Miss Manners Goes to Work on Politesse
Judith Martin, a.k.a. Miss Manners, has been explaining since the debut of her 1978 column how people can remain civilized in an uncivilized society. So who better to detail ways to remain an adult in a juvenile workplace? Her newest book, “Miss Manners: A Citizen’s Guide to Civility,” will be released in June.
In it, a would-be civilized worker can find a chapter titled “Etiquette Goes to Work,” in which she writes:
“Of the people who have failed to notice that proper manners for employees and their bosses have changed in recent years, a disproportionate number appear to be bosses. Miss Manners cannot pretend to find this odd, but she does find it disturbing. It is one of the fundamental principles of manners that responsibility for treating people well increases with the degree of one’s authority over them.”
But recognizing that things don’t always go as they should, Miss Manners offered The Times some ideas on how employees can politely deal with an impolite employer.
Question: What happened to the notion of a civilized workplace? Didn’t it used to be better?
Answer: The difference is that there was a layer of professional manners on top of everything that people were expected to conform to. It’s amazing how much better and more pleasant that can be than, “Oh, just be yourself, let’s all pretend we’re friends”--let-it-all-out behavior. There’s always a tension at the workplace, but one thing that’s changed is the lack of professionalism and another thing that’s changed is the lack of expectation of spending a good portion of your working life in the same place, in which you don’t want to make too much of a mess because it will come back to you.
Q: Is the situation getting better or worse? And what does this say about our culture?
A: That sort of phony pretense that we are all friends and the concept that it’s better to express your personality than to observe the formalities of the workplace--what does that say about us? It says we are sweet and naive because it’s all based on this extremely sweet and extremely naive idea that we’re all at heart lovable, that anybody can get along with anybody else if only they don’t allow any barriers to stand in the way--and it doesn’t work. It’s very idealistic and well meant.
In the workplace, there is a hierarchy and we’re not equal. A lot of effort has been put into disguising this, into “Oh come on, we’re all friends, we’re all a team,” and so on. Well, your friends don’t fire you, and they don’t reprimand you and they don’t have control over your life in the way that your supervisors and bosses do. So the formality of, “This is the way you behave and you can’t go any further, and this is the way I behave and I can’t go any further” helped to define a workable relationship. It wasn’t friendship, but it would be a workable relationship.
Q: Where does adult adolescent behavior at work come from?
A: We have a juvenile setup that encourages it. I’m not saying you wouldn’t have people who were immature in any work situation, but it would be disguised in a workplace where people were supposed to use the manners of grown-ups, were supposed to address one another formally, were supposed to stick to talking about business, were supposed to look the part of someone who was seriously at work and not at play.
We’ve encouraged it. We have a juvenile atmosphere--parties in the office and little jokes and nicknames and gossiping all the time. I don’t know why we should be surprised that people take advantage of that.
Q: So now what do we do to regain a civilized office environment?
A: There is progress actually, in that people recognize the problem. It’s not [a matter of going] backward. In the manners of the past, there were a number of people who were treated with disrespect and as children--women being the prime example. They were called by their first names but expected to address other people formally and that sort of thing--so it would be a tremendous mistake to go backward. Professionalism is not something that was a historic fad that we should dig up again. It is the logical way for people to behave in a working situation.
Unfortunately, the things that are now getting us back into professional type of behavior are the lawsuits that occur from the lapses--you have a party atmosphere at the office and pretty soon people start to flirt and somebody’s charging sexual harassment because there is no proper place in the workplace for treating people as you would at a party.
Q: So you have hope?
A: I do, I do! How else could I get out of bed in the morning? But I’m sorry it comes from these crashes rather than from people reasoning things out. But this is a way of change too. And lack of productivity is one of the natural results people have noticed. There literally are parties--employees birthdays are being celebrated, showers and all kinds of stuff, in a general atmosphere where people dress as if they were at leisure and address one another as if they were old friends. That whole atmosphere contributes to encouraging people to behave as they would among people who are much more indulgent with them.
Q: What are some appropriate questions one might ask during an interview to determine whether a boss’ temperament creates a good working environment?
A: I think I’d look around and see how many toys there are and how the person is dressed--you pick up the signals.
Q: Now, what if you’re stuck? What are some general ways one can politely approach an immature boss for a discussion on ways to improve relations?
A: The boss is still the boss. You can go back to the boss and say, “A number of us feel this would be better or that would be better,” but can you say, “stop behaving like a 2-year-old?” Well of course not, because he’s a 2-year-old with a lot of power.
Q: What general advice can you give about how a civilized person can retain his or her grace in a hostile environment?
A: Sometimes, actually, it has a beneficial effect and other people stop being rude, but at the very least it doesn’t contribute to [the problem]. Even the rudest people like to have polite people around them. Rude people are not people who believe in rudeness, they are people who believe in politeness with an exemption for themselves. If you are the polite person, you probably will do well; and if you don’t do well, this is not the place for you since it’s going to drive you crazy. Enough problems are surfacing in questions that people do recognize as being important--employee relations, lawsuits, productivity and so on--that there is this feeling that something is awfully wrong. And the person who can identify and deal with these things is probably going to have an advantage.
Q: An adolescent boss sometimes brings out the worst in all employees. How can one possibly remain polite to co-workers who have adopted the boss’ worst traits?
A: If you’re in a situation where they are going to be institutionally nasty to people, you either buy up the stock while they’re not looking and fire them, or you get out. Do I have a few kind words by which you turn an entire business into models of behavior? No. But what one can point out is that it is damaging to everyone. The numbers help if you have one tyrannical boss who is driving everybody crazy and you all go in as a body to a higher-up and say we’ve had enough.
Q: When all attempts at getting along fail, is there a polite way to quit?
A: Unfortunately, that too is bound by the rules of manners. People think, “Well, at last I have nothing to lose,’ and they let loose with all their grievances. Unfortunately, you do have something to lose because it always comes back. One needs recommendations. People want to know about previous employment and so on. That last satisfactory, “Now I’ve had it, let me give it to you,” is an extremely bad idea. So you quit with an inner satisfaction that you don’t have to endure this anymore and an outward formality. Not even at the end of this is there that moment when you can totally let loose--which is sort of a shame.