with the boss, don't make it known. You'll just make enemies."

Judi Kaufman, a trainer for Etiquette International in Beverly Hills, said it is usually advisable that a restaurant, not the employee's home, serve as the site for the first social encounter with the boss.

"The employee, obviously, is not at the same economic level of his supervisors, so a restaurant is often a good neutral place to avoid any possible embarrassment," Kaufman said.

The old "let's-have-dinner" ritual, according to Baldrige, is only one of many social codes the eager young executive should learn and learn well.

Never call the boss by his or her first name until asked to, she cautioned. "And never should a young executive have his (or her) secretary place a call to a senior executive. There's nothing more pretentious than that."

Backslapping, making too many jokes about the job and acting too casually are the most commonly committed blunders made by ingratiating employees in the office, Baldrige stressed.

"There always has to be that distance kept," she said. "Call it respect or call it fear, but you don't do things like plopping yourself down next to the boss in the executive dining room." In addition to serving the First Lady, Baldrige also was President Kennedy's adviser on matters of protocol.

Perhaps that's why she offered this piece of advice: "There is nothing that drives a senior executive more wild than when a junior executive barges in to the boss's office while the boss is in with someone else (to ask) questions that aren't at all urgent or important That just drives them crazy."

Further, at social functions like an office party or company picnic, "Never hover around the boss and monopolize him even if you've established a friendship."

And, Kaufman added, "Don't drink too much at the party. The best way to win over a boss, said Kaufman, is "to know his or her spouse and a little about what they're interested in, plus knowing the first names of the children."

Kaufman's list of egregious office errors include: don't take credit for someone else's work, don't be abrupt on the telephone and don't write any memos to a supervisor longer than a page.

"You'd be surprised how much an employer appreciates good telephone manners and someone who can boil all the information the boss should know into one page," Kaufman said.

Baldrige said it's the "little extra things" that breed employee success. Make sure to respond to an RSVP, she advised, and write thank you notes when someone does you a service and congratulatory notes when someone gets a promotion.

"Another thing," Baldrige continued, "we are the worst nation in the world in terms of introducing people. If you can't remember their name, laugh about it, but make the introduction."

The introductory protocol is quite simple: "If you're talking to a judge or a chief executive officer, for instance, introduce the lesser to the more important and the younger to the older. — By Ellis E. Conklin, UPI Feature Writer, 1986

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

The Impetus of 90’s Etiquette Era?

On a flight from New York to Paris, the etiquette authority Letitia Baldrige found herself seated next to a nearly nude dude from California. “Bared to the waist, he was,” she said. “The flight attendants didn't say one thing. He was a surfer, very suntanned, and I must say he had a great body.” Contributing to the decline in decorum, in Ms. Baldrige's view, is a growing folksiness in the corporate culture. “Companies are telling employees to first-name everyone, to forget about deference to age and rank,” she said. “All of a sudden, it's not only the C.E.O., but the clergyman and the schoolteacher who are being called Joe. It's spreading like wildfire.”

Informality Reigns, And Good Manners Get a Bad Name – Was this the impetus for the eventual “1990’s Etiquette Era”?

THE pleasure of your company is requested in a new age of informality. Do not bother to R.S.V.P. Do not get done up in black tie. The mood just now is one of casualness in dress, in manners, on all fronts.

This is the time of the artfully unmade bed (rise, take up your downy duvet and toss it); the carry-out dinner; the telephone solicitor who calls at all hours and addresses you by your first name.

A date for the movies and Chinese food nowadays does not necessarily mean two distinct activities. Not in the age of informality. And not in New York, where any number of moviegoers are capable of eating Sichuan from a carton while following the action on the screen. The pros use chopsticks.

Q. Is the informality of the 1990’s anything like the informality of the 60’s?

A. No. Women wore T-shirts and no bras in the 60’s. Today it’s bras and no shirts.

In keeping with the new informality, affluent urbanites who once drove around town in BMW’s have switched to Jeep Cherokees and Ford Explorers. “It feels right now,” said Steven Meier, a Manhattan lawyer who travels to meetings in his trusty Explorer dressed in a sports jacket and khakis.

