Manners Matters

When I'm in a restaurant, I don't know what to do," confides Glorian Persaud, 20, a pharmacy student, with a defeated tone in her voice. "There are a million spoons." I know what she means. Who hasn't confronted a bewildering array of silverware and goblets at a fancy eatery or corporate function? And let's not even talk about eating in Europe. Well, that will be remedied soon enough. I am embarking on a journey through the world of business etiquette, a journalistic Eliza Doolittle looking for a little polishing. As a result, I have awakened at the crack of dawn to join Persaud and her fellow pharmacy students at Rutgers University for a lecture by Barbara Pachter, a leading Biz Et expert who has written eight books on the subject, including her most recent, New Rules @ Work.

These are boom times in the Biz Et industry. Although businesses have become increasingly informal in dress and attitude over the past two decades, thanks in part to Silicon Valley, the greater corporate world hasn't completely lost its desire for a bit of decorum and savoir faire. In fact, it insists on it, one reason that some law and financial firms have reverted to suits and ties for men. Etiquette isn't easy for the generation that wears flip-flops on Fridays or closes billion-dollar deals in Denny's, as YouTube and Google famously did. So business schools and corporations are hiring Biz Et experts like Pachter to groom their charges in matters ranging from fork selection to the proper way to address the CEO.

Like others in the etiquette game, Peter Post, a director of the Emily Post Institute, reports a big uptick in his business. "We've been growing by leaps and bounds in the last couple of years," says Post, who gave 32 seminars in 2006, twice as many as the year before. The price for such one-day in-house corporate seminars ranges from $2,500 to $8,000. "There is a real desire on businesses' part to remedy a problem that they're seeing in their workforce. They have people coming in, or who are already in the workforce, who may have the job skills but who are embarrassing these companies when they're with clients."

Now pay attention, class. Pachter, whose clients include Microsoft, DaimlerChrysler and Merck, strides in with her tailored black pantsuit, black purse and black heels, looking serious. Are people suddenly ruder? she asks. The need for etiquette tune-ups has become direr as a result of changes in the business world, Pachter tells her students--more women, more international commerce and new technologies like cell phones, BlackBerrys and e-mail.

Pachter briefs us on one of the burning issues in Biz Et: Is it appropriate to say thank you with an e-mail? "I've lessened my stance on it, as long as it's not for a gift," she announces. "We've become such an immediate society. When you send a thank-you note, it could take three, four, five days to get there. People start thinking, Isn't this person going to acknowledge it?" I lean forward as Pachter talks about what to eat at a business meal in a restaurant. "Order what's easy to eat," she advises. Forget about such splatter-prone fare as spaghetti, lobster or ribs unless you're in a specialty restaurant and your dining partners will be ordering the same. Other rules, according to the experts: Wait until everyone has been served before you start. And whatever you do, don't chew with your mouth open. Deal breaker.