I sometimes get invited to a business lunch as a potential client. Interestingly, at the last two lunches I’ve encountered hesitant hosts. That is, after sitting down with our food, the host has waited quite some time to start eating. The etiquette is for the guest to wait for the host to start eating before beginning, yet these hosts were just sitting there with the food in front of them.

[...]

I got a recorded call from Americans United for Change urging us to call our senators to encourage them to pass healthcare reform. At the end of the message they stated the phone number to call. They said the number so fast I had to rewind the message three times. I thought about how much money this group must have spent disseminating the message and in the end they said the number so quickly no one could get it. This probably made their campaign fruitless.

What is it about saying phone numbers fast? More often than not someone leaves a message and says their number so quickly that I can’t capture it. Are you hoping to be called back? Say your number slowly and even repeat it. If people have to rewind you’ve probably lost 80% of them.

I was recently walking around Greenlake with a friend on a sunny, therefore packed, day. Twice I encountered dogs that were running loose, their owners unconcerned.

In the first situation we were rounding a corner and I saw a dog running towards the water across the concrete path in a very congested area. A rollerbladder was flying around the lake when the dog ran right in front of him. One second earlier and the man would have careened into the dog and done serious damage to both. Thankfully, he was able to just miss the dog by rolling up onto the grass. The owner said nothing and looked as if she could care less.

[...]

As I do every year, I watched the Academy Awards with a few friends. We meet at one friend’s house, enjoy a potluck dinner and gab about the dresses, the emcee(s), the Academy winners and losers. This year had its usual fill of beautiful and not so beautiful moments. We can learn many etiquette lessons by watching the Academy Awards.  Here are my notes on the good, the bad and the ugly moments of this year’s show.

Let’s start with the “Bad”

[...]

I recently taught a social skills etiquette class to some high school students from Puget Sound Community School. One of the topics I covered was poise. I asked my students what poise meant to them. They replied “good posture”, “being confident” and “grace”. While those are part of poise there is more to it.

[...]