More and more people are now communicating via text, e-mails, e-cards and now (thanks to Apple) face-time. With less one-on-one interaction, it seems as if people social etiquette and skills are not up to par. Thank You, Excuse Me, Have a Great Day, are all social phrases that are being used much less and so infrequently, that people are not only becoming indifferent toward this ‘laid back’ attitude, but are also accepting this new normality.
I come from a working-class family where etiquette was and still is taken very seriously. Growing up in a home with 9 older brothers, I was such a tomboy–something my mother hated. So before starting kindergarten, she made sure that I knew how to ‘properly’ conduct myself as a little girl and sent me to etiquette classes for toddlers (as she did with my brothers years earlier) to learn how to properly sit, the proper uses for cutlery, how to properly treat your ‘table-mate’, etc., and I never forgot when my etiquette teacher said, “Good manners and proper etiquette will open doors that money and status cannot.” She made that statement everyday and she was so right. When I look at our society and the informal way people greet and socialize with one another on a daily basis, it makes me realize how very essential it is to have the proper knowledge of formal etiquette. When I recently bought my first formal dinner set, the sales lady was shocked upon my knowledge of the difference in dinnerware sets. She said, “Not many young people, know about difference of formal and casual dinnerware sets, this is the easiest sale I’ve made in a while without having to give a lesson!” I laughed, but totally understood what she meant and we had a long conversation about how the decline and the undervalue of etiquette is affecting our society.
So please, take an etiquette class and invest in both Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt’s etiquette books because as the saying goes, ‘Money can’t buy class!”