A blue suit with a Giorgio Armani label hangs in his office closet “in case I have to impress a client.” But he rarely reaches for it. “In today’s economy you don't want to wow ‘em with your elegant shoes, your gold ring, your fancy car,” Mr. Meier said. “That's not the style anymore.”

Along Park Avenue, social couples who once did time on the charity circuit now look upon opulent parties as boring or embarrassing. Let’s have some of that new informality, they say. Which may explain the number of informal charity parties on the calendar this season.

Take, for example, the Lenox Hill Neighborhood Association's Bingo and Barbecue Benefit in June. The association used to hold black-tie auctions and sales of antiques and artworks. A couple of years ago, it sponsored a benefit sale of watercolors from the collections of Louis XIV, the Empress Josephine, Napoleon and members of the French court.

Let them eat barbecue.

“There is a wish for greater informality in these gatherings,” said George Trescher, the marketing consultant who runs most of New York's big charity events. “Particularly if you're trying to mix groups of young and older guests.”

Mr. Trescher, who was tieless at the time, said the dress code has been unraveling for years now. But jeans at the theater? The ballet? The opera? “Yes, yes,” he said. “What's new is that nobody looks askance at it. It's laissez-faire.”

Heads did not turn unduly when Kevin Walz took an aisle seat in the orchestra at the Metropolitan Opera the other night. He was wearing wool pants, no jacket and a plaid shirt unbuttoned at the neck to reveal his undershirt.

“What a bum, huh?” he said, stroking his chin. “I didn't even shave.”

Mr. Walz, a furniture designer, was dressed for a rock concert he planned to attend after “The Marriage of Figaro.” He said a trend toward piggybacking cultural events might have something to do with the new informality.

“Last month I went to the ballet in jeans for an evening of Stravinsky and then down to the Ritz,” he said. ”I snuck out five minutes early so I wouldn't miss the Pixies.”

To observe the new informality on the move, hang around in an airport terminal. Count the sneakers, the shorts, the sweatsuits, even in business class.

“We were talking about that the other day, coming back from Barbados,” said Sisi Cahan of Manhattan, a frequent flier long before they had clubs. “People used to look terrific traveling, and now they look ghastly. I haven't seen anyone attractive in an airport in years.”

On a flight from New York to Paris, the etiquette authority Letitia Baldrige found herself seated next to a nearly nude dude from California.

“Bared to the waist, he was,” she said. “The flight attendants didn't say one thing. He was a surfer, very suntanned, and I must say he had a great body.”

Contributing to the decline in decorum, in Ms. Baldrige's view, is a growing folksiness in the corporate culture. “Companies are telling employees to first-name everyone, to forget about deference to age and rank,” she said. “All of a sudden, it's not only the C.E.O., but the clergyman and the schoolteacher who are being called Joe. It's spreading like wildfire.”

Ms. Baldrige, who lives in Washington and lectures around the country, went on to say that “down here the diplomats try to hold onto some formality in entertaining, but it's getting worse and worse.”

“Some people don't even bother to R.S.V.P.,” she said. “Other people accept for seated black-tie dinners and don't show up. Or they show up with small children. ‘Oh, I couldn't get a baby sitter -- knew you wouldn't mind.’”

For an academic look at the reasons behind the new informality, put in a call to Michael T. Marsden, a professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

A secretary answered the phone, informally. (“This is Sylvia.”)

The caller asked for Professor Marsden. (“Hi, this is Mike.”)

Professor Marsden cautioned against comparing the informality of the 1960’s, which was real and deep and wide, to the informality of the 90’s. It could be one of those behavioral blips on the East and West Coasts that never go anywhere.

“In the 60’s, wearing blue jeans was identifying with the working-class culture,” he said. “In today’s, world the up-and-coming executive is supposed to aspire to the leisure life. What better way to show this than to wear a sweatsuit? It's costuming.”

Nonetheless, Professor Marsden went on, society has thrown off some formal trappings taken on in the 80’s. “But not all,” he said. “Look at weddings. Formal weddings are on the rise. As for funerals, when people are laid out at wakes, they're generally dressed formally. It's not likely you’ll find somebody being buried in their sweatsuit.”

