Alan S. Oser

A mean and hard-boiled Coast Guard commander tried to teach table manners to a roomful of officer candidates at the Officers Candidate School in New London, Connecticut, many years ago, and I was one of his pupils.

“Don’t slouch!” he barked. “Sit closer to the table and bring the fork up vertically to your mouth, and then at right angles into it.” He had several other tips as well, all interspersed with profanities and expressed in a tone of anger and resentment, which he undoubtedly felt toward the slobbering young college graduates he was training.

Since then I have always brought the fork to my mouth in accordance with his orders, more or less, although I have been accused of several other unmannerly infractions at table. At least I became sensitive to the importance of the issue, and have remained so.

Good manners promote healthy social relationships. This is obvious. It is less obvious that one derives considerable pleasure from successfully teaching good manners to others, beginning with one’s children and then extending to the world in general. Smugly self-confident about my own manners, at least most of them, I have sought out this pleasure frequently, although I must be careful how and when to do this.

I experienced the pleasure intensely one lovely November morning in Florida, some 40 years after the New London experience. By then my manners had become, in my view, quite polished. On assignment from The New York Times to write a story about the real estate market in Palm Beach County, I found myself tootling along Route A-1A in a rented car on the lookout for residential buildings under construction. With the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Intercoastal Waterway on the other, the route passes through many towns and is flanked more often than not by the homes of the rich, in high-rise condominiums and private residences.

New projects were not my exclusive focus, but in “wrap-up” accounts of a regional real estate market I liked to tell readers about new developments. In two days in Florida I had already been welcomed with open arms in sales pavilions at several construction sites. Accordingly, I was not prepared for the brush-off I received at a development site where the three towers of a huge high-rise condominium project were half complete.

At first no one even greeted me in the sales pavilion, never a good sign. I sat down, picked up a magazine from the table, put on my glasses and began to read. Eventually a smartly dressed middle-aged lady with a grim expression emerged from an office. I stood up.

“Good morning,” I said with a smile. “I’m from The New York Times. I’m writing a story about new construction in this area. Is the developer here by any chance? Would it be possible to speak to him?”

“He’s not here,” she said, still looking grim. “I don’t think he wants to talk to anyone. You can try tomorrow if you wish.”

Try tomorrow? Tomorrow I will be on a plane to New York, lady. Anyway, I’m doing him the favor offering to write about his project, which might help his sales. He’s not doing me any favor.

“I’m afraid tomorrow will be too late,” I said. “Will he be back at any time today?”

“Well, I’ll tell him you were here,” she said, and turned her back on me.

Perhaps it was the early hour, or the suppressed frustration I was feeling from the inferior interviews the trip had so far produced, but I suddenly experienced, most uncharacteristically, a flare of anger.

“You are rude!” I barked. “That is no way to speak to a visitor!”

With that I marched out of the office in high dudgeon, my briefcase tucked firmly under my arm, only briefly glancing back to notice her startled look.

A wave of satisfaction came over me as I strode to my car. “I really told her off!” I told myself. “She won’t treat any reporter like that again.”

Unfortunately, as soon as I started to drive away I remembered that I had left my reading glasses on the magazine table. It was necessary to return anticlimactically to the office to recover them. Pleasure vanished and disgust rushed in. Back at the office I grabbed my glasses from the table while trying to avoid the astonished looks of the sales lady and two colleagues who had joined her in the outer office. I was out of there in seconds, muttering “Thank you” on the way for some reason. I will never go back, I assure you.

This incident notwithstanding, I do believe that a flare of temper in the face of bad manners is not a bad way of teaching a lesson. It must not be used where a punch in the nose may result. Yet it can be effective, particularly with adults, regardless of the immediate reaction. I do believe that I improved the manners of that sales lady, even if I embarrassed myself in the process.

Obviously, good example rather than angry words—or any words—is the better teaching tool in the long run. The hope is that words will not be necessary. Words put the hearer on the defensive and encourage a retort explaining away the criticized conduct. They are also likely to encourage in the target a prompt recollection and reminder of your own display of defective manners on numerous past occasions. No, manners must usually be taught by example.

The exception comes in dealing with children, who will probably have emulated your bad manners and found additional ones. All these should be corrected at once. This means that most children need a lot of correction. Not all childish bad manners are need of prompt and decisive correction. I will list a few that are.

1. 1. Grabbing for food.
2. 2. Pushing ahead of one’s sister when trying to pass through a doorway simultaneously.
3. 3. Displaying bad temper in public.
4. 4. Speaking ill of others behind their back.
5. 5. Forgetting to use the words “please” and “thank you.”
6. 6. Interrupting me while I am correcting bad manners.
7. 7. Interrupting people generally.

Although some of these examples may apply to adults, most adults should be beyond the food-grabbing stage and will have learned to use the word “please.” I do have advice that applies almost exclusively to adults, and it surely applies to me, since I have been accused of certain unmannerly infractions repeatedly by parties I cannot ignore.

I begin with the chewing of food while speaking. Do not do this. Do not yawn while being spoken to. Do not interrupt (see above). Do not speak at length in conversation with others, or hog the floor at dinner parties. Avoid politics and religion in conversation with people you don’t know well, or people you do know well who disagree with you on those topics. Take particular care to keep it brief if speaking about medical problems or grandchildren. Do not scowl. (I once asked a popular classmate at college to tell me how to become popular. “Speak as little as possible and smile at all times,” he replied.)

The fact is that military officers are taught good manners, and this is one reason that military experience is worthwhile for many people. Military officers eat properly and they do not overstay their welcome when visiting. But military life produces bad manners too. Who does not know the story of the polite master sergeant at his first meal at the family table after a long tour of service, who calls sweetly to his sister across the table, “Pass the fucking butter”? She passed it, by the way, without a change in expression. Now that’s good manners.