Miss Manners Minds Your Business

June 3, 2013
With her sparkling wit and contrarian wisdom, syndicated columnist Martin, aka Miss Manners (Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior), writing with her son Nicholas (director of operations at the Lyric Opera of Chicago), reminds readers that business and etiquette need not be mutually exclusive, but that crucial distinctions exist between professional manners and social ones. It should come as no surprise that Miss Manners deplores relaxed dress codes (“ ‘casual’ has come to mean all social decencies optional”) and finds them symptomatic of a larger problem—the increasingly blurred boundaries between personal and professional life, with its accompanying loss of civility in both realms. “Be yourself” is the worst possible advice to give a job seeker, according to Miss Manners: “When attempting to enter the business world you need to learn to be someone else. It is called having a professional identity.” Intrepid, practical, and always humane, Miss Manners tackles common workplace hazards: irritating colleagues, rude customers, business travel, and office parties, which she’d prefer to see replaced by “genuine workplace treats such as bonuses and time off.” Agent: David Hendin.