Dear Gentle Worker

It may come as a bit of a surprise to some Gentle Readers--specifically those who have not consulted Miss Manners since they last prepared for a wedding or some other social occasion involving multiple forks.

But many savvy ladies and gentlemen with more than a passing interest in the proper way to comport oneself in the modern workplace--and how to survive the insufferable boors who haven’t a clue--know that Miss Manners, a.k.a. Judith Martin, has become the acknowledged arbiter of etiquette on the job as well as off.

From the bully pulpit of her syndicated column, run thrice weekly in newspapers around the world since 1978, Martin dispenses advice laced with her self-deprecating humor and gentle parody.

Increasingly, her readers have pleaded for clarification of the ever-evolving rules of the workplace, a topic that receives a lengthy airing in her new book.

“There have always been tensions in the workplace,” Martin said in a telephone interview from her Washington home. “But now there are enormous tensions from the constantly shifting situations in the workplace.”

These days, in fact, one is likely to find her newest tome, “Miss Manners Rescues Civilization,” filed in the Business section of the bookshop, as well as on the Weddings and Etiquette shelves beside her four other volumes.

“Etiquette is the language of human behavior,” Martin said. “You can have good manners or bad manners, but you can’t absent yourself from it. It applies to every situation, and I think people are starting to realize that.”

Miss Manners ladles out pronouncements on topics ranging from the trivial--is it OK to help oneself to the candy on the receptionist’s desk?--to the serious.

Sexual harassment, bigotry, office politics, ethics, the fuzzy line between work and personal life, the pressures of trying to balance work and family obligations, the human side of forced retirement and corporate downsizing--she holds forth on them all.

Like her other best-selling books, including “Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior” and “Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium,” her latest is a compendium of letters and social commentary essays.

Martin, 58, who asserts that her life’s ambition is “to solve everyone’s problems so I can get back to the porch,” thinly veils her more serious agenda. She’s leading a crusade to reverse the “rudeness crisis” that she says is contributing to the breakdown of society.

Call her quaint, but Miss Manners insists that consideration and respect for self and others is still a must. Far from being an antiquated set of Victorian rules, etiquette, she maintains, is the indispensable foundation for a workable society and a livable workplace.

TIMES: What prompted you to take on the thorny issues of workplace etiquette in your recent books?

MISS MANNERS: The thorny problems that people send me, of course. An awful lot of them seem to be connected not only with the workplace itself, but with the confusion between working life and personal life.

We have developed a very peculiar habit in this country over the last couple decades of pretending that we’re not at work when we are, of pretending that we’re just among friends and the work is incidental.

We use the manners of friendship--first names, personal conversations, birthday parties, baby showers, after-hours gatherings, retreats, poking into one another’s souls--instead of professional manners.

This has caused many enormous problems, including sexual harassment by people who think they’re in a quasi-social situation. So why not flirt . . . and do other things that would be perfectly respectable at a party, but not on the job?

Or the tragedies of people who believe they are in a setting that has the kind of indulgence for them that their friends do. So if they slack off . . . or make a fool of themselves . . . people will understand their excuses, because that’s what friends do.

All of this has confused people and gotten them into a lot of trouble.

TIMES:: Casual Friday is an increasingly popular trend in offices across the country. Why don’t you approve?

MISS MANNERS: Because this is a terrible fraud, to say that one day of the week you . . . can wear whatever you like and nobody is looking to see if you look the part for your job.

Nobody suspends that judgment. So instead . . . people now have to have three wardrobes.

People who are sophisticated enough to understand this have a wardrobe for Monday through Thursday, the professional look, for whatever profession they’re in. They have another for Friday that says, “I’m a relaxed kind of person, but I’m still high-powered and on the job.”

And for days off, they get out the grungy T-shirts and sweat clothes, which no smart person would wear on Friday in the office.

It’s like the office party. You’re told, “This is just a party, have a good time.” And you get silly and/or flirtatious and it comes back and hits you in the face that this was an office situation.

It seems to me rather pointlessly, and sometimes cruelly, confusing.

TIMES: As long as people have to spend so much time at work, what’s wrong with co-workers socializing and celebrating one another’s special events?

MISS MANNERS: This melding of the personal and professional life has deprived people of genuine social life. Partly it’s deprived them by taking up their time. If you have to go to office parties and weekend retreats, you don’t have time for your personal life.

And if all your friends are the people at the office, your clients and your contacts, what happens when you leave your job? You may be downsized or retire. Then there’s this terrible tragedy of people who say, “My friends have deserted me.”

Well, they weren’t friends. They were business associates, and what they had in common was the business, and that was what threw them together.

And because they were busy partying and carrying on with these people, they didn’t . . . develop the kind of friends who stand by you, who care about you year after year, who don’t care about your professional status, who are interested in you as a person and are interested in your family.

TIMES: You are critical of office retreats, which many organizations use as a way to develop team spirit.

MISS MANNERS: This is quite a common situation in America--where they [hire a facilitator] to go around the table and everybody is supposed to say something embarrassing or negative about themselves.

Well, what kind of fool would you have to be to do that in front of your boss? So anybody with any brains says, “Oh, my problem is that I take my work too seriously.”

Of course, this is all ridiculous. But it is this phony . . . buddy-buddy . . . charade we’ve veered off into.

TIMES: Can you offer some guidelines for appropriate workplace behavior?

MISS MANNERS: Professional distance in a cheerful, pleasant, cooperative manner.

