When you are an etiquette consultant people love to either share with you their etiquette horror stories or ask for etiquette advice. I love that my friends and business associates want to tell me their stories and trust me for advice.

I thought it would be fun to feature some of the etiquette faux pas and questions I’ve gotten over the last month or so.

Etiquette faux pas

A business owner discovered he wasn’t going to be able to deliver on a project for a client, so three months after their last communication he sent an email breaking the bad news.

My response

Never ever give bad news to a client over email. Call them. Also, if you value your clients you should get back to them within 24 hours of their email or correspondence. If you don’t have an answer, communicate to them that you will have an answer by x date.

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I subscribe to a few different blogs of people I admire or enjoy. One recent blog post surprised me as it seemed out of character for this blogger. It was a bit like a brag about how busy he was and why it was making him a better person. He outlined minute by minute what he was doing one day. A few times the timeline included the statement that he was chatting with people while “picking off a few emails” or taking phone calls. He went on stating how full every minute was. Even when he was alone he was doing something – email, writing, etc.  He seemed exhausted by his life while also talking about how necessary it is to work like this because he’s “out to win.” [...]