Gunn's Golden Rules

Niceties Are Nice

IS CHIVALRY DEAD? I hope not, but I am always discouraged when I hear people complain about “old-fashioned” acts of politeness. For example, I have heard women complain about men holding doors for them, as if it is inherently offensive and implies that they are weak.

How outrageous is that? I hold doors for women, and I also hold them for men. When I’m at Macy’s, I don’t let the door slam behind me when I walk through. It has nothing to do with gender. I would hold a door for anyone.

Would I hold the door for a dog? Okay, maybe not, because a dog shouldn’t be at Macy’s, but otherwise, yes! It has to do with noticing our fellow human beings and saying, “I recognize that you’re on this planet, and I don’t want a door hitting you in the face.”

That said, I did once have a terrible door-holding experience at D’Agostino’s supermarket in the Upper East Side’s Yorkville area, where I lived for seven years. This little old lady was trying to leave the store and was having the hardest time with the door. She kept pushing, pushing, pushing. To help her out, I pushed the door open for her. Well, she fell flat on her face on the pavement. We had to call an ambulance. I thought, That’s where politeness will get you; I caused this by trying to help.It was horrible. I try to do a nice thing for her … and I end up putting her in the hospital.

I learned a lesson from that. It’s important not to be overzealous in helping. Since then, faced with a similar situation, I broach the topic first. I say, “May I help you?” Then, assuming the little old lady says yes, I push the door open. To date, I am proud to say, I haven’t put any more senior citizens in the ER.

If I’ve made errors of overaction, at least I am not guilty of letting opportunities to be decent pass by. Honestly, I don’t understand how people can navigate the world and pretend no one else exists, like people who have big backpacks and yet barrel through narrow aisles. I don’t mind if people have huge bags, but what’s wrong with “Excuse me”? Why don’t they take the bag off their shoulder when they’re on the subway and put it on the floor?

Treating others nicely is such an easy thing to do, and it makes other people so happy. You’ll see people’s eyes light up—mine, at least—when someone smiles and says a genuine thank-you to a Starbucks barista, or asks, “Is this bag in your way?” when they have a huge suitcase on public transportation.

The other day at the grocery store, I needed a lemon, and there was no way to get to it through the throng of shopping carts, so I did my other shopping in the store and then came back. Instantly, other shoppers who were picking up fruit boxed me in with their carts. I thought: I’m not in a hurry. I can wait for these carts to move.

So I waited patiently for the carts to part. I waited … and waited. I was clearly there waiting, but the woman next to me just didn’t move. When I finally asked her, “Could you please move so I might get out?” she glared at me with a look of annoyance, as if I were ruining her shopping trip.

I thought: It’s a good thing I’m not an axe murderer.

Really, people who act like they’re the only ones on the planet are taking their lives in their hands each and every day. What if the person they wall in at the grocery store or bump with their backpack on the bus isn’t a mild-mannered pacifist like me? You hear all the time about road rage landing people in the hospital. Bad behavior isn’t only rude—it’s also dangerous.

YOU HAVE PRECIOUS FEW moments to make a first impression. It must be positive. One can lose out so quickly by not making eye contact, not emoting, not having a firm handshake, or not shaking hands at all.

Whatever the outcome of the meeting, at least you can say, “I did my best. I pulled off my end of this thing.”

There is no excuse not to reply when someone speaks to you. I say “Good morning” to the doorman in our building every day, and he never even looks up. If I ask him a question, he mumbles unintelligibly. I see him on the sidewalk talking to friends, engaged in an animated conversation, so I know he’s capable of talking. He just seems to be completely withdrawn around people he doesn’t know well.

I hear this a lot as an excuse for why people don’t take chances or don’t succeed in getting the job they want or the relationship they desire: “I’m so shy. I get very nervous.”

“I’m shy by nature!” I say. “I’m withdrawn. You have to learn how to engage. If I did, anyone can.”

Remember, I was so scared before my first day of teaching that I threw up! I still went into that classroom. And if I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t be writing this book now.

IF THERE’S ONE SITUATION in which good behavior should be easy, it’s following the birth of a child. New babies are typically the source of extreme happiness all around, so I’m always shocked when people behave badly toward new parents. The appropriate thing to do is to send a note of congratulations, in which you offer to help in any way you can, and ideally a small gift for the child as well. And yet, my friends with young children say it is rare that people follow this protocol. With couples unsuccessfully trying to conceive I can speculate that there could be a jealousy among some friends, but they’re the only ones whose reluctance to celebrate makes sense to me.

