the good old days

Office Courtesy: Meeting the Public (1952) reminded me slightly of why I quit a job years ago — I wasn’t willing to put up with the bullshit Barbara has to, although it’s her job to do so and it wasn’t mine.

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I’m amused by the mild undercurrent of familiar touching between the two roommates. I really doubt it’s the impression Encyclopaedia Britannica Films intended to portray, but hey, it’s 1952, an open-minded time that accepted everyone’s sexuality. But we’re here to learn about secretarial attitude, not lesbians!

It’s mildly fun to see Barbara and Ruth sitting there sniping about Mr. Franklin’s secretary (who, frankly, deserves it). Apparently future secretaries were best educated by showing them snarky bitchery. But it also drives home how annoying it really is to be a secretary. Do everything, be cheerful and friendly to everyone… jeez, you even need to swallow your gum whenever the boss walks in the room.

When I worked at a small company, I was eventually moved to a office by the front door. It’s a 30-person company, so I was asked to “chip in” by answering the door and greeting guests (when I objected, I got a lecture on my lack of team spirit). It was incredibly annoying; I constantly having my work interrupted, and it didn’t make it more “fun” if I had a cheerful, positive attitude towards whatever strange visitor was dropping by. (And I did have a cheerful, positive attitude, at least on the outside.) I’m an engineer, not a secretary, and so it was infuriating to be put in that position; it was one of the reasons I was happy to leave.

Shortly after I did move on, they hired a receptionist (who doubled as an HR something) for that office, but had an impossible time finding another manufacturing engineer to do the many things I had done… teaching another valuable lesson, prioritize your employees’ workload based on what you really need. They lost a lot more man-hours by having an incompetent engineer and a cheerful receptionist.

While the title made me think it would be about how to safely make a u-turn, the 1936 Turnabout Man is actually about road rage. I waffled for a while whether to use this for an Etiquette film or a Driver’s Safety film; however, its messages have larger implications for societal etiquette, so you get it on a Tuesday.

The basic plot is simple: a driver magically begins to drive the way he lives his normal life (politely), and conduct himself the way he drives (not politely).

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Reckless, rude driving has an interesting parallel with internet anonymity. In 1930, well before Teh Web, an automobile was the closest you could come to that, since the speed and enclosed vehicle effectively removed you from personal contact with pedestrians and other drivers. When there’s anonymity, it’s easier for the true nature of a person to show itself — through “road rage” or through ignorant, shortsighted, and rude discussions/comments on blogs and forums. I seriously doubt that people were constantly charming to each other before cars and computers (although who knows, I wasn’t alive then), but it must have been riskier to be a total asshole when you had to walk away from whoever you were insulting.

Warning: this is probably irrelevant to anybody but me, my spouse, my brother-in-law, and their parents. Sorry. Ignore unless you’re bored.

When your son graduates from college, the least you can do is go out to dinner with him. Otherwise you are BAD PARENTS. BAD!!! I don’t care how much you stuffed yourself on free cookies at the post-graduation reception, you can sit through one damn meal and have a day that is about HIS success, not YOUR neurotic self-indulgent fear of aging.

Also, when you’re visiting us, and planning on getting into town “sometime today”, could you please give us a phone call to let us know you’ve arrived? Especially considering one of the highways you were supposed to travel on has a few gaping holes in it since Indiana is experiencing extensive flooding. We realize you don’t care much about your sons (ref. previous paragraph) but for some ridiculous reason WE would like to know that YOU are not dead.

Then you ice the cake by calling up the next morning and complaining that we already made plans (in other words, went to work) and dropped our kids off in daycare? True, we could have just left them at home in the hopes that Nana and Grampa hadn’t drowned last night, but I guess I’m just a crazy overprotective bitch secretly devising ways to prevent you from seeing them until four in the afternoon.

Thank you. Please feel free to return to your normal life now, I’m done. At least, I hope I am, because they’re in town for another week.

Don’t drive in Boston. Ever.

This is not to say you shouldn’t visit (or even live in) Boston and surrounding areas. I lived in Charlestown for seven years and visit the area every couple of years; this time, it was for my brother-in-law’s graduation in Cambridge. This meant we were with my mother- and father-in-law, which automatically means the batshit insanity level goes through the roof. (I love them, I really do, but vacationing with them is at least five times as stressful as it needs to be.)