In any case, elaborate entertaining is out in New York. No more putting on the dog for company. Caterers who used to gussie up trays of hors d'oeuvres with foie gras medallions say they are making meatloaf, mashed potatoes and beans. “But beans don't have to be beige or boring,” said Susan Simon, whose catering company on the Lower East Side has always been known for its stylish and informal food.

And guests like Mr. Walz, the jeans-at-the-ballet man, find the down-home feeling refreshing. “You even see Pyrex on the table now,” he said. “People are much more casual about entertaining. They're acknowledging that life is tough in New York. What's important is that we're all together, having dinner. So what if there are a dozen kids underfoot and the centerpiece is daisies?”

When not dining at home, some busy New Yorkers are dining out, informally, while doing something else or waiting to do something else. In coin laundries, in bank lines, in doctors' offices, everywhere there is the crinkle of foil unfolding, the snap of aluminum cans opening.

Subways, always informal, have become more so with commuters breakfasting on bagels and coffee and applying major makeup and nail polish. On the F train the other day, Lucinda McBride blotted her lips with a tissue, smiled and said, “My mother said never put on lipstick in public.” She went on to apply eye shadow and mascara as the train rumbled from Brooklyn toward Manhattan.

“This is how I get ready for the office,” Ms. McBride said, studying her face in a mirror. “I've got two kids under 6.”

That's nothing, according to Phyllis Hall, who works for a trade magazine in Manhattan and commutes on a No. 68 N.J. Transit bus with a man who manages to change from sports clothes to a business suit on the turnpike.

“By the time we come out of the Lincoln Tunnel, he's in full business attire,” she said. “He even does cuff links.”

Here is the new informality personified. Except for the cuff links. They must go. – The New York Times, April 1, 1992

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

Etiquette Challenges in 1992

Letitia Baldridge was a wise woman: “For every step forward in electronic communications we've taken two steps back in humanity,” Ms. Baldrige said. “People know how to use a computer and answering machines but have forgotten how to connect with one another. Our society is unraveling. We're too self-obsessed. Look at all those unattractive people talking about depraved things all day long on TV talk shows. People can talk about themselves, yet the art of conversation, which has to do with sharing, is disappearing. I feel as though I am chasing a runaway locomotive.” Sadly, Baldrige died in 2012, at the age of 86. One has to wonder what she would have thought of today’s social media platforms.

At Tea with Letitia Baldrige

(She was the Calming Voice of Civility in Uncivil Times)

O TEMPORA! O mores! The mores are enough to make Letitia Baldrige, the guru of social niceties, put down her cup of tea and wring her hands in Ciceronian despair. She reeled off some recent examples.

The bride-to-be who faxed her wedding invitations. The cellular phone that rang during Mass. The young executive who goes from word processor at work to VCR at home and does not know how to make small talk.

“For every step forward in electronic communications we've taken two steps back in humanity,” Ms. Baldrige said. “People know how to use a computer and answering machines but have forgotten how to connect with one another. Our society is unraveling. We're too self-obsessed. Look at all those unattractive people talking about depraved things all day long on TV talk shows. People can talk about themselves, yet the art of conversation, which has to do with sharing, is disappearing. I feel as though I am chasing a runaway locomotive.”

In this automated society, etiquette has an anachronistic ring. But in reality, Ms. Baldrige’s message is not one of clinging to old-fashioned manners when all around are losing theirs but how best to adapt with civility to a changing world.

That's often where tea comes in: people need it more than ever, Ms. Baldrige said. (Yes, Ms. “I'm a businesswoman, and Ms. is an appropriate form of address,” she said. She is known as Tish to friends.) Ms. Baldrige views tea not as a ceremonial or snobbish throwback, but as a relaxing break in the daily routine, and one that is quieter, less complicated and often less demanding of one’s time than lunch or dinner.

With a background in governmental protocol and 18th-century decorative arts, Ms. Baldrige, 66 years old, has progressed from updating Amy Vanderbilt's book of etiquette in the 1970's (with advice on how to address an invitation to a couple who are not married, revolutionary stuff at that time) to writing a guide to manners for executives in the 1980's to sorting out the “new manners” of the 1990's. She is currently revising the executives’ guide, paying attention to issues like sexual harassment, child care and the proper use of beepers.