Also, for friends who are a bit immature, maybe the baby poses a threat. Having that baby means the parents are really cemented to their nuclear family. Friends whom the couple has coddled may think, You can’t have a baby! I’m your baby!

But no matter what qualms you might have, it’s important to suck it up and send that note of congratulations. New parents often feel very alone and very tired. They need a little cheerleading from the people who love them.

So how about visiting? If you’re lucky enough to be invited to see a new baby, be sure to bring food for the sleepy new parents, and don’t stay long. Also, do whatever you’re asked. For example, germs can be very scary for new parents, and you may be asked to wash your hands before holding the baby. Aunts and grandmothers often think, Wash what? Give me that baby!Just do whatever will make the parents most comfortable, even if that means scrubbing down as if you’re preparing for surgery.

The parents can facilitate this, though. What about walking around with wet wipes? You’re making good hygiene easy. It’s not a blockade around the baby, but it’s a moat. Antibacterial wipes are the drawbridge, as in: “Would you like to hold the baby? Yes? Great! Have a Wet One!”

Breast-feeding in public is a really hot topic right now. On one hand, you have activists who say you should never cover up, ever—nurse loud, nurse proud! Others say you should never leave the house—and, by the way, keep the blinds down!

I was breast-fed. My younger sister, Kim, was not. Between 1953 and 1956, the pediatrician went from encouraging breast-feeding to saying, “We don’t do this anymore.” And now, of course, it’s back in vogue. It seems to me that there are ways of nursing comfortably and whenever necessary while still staying fairly discreet. As long as we’re encouraging women to breast-feed, we should make sure we support them in the practice.

I once had a coworker who was pumping all the time. Often I wished she had the baby with her. I know she and the baby missed each other, and from my perspective babies are a lot more fun to have around than machinery. Workplaces seem to be evolving in such a way that families are taken into account more, and I think that’s certainly the future.

NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT the manners around one of the most enjoyable social graces: gift giving. Giving gifts is so much fun. There’s a thrill in choosing an item you think someone will enjoy. A lot of work goes into getting and sending a present. There’s the cost of the gift, sure, but also the wrapping, the ribbon, the card, and the horrible line at the post office.

My niece, Wallace, and I tried to convince everyone in our family to do Secret Santa or some other gift-giving game that would allow us to buy only one or two presents rather than the dozens the family now seems to expect.

“I like getting lots of presents for people,” my mother said. “I’m an old lady. I can do whatever I want!”

“Okay,” Wallace said, “then how about a theme? Like next year the gift theme could be cheese. It doesn’t have to be a big hunk of Edam. It could be cheesy,like Valley of the Dolls.” Wallace and I were thrilled with ourselves for having come up with that.

The family didn’t go for that, either.

I forget how sensitive people are on the subject of presents. I joked on a Lifetime holiday promo about how homemade gifts say “love” and also say “cheapskate.”

Well, there was an outcry on the message boards over that. One person wrote, “Your commercial in affect [ sic] was insulting and DEMEANING to those of us who hold the welfare of our loved ones above the commercialism of the season.”

I received a similarly angry letter from a viewer about how, because of hard times, the family was making fudge for presents rather than shopping. She felt I’d belittled that choice.

I felt horrible. I wrote the letter writer a note apologizing for having been so flippant. And I really did feel sorry. But I also thought, It was a joke.And I think people should own their situation, whatever it is. There’s no shame in being a cheapskate when you’re poor. I think she could have written a note with her gift saying, “Fudge says love, and it says we’re broke. Here you go. Love you!” I would love to get fudge, especially with a cute note like that.

Anyway, whether you get or make a present for someone, you want to have the gift appreciated, or at least acknowledged. When there is no reaction—no thank-you card, no e-mail, no phone call—you start to wonder whether it even arrived. It’s like throwing gifts into a big black hole.

I have a friend who sends her nieces and nephews gifts every year for Christmas and then hears … nothing. No note, no call—not from them, not from their parents.

My advice? Cut them off. If people don’t even acknowledge your gifts, you have to assume they don’t like them and don’t want any more. When people don’t communicate with you, you can only go by their actions, and if their actions are to give no indication that they want you to keep doing what you’re doing, you might as well stop.