Normally, I’d hop onto the T or a bus and go wherever I need to. Not only is the coverage great, but you don’t have to deal with parking or driving. Parking in Boston or Cambridge is batshit insane, especially when you’re trying to park for a graduation in Cambridge and so are 2400 other graduates’ families. Similarly, local drivers are batshit insane, and it gets worse when they are angry about dealing with hundreds of out-of-town drivers who don’t understand Boston Traffic Ettikit.

However, my in-laws badgered us into driving rather than taking the subway. (”You want to take the kids on the subway? OMG!”) So once again, I got to experience streets with no street signs (”This isn’t Prospect Street!” “HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU TELL?”), green left-turn arrows on the right-most stoplight (?!?), taxi-cabs wedging themselves in wherever they want, rehabilitated amphibious assault vehicles (the “duckboat” tours) randomly cutting me off, and (my personal favorite) at least two cars from oncoming traffic will turn left in front of you when the light turns green.

After every illegal, dangerous maneuver you see, you’ll be granted a cheery wave, a silent “thanks, sucker,” that acknowledges your excellent braking reflexes. I learned to drive in Boston traffic, but I’ve gotten soft after living in Indiana and South Carolina — Boston Traffic Ettikit requires ruthless driving or you’ll never get anywhere. Yielding is for babies and clueless tourists. It took a little while to get back into the rhythm.

We did get to have some fun by trying to lose my husband’s parents in the bad traffic, though… their own fault for deciding to follow us

Another tidbit of Office Etiquette dedicated to my fellow co-workers desperately seeking their next place of employment…

Unless you’re willing to sleep with the boss, you can’t call him by his first name.

Excerpted from a story in Love Romances #82 (July 1952) — thanks to Sleestak.

Typically cheesy romance-comic plot aside, it is damned annoying to see secretaries (or any woman in an office environment) called by their first name while male co-workers and superiors are entitled to the full respect of being called Mister Somebody.

The modern version is allowing everybody to use first names, but a surprising number of men think it’s just great to call me “sweetie” or “hon”. (This is almost always done by guys of a certain age. Except that snotty engineer my own age who’s just a total fucking idiot…) Many of them are in sales, trying to convince me to buy their piece of industrial equipment. Do they really think that sleazy overfamiliarity is likely to make me overlook an inflated price list and bad OEM-restrictive design?

So, your lesson for today: creepy pickup lines are not a reasonable substitution for good customer (or co-worker) rapport.

Successful companies are ones that satisfy their customer’s wants, needs and desires. The data clearly show that if your customer base is global and diverse and you reflect their perspectives and their knowledge, you’re going to have a better chance for success. The closer you get to their emotional and intellectual roots, the better you’re going to communicate with them.

So what’s the business case for diversity? It’s the only business case we need—the only way to satisfy diverse customers is to include their perspectives inside the company. This is especially true for Ford, because we probably have the most diverse set of customers in the world.

From Ford CEO Alan Mulally, posted on Ford’s website.
Mr. Mulally might wish to have a discussion with J. W. Horne, who is apparently the advertiser representing the Kieffe & Sons Ford dealership to the public. (Note, anything in brackets are my comments, as are the ellipses. I didn’t want to bore you with the whole thing, feel free to go to the source and read it yourself.)

For those of you out there in never never land or la la land or maybe underground and under the radar [?] who are so called non believers, I am the man who wrote and recorded the Kieffe and sons spot. In fact I write and produce all of the Kieffe and Sons ford spots…. I am a believer and I am pretty sure that most everyone at Kieffe and Sons ford are also believers…. Believers do not have to justify their existence…. I support everyones right to think and do and live as they wish. I do not condem [sic] any American that disagrees with me…. if you were careful enough to listen to the entire spot you would have heard me say that to the good people at Kieffe and Sons ford “everyone one is welcome at the dealership whether you are a believer or not, you are still welcome…. We do business according to the rules of the good book.. if you are offended by that, then you are offended by the truth…. If you are offended, well like I said in the commercial.. thats tough.

