In today's casual society, one professor is a standard-bearer for proper etiquette
You're a business executive, waiting for an interviewee to join you for a recruiting lunch, when the young man walks through the door and extends his hand. He is wearing a crisp suit—and a baseball cap.
Brian Earle '67, MPS '71, a senior lecturer emeritus in communication, has dozens of such anecdotes—stories that have prompted him to teach the rules of etiquette, battling what he calls a diminishing emphasis on manners in today's society. "Families used to have dinners where everyone sat down; parents taught guidelines and were role models," Earle says. "Now, kids run home after practice, grab a bite to eat, and head out the door. Everyone eats on their own schedule, and it's rare to find the kinds of family dinners that used to give more instruction." Earle's etiquette career started twenty-five years ago, as a lecture in his Business and Professional Presentation class. Says Earle: "I began getting more and more questions from students who had second interviews over lunch: 'What do I do with my hands?' or 'What do I do with the wine?'"
Since table manners can be so important in the business world, for years Earle held the final exam for one of his comm classes as a dinner meeting for a made-up company, Cornell Communication Consultants. Each student had a different role in the firm and had to give a presentation—but that wasn't the sole source of their grade. Though they didn't know it, they were under particular scrutiny by Earle and his TAs. "We watched how they behaved," Earle says. "If someone was drinking beer out of a bottle, or if they began to eat before I did, that was a 'ding.' We even had the restaurant turn up the heat and the Muzak so they had to deal with that as well."
Earle notes the rise of a new source of potential workplace faux pas—online etiquette, or "netiquette." Today's twenty-somethings, with a cell phone in one hand and an iPod in the other, are continually connected to the Internet and to each other—and the emergence of text-messaging and truncated online language has led to impersonality and even rudeness in e-mail communication. "The older generation has been schooled in a more particular and specific etiquette," says Earle, noting that the niceties of formal letter-writing are often lost on the Web. "The Internet equalizes the differentials, such as socioeconomic status, that used to be there."
Alison Wollenberg '09, who took Earle's class two years ago, says that learning about etiquette has made her more confident in the job market. "Whether our generation has good etiquette or not, many of the older generations think that we don't," says Wollenberg, a New Jersey native and varsity fencer. "So when you do have good manners, you'll be perceived as more professional, more respectful, more ready to be in the business world."
Earle notes that when CEOs are asked what they look for in potential employees, they often say it is how they act toward others. "CEOs have said that how you treat a waitperson at a restaurant is a magical window into your soul," says Earle. "If you're rude to a waitperson, then you're likely to manage people poorly." Sometimes, he notes, politeness means not following the letter of the law. "Good etiquette," he says, "is making people feel comfortable in a variety of situations."
Though he now has emeritus status, Earle still gives lectures for the career offices on campus, and speaks at many schools on the East Coast. His hour-long talks run the gamut from the art of holding successful conversations with new acquaintances to the etymology of "etiquette" (French for "ticket," it was a printed list of rules that gained the bearer entry into the court of Louis XIV). In his lectures, Earle often cites an ABC poll that found 85 percent of people believe that a greater use of "please" and "thank you" would enhance their lives. "It has to start with general demeanor," Earle says. "If everyone were kinder toward each other, the world would be wonderfully improved."
— Justin Reed '09