When Christmas morning arrives and they look for that box among the piles, maybe they’ll realize that their silence has had an effect. How great would it be to be a fly on the wall in that house?

“Where is it?” you can imagine them asking.

Where is it? You never noticed when it came—how it is you notice when it doesn’t?

My mother reached that point with a relative. She never heard a word after the gifts stopped, and she was sorry she hadn’t stopped sooner.

At the same time, giving people something you know they’re going to love is thrilling, and when it’s acknowledged it makes you closer to that person. Thank-you cards are an opportunity to tell the giver how happy you are to be considered, and to tell them how much they mean to you. It’s a lovely part of social life.

Alas, I am afraid the thank-you note and even the ritual of gift giving are on the outs these days. I’ve heard of these things called “no-gift parties”—wedding invitations that say things like “No presents, please,” or funerals that request that mourners donate to a charity instead of sending flowers.

I’m just baffled. Why would you want to derail people who have a good impulse? Don’t people who are getting married need things? Charity should be part of the whole year. Everyone should give back. But weddings, like birthdays, should be a really special occasion. If there are no presents, why bother having a party? You can see your friends anytime.

Children especially need to receive presents. Not only do they want them—and why shouldn’t they—but presents are good for them. When they open presents in front of people, they learn how to be gracious, even when they get something they don’t want or when they get two of the same thing. (Not that there’s much chance of that these days—there are so many different kinds of toys now. I was looking at the Toys “R” Us catalogue. There were four pages of Legos. My inner child almost fainted.)

All that said, I have to tell you a secret: I am the worst gift recipient in the world. I have a closet full of unopened gifts. I’m in denial about them. I should probably seek therapy for it. I love showering other people with gifts, but I don’t want to get them.

To clarify: With people I know, I’m pretty good with thankyous. It’s when strangers send me things that I freeze up. The obligation such gifts raise in me outweighs the joy they provide.

So to all the strangers who have sent me gifts: a great, belated thanks to you all, and I’m sorry I was too overwhelmed to respond before now. I love whatever it is, and it was so generous and sweet of you to think of me. Now please take anything else you might want to send and give it to someone more deserving.

Why, you may ask, don’t I just pass along all those unwanted gifts to others who may enjoy them? Well, I learned the hard way that regifting is dangerous. When I was at Parsons, there was a going-away party for a coworker I had been extremely fond of at one time but then came not to like very much. I was planning to sit out the farewell fete, but some colleagues insisted I go. I was very reluctant but finally agreed, and I thought I would just go to my gift closet and find something appropriate to bring her.

I found a silver Tiffany pen. It seemed perfect: not too personal, but nice. I’d been given it when I judged an art contest among the employees of the Port Authority. It had been a great event on the sixtieth floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, a long time ago.

At the party, I presented her with that beautiful little blue box with the white ribbon, and she was delighted. She opened the box and pulled out the pen with a smile on her face. Then she said, “Oh, look, and it’s engraved, too!” As she read the engraving, her face fell: “Best wishes from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.”

It was very embarrassing. And yet, once the first flush of shame had passed, I thought it was pretty appropriate. I didn’t want to go to the party. I didn’t want to bring her anything. And so even though I went, my true feelings crept through. In effect, my elegant Tiffany pen bitch-slapped her. That’s a situation where I should have just trusted my instincts and stayed home.

I’ve been on the other side of this kind of faux pas, too. When I was living on Perry Street in the West Village, there was—and I believe still is—an annual street fair called the Perry-phernalia Block Party. My neighbors Bea and Jerry Banu and I always sat together out on the stoop. In fact, Jerry was in charge of the event. One year, as my dear friend Bea was setting up her table she declared, “I’m going to get all the jewelry I don’t like,” and she came back out with a box full of things I had given her!

“I’m glad to know you don’t like this stuff!” I said. “Now I can stop giving it to you!” She was mortified, but I said, “Don’t bring it back inside. It’s done. Forget about it. Maybe now they can find a happy home.” It’s good that I don’t have an ego about these things.

And I was serious about being glad to know. I know it’s not proper to tell people when they have terrible taste or to specify what you’d like for the holidays, but sometimes I wish I could.