Before catching a shuttle from New York to Washington, where she lives with her husband, Robert Hollensteiner, a real estate developer, she was having tea at the Mayfair Regent Hotel, one of her favorite places. “They know how to serve it here,” she said as she poured some orange pekoe from a china pot through the silver strainer balanced on her cup. “You'd be surprised how much easier it is to conduct business over tea than over lunch or dinner in a bustling restaurant.”

She selected her tea without hesitation from an assortment of eight. Her utter confidence and sense of command in making her choice, as much as in handling introductions or in keeping a conversation going, are warmly reassuring, never intimidating.

Tea can make people comfortable in a similar fashion. In business situations, Ms. Baldrige believes, the logistics of tea are actually easier to handle than those of a full meal, especially for people who have yet to figure out which side their bread-and-butter plate is on. Once the formality of pouring is out of the way, the participants can get down to business, without spending too much time. No need to worry about elbows on the table because the table is often too low.

“I've seen business deals confirmed over tea and people fired over tea,” she said.

Ms. Baldrige, who now conducts seminars on behavior and corporate relations, cut her social teeth as the personal secretary to the Ambassador at the American Embassy in Paris. That job was the beginning of her career in protocol: she went on to Rome with Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce and then, in 1961, to Washington with the Kennedys. More afternoon teas than she can remember. And enough stories to last for a month of afternoon teas.

“In Rome, I accidently introduced a new Ambassador from Pakistan as the Ambassador from India in front of the entire diplomatic corps,” she recalled. “He exploded and left, and I spent the next four days apologizing with calls, letters, visits, flowers. If I did something like that today, it would be all over the media, and I would probably have been fired. I learned to apologize in a major way.”

She is more careful about introductions and greetings these days. As Ms. Baldrige was considering a little tray of tea sandwiches at the Mayfair Regent, a woman recognized her and stopped, mentioning an occasion when they had met several years ago. No flicker of puzzlement crossed Ms. Baldrige's generous, open face as she waited for the woman to finish. “Of course,” she said brightly, as though the previous encounter had occurred just yesterday. Afterward, she said: “I never would have recognized that woman, but she had the good sense to introduce herself by name. Everybody forgets names and faces, and it's just inconsiderate to expect someone who isn't your boss or your sister-in-law to know exactly who you are.”

What do you do if you fail to pin a name on a familiar face? “You come right out and ask the person's name and then say something about how you know you've met before, but there are days when you even forget your own children's names.”

Not that she is likely to, in the case of her own children. Her daughter, Clare Smyth, 26, is named for Mrs. Luce, and her son, Malcolm Baldrige Hollensteiner, 24, is named for her oldest brother.

She confesses she is somewhat appalled at her son's table manners. “I think he really does it to twit me,” she said. “He's always got the spoon in the ice cream carton, because he can't be bothered with a dish.”

Ms. Baldrige has written a dozen books, many about etiquette. But these days instead of merely talking about manners in her seminars, she digs beneath the formalities to reveal the logical, civilizing nature of social protocol.

“There are major C.E.O.'s who do not know how to hold a knife and fork properly, but I don't worry about that as much as the lack of kindness,” she said. “There are two generations of people who have not learned how important it is to take time to say ‘I'm sorry’ and ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and how people must relate to one another.

“But that does not extend to allowing perfect strangers to address you by your first name. With me they're better off sticking with Baldrige, because too many people have trouble getting Letitia right.”

Ms. Baldrige admits to having some old-fashioned values and holding views that some would call sexist. “I marched in the pro-feminist parade with everyone else in the late 60's,” she said, “but that does not mean that women should abdicate their roles in the family. Women have the babies, and they have to be the ones to teach manners and ethics. Men won't do it because they're more concerned with making money, keeping fit and having a good sex life.”

Ms. Baldrige grew up in Omaha, but you'd never know it from her Eastern establishment accent. She still loves the Midwest for what she calls its relative lack of artifice. She went to Vassar and then, in 1946, enrolled in graduate school, the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute of Psychology at the University of Geneva. “I fell in love with Europe and decided I would do anything to get back there after I finished my studies,” she said.

She landed the job at the American Embassy in Paris after reluctantly taking a secretarial course, a requirement for a woman trying to get a job in those days. “For me to be in that atmosphere, with people like Dean Acheson coming to the Embassy, was incredible,” she said. Once in the Embassy, even with steno pad in hand, her career was off and running.

