“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch . . .”
— from “If,” by Rudyard Kipling
You never know what is going to make you think about a Matter of Manners. This time it was George III and a haughty upholsterer.
Edna Healey’s The Queen’s House: A Social History of Buckingham Palace includes an account of King George setting an example for a contractor. This made Etiquetteer pause to consider how we treat staff in this century. A workman’s ladder blocked access to a book the King wanted to read:
“. . . His Majesty desired Cobb [the upholsterer] to hand him the work. Instead of obeying, Cobb called to his man, ‘fellow, give me that book!’ The King with his usual condescension rose and asked Cobb for his man’s name. ‘Jenkins, Your Majesty,” answered the astonished upholsterer. ‘Then,’ observed the King, ‘Jenkins, You shall hand me that book*.’”
What an elegant and simple way to make the point that our common humanity needs to be acknowledged. Another came from playwright and ambassador Clare Boothe Luce, who surprised embassy staff with a champagne party after the Trieste Crisis of 1953-1954. “She threw a victory party that very night,” reports Letitia Baldrige in her down-to-earth memoir A Lady, First**. “She ordered the very best champagne and caviar and paid for it herself. The guests were not the top officials on the Italian or American sides but the embassy clerks and assistants in the Code Room, who had been working twenty-hour shifts for days . . . She toasted her guests, who had never seen the inside of [the ambassador’s residence] before, for their efficiency and their patriotism. (They would never forget that night.)”
So, for those of us not kings or ambassadors with unlimited budgets, how can these examples guide us in our own staff interactions? First, remembering names. People love to be remembered. You love it when people remember you. Take the time to learn the names of your baristas, your hair stylist (and the receptionist at the salon), your dry cleaner, the counter staff at your favorite bakery, etc. And when you do, do it in such a way that you don’t project that you feel obligated to ask or that you expect better service as a result.
Next, be kind, sympathize, and be as generous as you’re able. The pandemic has devastated the service industry, and we know that many businesses (especially restaurants) are still returning to earlier standards after such a long hiatus. Curb your impatience. We are still fighting the War Against the Coronavirus, and we’re still all in this together.
Lastly, don’t lash out at staff for problems they aren’t responsible for. We see this almost daily in the news regarding air travel, with flight attendants and other airline staff taking impossible levels of abuse from travelers enraged by either a) mask mandates or other pandemic restrictions, b) not-always-unavoidable travel delays, or c) complete, total, and utter absence of useful information from the airline. The airlines don’t make it easy for us, and Etiquetteer isn’t giving the company a free pass; send a factual, sternly-worded message to Corporate after your trip. But the staff on the ground aren’t responsible for the rules they have to enforce. You may need to blow off steam, but they shouldn’t bear the brunt of it.
Etiquetteer will be most interested to hear from you about your own experiences, as staff or customers, during the pandemic, and where you think more guidance is needed.
*John Thomas Smith, Nollekens and His Times: the Life of the Sculptor Joseph Nollekens, quoted in Edna Healey’s The Queen’s House: A Social History of Buckingham Palace, page 43.
**Etiquetteer refers to this wonderful book a lot, but it is a wonderful book, so it’s irresistible.