We always say we want people to be friendly. Do we really want them asking what we did last night, disapproving of our love life, borrowing money--the sorts of things that friends might do?

No, we want them to be cheerful, cooperative and professional, and to fulfill their roles.

TIMES: Did things used to be better? Are things getting worse?

MISS MANNERS: There is a tendency for people to say, “Oh, everything has gone downhill and why can’t we go back to when everything was perfect?”

That’s when I haul out the calendar and say, “Sure, but show me when that was.”

This pseudo-friendship thing is a lot worse, but some things have gotten a lot better. The strides in the workplace have been incredibly dramatic for women and many other people. There are all kinds of bigotries that are not wiped out . . . but are no longer respectable.

So I wouldn’t go back for the world. What we have to do is take the best of the past and go forward.

TIMES: Have the rules of etiquette changed?

MISS MANNERS: Shall we say that we are enforcing rules that were on the books but not enforced? When men say that the sexual harassment issue is brand-new--that “it used to be all right to do this and now all of a sudden, women take offense”--that’s a rather odd statement.

It used to be all right for gentlemen of the old school to grab women by their hair and stick their tongues in their mouths? I don’t think so. This is not a new etiquette rule.

But it is a new law. And because etiquette does not have the fierce sanctions of law and people were not being thrown in jail for this, they did it. But it was a gross violation of manners.

The other . . . big change . . . is that in professional situations, you treat people by their job roles . . . not by their gender or other factors.

When women began to be more commonly in high positions in the workplace, there was panic over [who paid for] the business lunch. I was deluged with questions from men, “Oh, but I can’t let women pay for lunch.” And I thought, “Why not?”

There were a few questions from women: “I’m supposed to pay for lunch, but how can I do it?” I was puzzled. Well, cash, credit card, what do you mean how can you do it?

And they were resorting to little ruses, like fixing it up with the waiter beforehand, because they were so embarrassed to do it.

TIMES: Gender should not be a factor in the workplace?

MISS MANNERS: Right. You’re not supposed to notice who’s a boy and who’s a girl.

You do, obviously. But you’re supposed to keep it to yourself. And you can always say, “Would you like to get together socially after work?” if you’re willing to take no for an answer.

But all these silly questions, like, “Should you stand up when a woman comes into the room?” Well, does she own the company you work for? Then maybe you should.

So it’s a useful guideline for how to treat people. Do you tell men they look gorgeous? No, it’s a gender thing. Better not do it.

Who goes first? The highest-ranking person. Who gets coffee? The lowest-ranking person.

TIMES: The workplace is not as stable as it once was. Has that made it harder to cope?

MISS MANNERS: There is a tremendous amount of tension that comes from the insecurity of the workplace. There are turnovers, so people don’t know each other . . . as well. . . . There’s enormous resentment and bitterness, not only from people being fired, but from the people left behind, having to cover for the people who’ve been downsized. Who’s next? Who’s working on getting the next job and neglecting the present one? Who’s trying to make others look bad so they’ll be the ones to take the blow?

How do you help people who’ve left? How do you deal with the human side of these problems? How do you fire someone?

TIMES: How do you?

MISS MANNERS: You fire someone in a face-saving way. There is no value to be gained by anybody in an unpleasant firing.

TIMES: Has technology created workplace problems?

MISS MANNERS: There are many problems from the wider use of technology--e-mailing love letters, faxing letters to people who shouldn’t see them because you don’t know where the fax machine is located.

And the home office, which I’m going to be writing more about, has all sorts of problems--the doorbell ringing, the phone ringing, friends and family members not understanding that the person is working.

TIMES: With the restructuring of the workplace--flattening out the hierarchical pyramid, organizing workers into teams--is the American workplace becoming more democratic?

MISS MANNERS: No, I think that’s a fraud. When the time comes to fire people, do they go to the group and say, “Which of you should stay and which should go?” No, the top people fire whomever they want to.

Do we have a democratic workplace? Of course not. Somebody owns it. If it is you, you still can’t do whatever you want--you’re bound by laws and fair employment practices. And somebody could buy you out.

Everyone is working at the pleasure of someone else. The CEO has to answer to the stockholders. The president of the United States works for the citizens of this country.

So, too bad for people who dream of becoming so important they won’t have to be polite to anybody.

TIMES: Is it ever OK to break the rules?

MISS MANNERS: I am not going to suspend the rules and say, “Now we’re going to have Rude Friday.” But you can always think of instances when one rule can be suspended in favor of another.

The classic example is . . . that people try to teach children the rules, without teaching how to weigh them. They say, “You must never tell a lie,” and then one day, the child says, “Mommy, isn’t that the fat lady you hate?”

The parent forgot to say 1) you don’t have to say everything on your mind, 2) this is an opinion and 3) the whole thing is overruled by the rule that you must not hurt anybody’s feelings.

Although you must learn the specific rules, the Golden Rule is an excellent guide when you’re trying to judge among conflicting rules.

TIMES: Are you optimistic that people will start behaving better in the workplace?

MISS MANNERS: I am--and I couldn’t always say that--but I am now, because of this huge outcry for civility that has occurred in the last year or two.

Now I’m waiting for people to take the next step. They want to be able to be rude themselves, but to have everyone else be banned from rudeness. They do have to be polite themselves too.

Anybody who goes to work today knows we haven’t solved the etiquette problems and we don’t have a totally nice society. But identifying the problem is surely an essential step.