When she returned home after three years, she began liberally sprinkling her conversation with French words. “I was thoroughly obnoxious, a big blond snob, really bad news,” she said.

She then worked at the Central Intelligence Agency on a psychological warfare project. “In retrospect, what they were doing was not so different from public relations today,” she said. In 1953, thanks to her command of Italian, she became special assistant to Ambassador Luce in Rome. By 1956, she was in New York at Tiffany & Company as the first director of public relations and the first woman to be an executive there.

“Those were the glorious days of Walter Hoving,” she said, referring to Tiffany's former chairman. “He would not sell scarfs and handbags.”

She took advantage of her job at Tiffany’s to purchase a full set of sterling silver flatware for herself. “I was single, a career woman, but you do not have to be a bride to want beautiful things and to use them when you entertain,” she said. “It should be no different today.”

Then this arbiter of taste looked around the area off the Mayfair Regent lobby where tea is served. Her eyes lighted on the giant floral arrangement in the center of the room. “Look at those fabulous flowers,” she said, adding in a conspiratorial voice, “Sometimes they put in a few fake ones to help out.”

Oh?

“I know it,” she went on, “because I felt them when no one was looking. I'm always doing things like that.” – The Living Section, NYT, 1992

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

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

More Manners for the 1990’s

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.

A New Environment for Polite Behavior : Etiquette... 

Letitia Baldrige says the aim in everyday situations is to teach manners without ending up in fisticuffs.

There is something new to worry about: being ecologically correct. But how do you get your message across in polite company without being confrontational?

Letitia Baldrige, manners adviser to five first ladies and author of “The New Manners for the ‘90s,” recognizes the dilemma.

“When somebody throws something out the car window, honk at them, but don’t give them the finger,” Baldrige says. “We’ve got to temper our negative feelings about people who desecrate the environment.”

As far as people dropping trash on the street, “I do believe in picking it up and saying, ‘Oh, I think you dropped this,’ ” she says. “A lot of people do that now, politely and nicely, and I think it’s very effective.”

Baldrige hopes the 1980s atmosphere of “acquire, possess and have the right to do whatever I want” is gone.

“We have a lot of societal problems that we have to fix in the 1990s,” she says.

“But I think the young people are aware of this for the first time. The young were so apathetic in the late ‘70s and ‘80s. There was no campus activism. But now they’re excited about many issues, and the environment is one of them.”

Some young friends of Baldrige got a chance to use written communication during a camping trip.

The people in the camper next to them had departed early in the morning, leaving behind their trash and garbage. Her friends cleaned the campsite.

The next day, they spotted the camper, but not the occupants. They wrote a long letter and left it on the windshield, explaining that they had stopped at the campsite and saw how messy it had been left.

They wrote: “We know it wasn’t your intention to ruin the environment or make it impossible for all the other campers to enjoy it. But we cleaned up your mess, and we want you to know we helped you out. And we know you’ll do the same thing for somebody else some day.”

Baldrige says: “Now that’s effective, and probably made those people stop and think.”

Aural pollution is another kind of pollution that bothers Baldrige.

“I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve been on a city street or in an elevator, and young women will use four-letter words and all kinds of foul language,” she says.

“I stop them, put my hand on their arm and say, ‘I have something to tell you. I’m old enough to be your grandmother. You’re young and beautiful, and you’ve got the whole world ahead of you, but you have no idea what that polluting language does to change my perception and everybody else’s perception of you.’ ”

Baldrige believes in the courage of her convictions.

“You have to speak up; you really do,” she says. “But the point of all this is not to get into a confrontation but to convince instead. I believe in teaching manners without causing fisticuffs.”

If your style is caustic, Baldrige says, the message is lost.

“The best thing we can do to save the planet is set a good example for our kids at home,” she says.

“Revive that old tradition of napkin rings and cloth napkins and cut down on paper use. Give presents to new mothers of a diaper service. Recycle.”

But if you are visiting your parents, and they are not recycling, think before you speak.

“Each community has different rules about this. If there isn’t a setup for recycling, don’t take this out on your parents,” Baldrige says. “Instead, find out where to take the bottles and offer to do that for them. Show them; don’t tell them.”

