Have you ever found yourself in an awkward situation and you weren’t sure what to do or say? Today on Home School Heartbeat, Mike Farris, Chairman and General Counsel of Home School Legal Defense Association, discusses those situations with June Hines Moore, author of The Etiquette Advantage.
Michael Farris:
June, as I welcome you back to the program today, I want to ask you about awkward situations. You know, they’re just unavoidable—they’re going to happen to all of us at some point. How can a thorough knowledge of etiquette help us in those situations?
June Hines Moore:
Well, we need to remember to apologize when we’ve made a mistake, but we don’t want to go on and on because that gets tiresome. And then as to how it can help us, it can help young people and older people get a job, help them make friends, help them feel better about themselves. So we do our young people a great service if we can teach manners to them without preaching and fussing at them.
Mike:
June, how are you different than Miss Manners or Emily Post?
June:
I’m glad you asked that question because I’m often asked about Miss Manners. She’s a syndicated columnist, and while I don’t want to talk badly about her, her way of answering people, to me, is a little bit offensive—and I never laugh at anyone’s question.
Emily Post—of course, she lived in the early part of this century when we didn’t have email, cell phones. There have been so many things come along that the old traditional rules don’t change, but we constantly have to add to them to keep up with the new technology.