My mother to this day buys me socks and underwear—and in the wrong size, no less! I am fifty-seven years old, and she still buys me things in a size L—large. No matter how many times I tell her, “Mother, I’m a medium. I always have been!” she doesn’t listen. And every year I have to return what she gets me.

One time she bought me a shirt that came in a Lord & Taylor box. I went to the Men’s Department to exchange it for another size, and they said they didn’t carry the item at all. I called my mother to tell her, and she gasped. “I got it at an outlet,” she said, blushing through the phone. “I just used the Lord and Taylor box.”

When pressed on her dubiously successful gift giving, my mother just gets defensive. “You and your sister and your niece and nephew are so hard to buy for,” she told me recently, “because you have no interests.”

“What? No interests? Wait a minute!” I said. “Just to speak for myself, I am passionate about many, many things. I love fashion. I love design. I love books. I love architecture. I love movies. I could go on! You could get me any book. You could get me a DVD. An Amazon gift card.”

For me, gift cards are fantastic. Whenever I don’t have a perfect, one-of-a-kind gift in mind for someone, I love to give gift cards. Alas, my family says that’s too impersonal. They’re always complaining when I give these cards, saying I didn’t take the time to find the perfect gift for each person. I finally told my sister, “Apparently, my hinting has been too subtle. I get these for people because I’d like to receivethem.”

And they’re way better than crazy objects that I then have to move around my house and hide in closets. Recently, I was given an objet d’art by some friends. They have never been in my apartment, and when I saw what they sent, quite frankly I was insulted. It’s grotesque, and 100 percent not me. I wish I could show it to you so you could see how there is no apartment on the planet, at least none I’d want to visit, where this could possibly look good. It’s ambitiously bad.

Why did these friends feel I needed that piece of bizarre sculpture in my life? I was honored that they wanted to give me something, but it’s very presumptuous to get people things that are going to take up a lot of space in their lives unless you know for a fact that they will really love it.

That’s why I find registries very handy. You can see what people need and want and what other people have already bought for them. It takes all the pressure off and makes you feel like you’re getting something that’s really going to be appreciated.

I’ve bought a lot of presents off gift registries, but truth be told, I haven’t been to a wedding in fourteen years. I’m old enough that, by now, people in my peer group have either married or they haven’t. And if they’re doing it for a second time, it’s usually a small event with just a few family members, so I just send a small gift to acknowledge the event.

The last wedding I went to was at the couple’s house in Greenwich, Connecticut. They were fashion people. They had a big tent in the backyard and every possible bell and whistle. There were probably 350 or 400 guests. Even the Porta-Potties were fully equipped, luxurious trailers. I was sitting at the table of the grandmother of the bride, and I said to her, looking around in awe, “This is phenomenal!”

She looked at me with a trace of pity and said, “You must not get out much.”

This was the bride’s grandmother! Isn’t she supposed to rave about her family? Isn’t she supposed to be enthusiastic?

She’s right, I don’t get out much,I thought. But even so! This is an incredible wedding.

This couple really wanted a lavish party, but I pity brides today who feel that breaking the bank is an obligation. Weddings seem so stressful to me in general; it’s a wonder how anyone who’s throwing one feels like getting married at all by the end.

I know someone who rented the whole Yale Club and had a towering raw bar for the postceremony cocktail hour. This was before the multicourse sit-down dinner for more than two hundred people. They must have spent a quarter of a million dollars.

I always say in a case where you’re already breaking the bank (as on one of those ridiculously priced designer handbags), you should spend 10 percent less than you’ve budgeted and give that extra money to charity. Your wedding guests won’t notice if there’s one less tier of oysters and lobster claws, but 10 percent of a fortune can make a real difference to people who truly need it.

Given how expensive weddings can be these days, I understand how eager the couple is to receive money as a gift, but if that’s the case, they should simply throw a cheaper party. I have thankfully never been to a wedding where the bride walks around with a money bag, though I have heard tell of them. Miss Manners calls this “simple social blackmail,” and she’s right.

Besides, there’s no shame in marrying simply. In Washington when I was growing up, weddings were typically a ceremony followed by a champagne reception. There was never a meal associated with a wedding. If you felt you had to feed the out-of-town people, you did it the night before at the rehearsal dinner. Ultimately, whenever you’re entertaining, it’s good to work within the budget you have, and if that means you just do a cocktail hour, that’s totally fine. Just make sure it’s a fun and gracious cocktail hour.