She believes that the family dinner table is a place to slip in some environmental messages.

“Don’t abuse drugs or alcohol in front of your kids--or at all, for that matter,” she says. “They will do as you do, not as you say.”

But a social dinner is not the place to be preaching.

“It’s a great rudeness to give a lecture or to reject somebody else’s food,” she says. “There’s such a lack of good dinner conversation that it’s not the time to turn it into a soapbox.”

If you have decided to be a vegetarian, let the host know ahead of time. Often, there will be plenty of items that you can eat.

Smoking can be another sore point. “I make it easy for my smoking friends by setting up a place on the patio for them,” she says. “But they know not to smoke in the house.”

Her attitude certainly has shifted from dinner parties of years ago.

“I used to go around polishing the sterling-silver cigarette holders and putting out matchboxes and silver ashtrays; I spent hours getting the smoking accessories ready,” she says. “Now I think the only people left who smoke are nicotine addicts.”

Baldrige is not a smoker, “but I learned to smoke at Vassar so I could look like Lauren Bacall, cool and sophisticated. What’s sad is some girls, at age 11, are still picking up the habit for the same reasons I did.”

One final pollution area Baldrige would like to tackle is movie theaters.

“They may smoke in Irish movie theaters, which is certainly a fire hazard, but we Americans leave all kinds of trash behind, plus we’re always spilling sticky soda and throwing chewing gum on the floor,” she says.

“I think I could make a lot of money selling recyclable plastic booties you could buy to save your shoes.” — By Donna Larcen, The Hartford Courant, 1990

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

The 1990’s Etiquette Era

New etiquette books were suddenly plentiful in the last dozen-or-so years of the 20th century, in preparation of the 21st century and to address all of the technological advances of the 1990’s. Judith Martin’s, “Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium” was one of the most popular.
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“What’s the office etiquette when men and women work together? Judith Martin: The very simple rule that takes care of most problems is that gender is simply not relevant in the workplace. Once you realize that, then the questions of who goes through the door first and who pays for lunch are very easily settled. It should be settled just as if it were an all-male workplace— by rank and position.”

Establishing Polite Parameters for the 1990’s

Dear Amy: Help! On second thought, make that: Help, please! 

Ms. Vanderbilt, you must be turning over in your grave because of the problems that polite society is suffering as we enter the ‘90s.

I mean, as manners go, I’m not exactly a model of decorum. (I take special pleasure in cutting off Camaros on the freeway). But even I know there should be a better way of congratulating your second husband on the birth of his first child from his third marriage than just looking embarrassed and saying, “Gee, you told me you’d had a vasectomy!”

Or writing to all your friends in one fell swoop by using the recall button on the personal computer. Or telling a potential sexual partner to use a condom by strategically leaving a dozen boxes of Trojans next to the Champagne in the refrigerator. Or wrestling with the complexities of call-waiting by shouting “Hang on!” or murmuring “Sorry, this new caller is richer than you, Mr. Murdock.”

Just consider, for instance, the contretemps I found myself in just trying to write this story. I was chatting on the phone to New York etiquette arbiter Charlotte Ford when suddenly I heard a “beep” and Miss Manners (a.k.a. Judith Martin) was holding on call waiting from Washington.

“Uh, what do I do, Charlotte?” I asked in a panic.

“It’s easy,” she replied, soothingly. “I think that whoever’s on the phone first when call-waiting comes in takes precedence. Tell the other person you’ll call them back.”

Hmmm, logical enough. So I clicked back to Martin.

“Judith? I’ve got Charlotte Ford on the other line, and she says I should stay on the phone with her and call you back. Does that sound OK?”

Miss Manners paused a moment to consider.

“Absolutely,” Martin purred.

What I need, Amy, is a definitive guide to all this stuff. Something to keep right by the bedside to govern matters of a sexual, or nonsexual, nature. It’s no good to find out the proper way to act after the fact. By then my social life is going to degenerate into watching reruns of “Facts of Life.”

But wait, what are these packages on my desk? Could it be that America’s foremost etiquette experts have been working overtime to establish polite parameters for the ‘90s?