Even disregarding factual errors in the radio spot and Horne’s masturbatory self-justification, he’s missed the point that it’s not just atheists who are angry; there are plenty of Christians who heard it and were disgusted (not to mention the non-Christian-non-atheist population of the country). Horne’s non-apology insists that Kieffe and Sons will still welcome anybody to the dealership, meaning the ad (paraphrased) told non-Christians, “Sit down and shut up. Then, come buy our cars and we’ll pretend to respect you!” How open-minded of him. Flaunting majority status while deigning to take a minority’s money is not an apology, nor a way to gain business (except from bigots).

Owner Rick Kieffe paints a different picture, however.

This statement is provided in response to reaction prompted by a radio commercial that Kieffe & Sons Ford recently ran referring to issues of God in our schools and on our money.

For 15 years, Kieffe and Sons Ford has run ad campaigns that focus on current events. We have chosen to do this rather than presenting typical car sales ads. We do this through an agency that develops the material and sends us a package of commercials to review. From this, we select commercials that we distribute to area radio stations…. Regrettably, the commercial that has prompted the current objection to religious sentiment (”Under God”, “In We Trust”) was not closely reviewed by our dealership before it went live. The commercial has been replaced. We apologize to all who were offended. It is Kieffe and Sons’ intention to support America and the freedoms that make this country great.

All he’s done is replace the commercial? What I want to know is whether Kieffe intends to continue using Horne’s advertising company. If so… well, it’s not a sign of real concern, is it?

The fact that this fiasco was started by one short-sighted bigot in Oklahoma who’s not even a direct Ford employee is disappointing. UPDATE: Turns out Kieffe is, actually, quite happy with what Horne said, and was “forced” to apologize by Ford corporate. So, it’s a direct Ford employee making himself look like a bigoted ass, and making Ford look like it doesn’t believe in a diverse customer base.

Ford has a lot bigger problems to solve, and needs to get this off their backs, or it will continue to degrade their public image.

• Like I said, I am in the market for a new car…. I have not thought about dealers yet, though I’m looking forward to the next generation of hybrids. But I do know who I won’t be dropping $30K with. –Way of the Woo
• I certainly will never buy a car from him and would certainly not recommend him to anyone. –Underground Unbeliever
• There’s not much we can do, except boycott Kieffe and Sons Ford, and heck, boycott Ford altogether — Ford seems unconcerned about the fact that one of their dealerships is using bigotry to sell cars. –Pharyngula

It’s not just Kieffe and Sons that will feel fallout (including rude, stupid, shortsighted people calling them up and swearing, does that help anything, jerks?) — it’s also hitting Ford.

I hope to see something from Mulally reinforcing the apology, perhaps even [UPDATE: hard to reinforce Kieffe's non-apology] broadly emphasizing that Ford as a corporation DOES want to have a diverse customer base. Without that, he’s making it very hard for me to justify leaving Ford vehicles on my list of possible future purchases — and I really, really want American-made cars. I don’t live in Mojave and have no way to personally change the income of Kieffe and Sons, but I do patronize my local Ford dealerships — or, at least, I have in the past.

Should I continue to give you business, Mr. Mulally?

The factory I work at is scheduled to close at the end of June, so we’re all being given an amazing amount of leeway while looking for new jobs. This includes having a job search consultant who works on our resumes, gives us interviewing tips, and so on.

However, I recently stumbled across a lovely guide for interviewing etiquette. From a 1953 issue of the comic book Cinderella Love (#13)…

The mostly-male engineering team is sure to benefit from this advice A thousand thanks to the women’s movement and modern computers, for letting me have a career that doesn’t involve typing and stenography.

There are also tips for holding the job once you’ve got it — read more here. Sleestak comes up with some awesome stuff.

My mother always chided us to practice our manners, even at home, because “Some day you might be invited to the White House, and you wouldn’t want to have bad table manners there!” While this may depend somewhat on whether you’re a particular fan of the President who invites you, it’s a valid enough point — we practice good table manners so we don’t look like uncivilized, disgusting pigs when we’re dining with other people. So far, the most I have been able to apply this to is business dinners, as it is a bad career move to eat like a slob (especially if you’re a working woman, your manners must be impeccable). I expect that the White House is rather far off in the future.

