FINDING BEAUTY IN THE WEEDS
The point of etiquette is to promote a feeling of comfort. There are guidelines for etiquette in every culture that pervade almost every social encounter.
Emily Post, the philosopher, offers a way of living: “Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them; manner is personality—the outward manifestation of one’s innate character and attitude toward life.” "There is no reason why you should be bored when you can be otherwise. But if you find yourself sitting in the hedgerow with nothing but weeds, there is no reason for shutting your eyes and seeing nothing, instead of finding what beauty you may in the weeds." EmilY Post
Recently I was waiting for someone to arrive for dinner and had more than enough time to reflect on the behavior of my dinner guest. When someone is late they convey incompetence or disrespect and reveal too much about themselves. This is compounded as the late arrivals are repeated. Don't be late is the first rule of dining etiquette. Arriving even five or ten minutes late leaves a bad impression; any later than that sends a clear message of carelessness and thoughtlessness.
On this occasion, I rushed in order to meet someone for dinner at an appointed time. I value being on time and made my timely arrival a priority. I was quickly ushered to a table ready for a relaxing dinner. Five, ten, fifteen minutes went by, and I continued to await the arrival of my dinner partner. No messages or texts arrived. After exhausting observation of the servers and patrons, I called to investigate the delay. I interrupted an in progress phone call as they are still at the office. "I can't talk--on another call" was the clipped retort. The click of the hang up cut my words mid-sentence. Feeling disrespected and rather annoyed to put it mildly, I settled into some Iphone diversion. Appetizer ordered, I passed another twenty minutes. The phone finally rang and the first words were "it's all about closing a sale". When I stated I was waiting without any word on their arrival for the past 40 minutes, the response was "you would have done the same thing", I'm on my way" (just a mere 20 minute drive). I chose to wait and just see how the hand would be played.
Consider the choices:
You could:
Propose a cancel or reschedule
Follow up the "Now I'm on the way" with more excuses upon arrival
Offer apology and acknowledge gross lack of courtesy
Any guess on on the rest of this story?
I find that as I age, there is a tendency to care more about certain things, that in the past may have been elbowed out awareness by higher priorities of the moment. I mean those things that were formerly unnoticed, discounted, or rationalized as I was busy with "doing" versus "being". One of these things is etiquette as it relates to being late or keeping someone waiting.
Sometimes individuals are just too optimistic about how quickly they can do things. Basically this means that people are late because they are not honest with themselves about how long it takes to do things. If you really do want to be on time, start being by being a better judge of how much time tasks really take and then add some time to you estimate. If you are detained, call ahead and remember to offer genuine apology for the inconvenience and remember your behavior conveys disrespect.
No comments:
Post a Comment