Some of these books are from the usual suspects: Judith Martin, Letitia Baldridge, and Charlotte Ford. But, suddenly there are new names making waves in the manners business. After all, who better than Sidney Biddle Barrows of Mayflower Madam fame to solve such bedroom dilemmas as: Do you make eye contact at an orgy? (No.) Do you use your lover’s toothbrush? (Yes.)

“My literary agent thought up the idea,” Barrows confides. “Most people think sex is inherently not very polite, and certainly not something one talks about unless one absolutely has to. But etiquette is a way of romancing between men and women. And now that we’re not jumping into bed with someone, we need something like this to drag out the courtship a little longer.”

All the authors attempt to create a new code of etiquette for a new time. Let’s see, Amy, how do I explain it? Men are sometimes women. A child can have four different mothers. Answering machines talk to one another.

As social arbiter Letitia Baldridge notes, “Manners comprise everything in our human relationships, all the things that we do all day long and the way we interrelate with people. And if any of these things change, then we want to change with them.”

That’s why Baldridge, the former chief of staff during Jackie Kennedy’s stint as First Lady, has written her “Complete Guide to the New Manners for the ‘90s.” (Remember her, Amy? In 1978, four years after your death, she updated your etiquette book. Then Tish decided she was a big enough name to go it alone.)

Baldridge, who cheerfully dispenses advice on what a pregnant bride should wear and whether it’s polite to send a dinner invitation through the fax machine, is convinced that manners are making a comeback in the ‘90s. “You bet. I see it in my mail, I see it in the people I lecture.”

But why? “We became very self-obsessed in the ‘80s when the philosophy was ‘succeed, make money and spend it.’ And I think it’s time to stand back and start spending as much energy thinking about other people.”

I thought, at 646 pages, Baldridge’s book would be le dernier cri . Yet, it’s beaten hands down in sheer heft and chutzpah by fellow Washingtonian Judith Martin’s latest opus, released in November and entitled grandly enough, “Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium.” The syndicated columnist takes 742 pages to impart her wit and wisdom on contemporary quandaries from the decline of the nuclear family to the rise in women in the workplace.

Are things really that bad to warrant so much space? “Certainly,” Martin sniffs. “We have such a long way to go to get to some place approaching civilization.”

It’s her view that American society is coming to the end of a generation-long experiment that started in the ‘60s when the baby-boomers decided just to chuck existing rules of behavior and be themselves.

“This is what I call the Jean Jacques Rousseau School of Etiquette,” Miss Manners relates. “The problem being that in our natural state we’re not all that livable.”

In addition, Martin sees our current social situation complicated by two main factors: technology— the fax machine and answering machines weren’t ubiquitous a decade ago— and sex. Not only are sexually transmitted diseases a topic that must be addressed these days, but so is sexual etiquette in the workplace.

“The very simple rule that takes care of most of these problems— that gender is simply not relevant in the workplace— is a very difficult concept to get across. Because once you realize that, then the questions of who goes through the door first and who pays for lunch are very easily settled by rank and position.”

Compare that to the Mayflower Madam. She was only too willing to be interviewed about this month’s “Mayflower Manners,” which describes itself as an “Etiquette for Consenting Adults.” Of course, Barrows is the very picture of politeness as she delves into such uncharted territory as: Is it rude to rip an exotic garment off a woman? (It depends on how much the thing costs.) Or when two people meet through personal ads, who is the host? (Whoever placed the ad.) Or even whether there are basic principles of etiquette that apply to the menage a trois. (No one should show favoritism.)

Barrows, of course, believes she’s providing a valuable public service. “I don’t think you’ll find anywhere in the other books the proper etiquette for treating a call girl or escort service. And I don’t think you’ll see too many pages on how to behave at an S & M party in a club or a private home.

“A lot of people think, ‘Ugh, an etiquette book’ and think of Letitia Baldridge and all that dry, ponderous stuff,” says Barrows, defending her lighter touch. “That’s what makes my book fun.”

But it wasn’t fun at all when a seemingly simple question about AIDS drew Barrows into a national controversy recently and one gay activist group in New York City claimed the Mayflower Madam had made a major faux pas.

The question was: “If a host invites a known carrier of AIDS to a dinner party, should he so inform his other guests?”

Barrows responded: “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.”