For today’s Etiquette Instruction, we return to the classroom film format which I love so well. Emily Post herself narrated this 1947 mental hygiene film called Table Manners.

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Manners for the most formal dinner party are exactly the same as they are at home!

Translation: Emily Post is very formal at home.

This is a surprisingly high-level discussion of table manners, showing adults instead of children as its subject. I suspect the target audience was not in a classroom, even a high school one, but rather the film was made for showing at the Emily Post Institute itself. (Maybe they had etiquette classes or something. I can’t find much information on its history, and their website publishes various points of etiquette rather than a history of the Institute and its mission.)

But back to the film! I found it hilarious that there is advice on how to eat spaghetti. That’s probably the one meal that I would never imagine being served at a dinner party — maybe it was considered fancy in the 40’s! Finally, I learned that I don’t eat soup correctly (I tip the spoon towards me, not away) and have never done quite the right thing with soup spoons. Damn, ma, why didn’t you teach me that — now I’ll be the laughing stock of that White House dinner!

Christians (and, really, anybody who tries to shop during the month of December) always complain that Christmas is becoming too commercialized. But Mother’s Day is what is driving me nuts this year. Even grocery stores have huge posters up reminding you to buy something for your mother. Gift Cards! Clothing! Jewelry! Flowers! Cake, cookies, pastries, chocolate! It’s annoying to watch the harassment since I’m supposed to be the target of this generosity. It’s even more annoying that the stores I actually need stuff from at the moment (Lowe’s and Home Depot, since I’m doing a fair amount of home repair) don’t mention a thing about Mother’s Day… wonder why…

A friend told me about the gift she got from her thirteen-year-old last Mother’s Day: a diamond ring. He’d listened to the advertising, and found the jewelry store’s advice to be particularly compelling — and spent what was for him a fairly large chunk of change. She was a little weirded out (diamonds are usually from the boyfriend or spouse, not children), but mostly upset at having to figure out how to phrase a response: she loved the sentiment, but couldn’t possibly keep it. “He tried so hard,” she said, “and I was just thinking, Damn, this is wrong, we have to take this back, but how do I tell him?”

Anna Jarvis initially strove to recognize the contributions of her own mother, who was active in her community in addition to being, well, a mother. Shortly after it was written into law as a national holiday in May of 1914, however, Anna rapidly regretted the commercialization.

Jarvis, says her New York Times obituary, became embittered because too many people sent their mothers a printed greeting card. As she said, “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment!”

For kids that are grown and away from home: what most mothers want most is to know that their children are happy and thriving. If you’re not nearby, write a letter about your great accomplishments and hopes (inside the printed card is acceptable nowadays). If you’re reasonably close, visit and tell her about your accomplishments and hopes. Bitching about your problems is a big no-no.

If the kids are still fairly young, Mom wants nothing more than to get away from the kids. Babysitting is an ideal Mother’s Day gift.

Oh yeah, and to the guy at work who was complaining about his newborn daughter arriving right before Mother’s Day last year, so he “had” to buy flowers for his wife for another holiday: fuck you, you selfish little shit — she just gave birth, the least you can do is buy her a plant.

Europe’s Unflattering Opinion Of UsFor years we Americans have swarmed over the face of the world, taking it for granted that the earth’s surface belongs to us because we can pay for it, and it is rather worse than ever since the war, when the advantages of exchange add bitterness to irritation. And yet there are many who are highly indignant when told that, as a type, we are not at all admired abroad. Instead of being indignant, how much simpler and better it would be to make ourselves admirable, especially since it is those who most lack cultivation who are most indignant. The very well-bred may be mortified and abashed, but they can’t be indignant except with their fellow countrymen who by their shocking behavior make Europe’s criticism just.

Understanding of, and kind-hearted consideration for the feelings of others are the basic attributes of good manners. Without observation, understanding is impossible—even in our own country where the attitude of our neighbors is much the same as our own. It is not hard to appreciate, therefore, that to understand the point of view of people entirely foreign to ourselves, requires intuitive perception as well as cultivation in a very high degree.

Today’s selection is brought to you from Emily Post’s 1922 Etiquette. Hurray for Project Gutenberg.