As a result, Barrows was “disinvited” to the premiere of a movie, while her publisher, Doubleday, was asked to issue an apology.

Using language not printable in a family newspaper, Barrows fumed that she had been the victim of a setup by “a very radical gay group that’s always looking for media attention. How could I be disinvited to something when I was never invited in the first place? This whole thing is so personally upsetting to me I can’t tell you. It’s a real nightmare.”

As for what to do in the situation, Barrows still sticks by her advice. “I have a huge number of gay friends and every time I’ve ever been invited anywhere I was always told if there was somebody with AIDS who was going to be there. Not because these people were trying to warn me. But because they wanted other guests to have an extra level of sensitivity.”

On the other hand, both Baldridge and Martin didn’t see the necessity for telling anyone anything. “At most respectable dinner parties,” notes Miss Manners, “there wouldn’t be any activity where you would catch AIDS so I don’t see why you should have to tell people.”

But etiquette arbiter Charlotte Ford professed some confusion as to what to do. “Hmmm. Such a tough situation,” she murmured. “I think there are certain people who don’t care, and there are other people who would be just devastated if they were at a party with someone who had AIDS.”

Her solution, she decided, was simply not to invite the person with AIDS to dinner— which AIDS support groups say is also wrong.

So who’s right, Amy? I honestly don’t know. The only thing I’m certain of is that by next week, next month, next year, another social phenomenon will create another conundrum for etiquette experts.

And, Amy, you won’t be here to help us through it.

What’s the office etiquette when men and women work together?

JUDITH MARTIN: The very simple rule that takes care of most problems is that gender is simply not relevant in the workplace. Once you realize that, then the questions of who goes through the door first and who pays for lunch are very easily settled. It should be settled just as if it were an all-male workplace— by rank and position.

CHARLOTTE FORD: If I was a woman and invited to dinner by a male colleague, I would certainly say, “Let’s have lunch first.” I just wouldn’t be available for dinner.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

What is the proper way to use your answering machine?

BALDRIDGE: The best way is to record as short a message as possible, 15 seconds, and be very business-like and be very up.

MARTIN: The telephone is a very rude instrument. Monitoring calls on the answering machine is polite. People somehow put the onus of politeness mistakenly against people who do not accept all calls at any time. There is nothing wrong with picking and choosing.

Is it polite for a mother to breast-feed her baby in public?

BALDRIDGE: Definitely not. Anyone looking over, especially any man, immediately starts to conjecture about the size and shape of the breast.

MARTIN: No. In some countries people breast - feed on the street, but it is not done properly in the United States, and the argument that it is a natural thing bears no weight with me.

FORD: I’ve always said that whatever a mother wants to do is her business. The only thing is, I think you should do it in private. Go to an airport area not populated by people, go into another room in someone’s house.

If a child has several sets of parents because of divorces, how do you decide who should come to school on parents’ day?

BALDRIDGE: It’s up to the child to decide whom he or she wants. The child should ask that parent to come and then apologize to the others and explain why they weren’t asked.

FORD: It all depends on the relationship between the adults. Forget the children. It’s the adults that set the mood for whatever the function’s going to be. It’s very, very hard, but somebody’s got to bite the bullet.

MARTIN: That is incredibly complicated. I’d say parents, their mates and assorted other people who want to be involved. I was president of a school board where we didn’t realize for a long time that it was offensive to send out questionnaires where it gave only one line for “mother’s name” and “father’s name.” So we would put four lines under each for families to do what they liked. So those things have had to be adjusted.

What is the worst new breach of entertaining etiquette?

BALDRIDGE: Some people feel that they should turn on their TV sets even at dinner parties. I’ve seen guests leave the table to go and watch their favorite football game in the library.

MARTIN: The understood social contract whereby the host sets the terms of the contract and the guests can take it or leave it has broken down miserably. People now consider an invitation to be the opening of negotiations. You tell me what you’re serving for dinner, and then I tell you this is going to kill me, or you tell me who the other guests are and then I decide if I want to accept. And heaven forbid if you try to set a dress code.

FORD: Hosts who ask guests to take their shoes off. You have to respect your host’s wishes. But as somebody said, if their carpets are that good, why do they ever have any guests? — By Nikki Finke, Los Angeles Times, 1990

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