Generally speaking, I am all for doing things cheaply whenever possible. For example, I prefer not to take taxis or limos. For some reason, people don’t believe that I take public transportation. They assume that I have a car service, or maybe even a sedan chair carried by nubile models. In fact, I take the subway twice a day on average, and I salute its relative speed and convenience.

The subway is, however, a petri dish of bad manners. I’m not talking about mild nuances of behavior or even some of the craziness that takes place within the train’s cars or on the more oppressive platforms where riders sweat or freeze and hold their nose or ears. That’s just the sound and smell of New York.

I’m talking about the way people push and shove and act as if they are in the Thunderdome. Why do people ascending the stairs behave as though it’s perfectly acceptable to leave no room for people who are descending and vice versa? There is adequate room for one aisle to go up and one to go down.

What happened to using words instead of actions as the means of moving past people who are obstacles in your path? I find that merely saying, “Excuse me, please …” is a successful method. I have never needed to push, shove, or body block my way through a crowd, so you needn’t, either. And remember that backpacks, wheeled luggage, and baby strollers were not invented to be used as battering rams. I like getting around the city fast, but I often feel kind of beaten up by the time I reach my destination.

Another place where it seems like niceties have been completely abandoned is on airplanes. I have to fly all the time for work. As we know, flying used to be a very glamorous thing and is now only a hair less miserable than a cross-country trip on an un-air-conditioned bus in August.

Still, quite frankly, I look forward to that airline door closing. There is no phone. There is no Internet (although airborne Internet access is surely in our future). I am insulated. I can actually just focus and write on my computer or read a book. It’s heaven. But I can’t sleep on planes, which is why taking overnight flights makes me crazy. I am always wide awake. I am the perfect person for the exit row. If the pilot ever needs me, I am right there, ready to go.

Maybe that’s why strange things are always happening to me on planes. One time, I had my seat in coach and was just about to start reading when a woman came down the aisle with an eight- or nine-year-old child and sat next to me in the middle seat, with this large child on her lap. She thought children could travel for free, and no one had stopped her.

Seats today are close quarters to begin with, but this was ridiculous. No one in the aisle could move. Eventually, the flight attendant came and sorted things out and explained that children over two need their own seats, but until then I thought I was going to be pinned down by a large preteen for the whole flight.

Once when I flew from Paris to New York, we made an emergency landing in Boston because a famous nightclub owner and her teenage son refused to stop smoking. Something similar happened once when I was flying from New York to Detroit early on a Sunday morning. There was a bad-tuxedo group—the men wearing these hideous purple and pale blue tuxedos and the women clad in acetate gowns—throwing lit cigarettes at one another. The pilot ended up leaving the cockpit to come yell at them. When we landed, the sheriff got on board and took them away.

Another time when I boarded, an older man was sitting in my seat. I asked him about his seat, and he didn’t seem to understand me. I said, “If you’re in my seat, where’s your seat? Because I’ll sit in it.”

When that failed, I approached the flight attendant and explained the situation. She said, “Well, just take a seat.”

“Aren’t these seats assigned?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “but if someone comes and you’re in his seat, you can just move.”

“But this man in my seat must have an assignment of his own.” I said again. “Can’t you just help me figure out what it is, and then I’ll sit there? It will make it so much easier for everyone.”

She was completely and totally uninterested in helping facilitate. I realized I was being really annoying, but I stood in the vestibule by the entrance to the plane until there was only one seat left, and then I sat there.

So it’s not just the fellow passengers who can make a flight difficult, sometimes it’s the flight attendants. They say they’re there for your safety and to do anything they can to make you more comfortable, but sometimes their stress levels get the better of them and they become more like jail wardens than attendants.

On a flight to Tampa for a speaking assignment, I sensed there was going to be trouble when I saw a very young flight attendant who seemed furious. Can’t you just tell when someone has an aura of hostility? The second you see them you know they’re going to be troublesome. Sure enough, a woman came on the plane with a huge, unwieldy roller bag, and she told this angry flight attendant, “Excuse me, but I’m going to need help putting this in the overhead.”

The response: “Then you had no business bringing it on board.”

Debatable.

“But I do have it on board,” the woman said, “and I do need help.”

And the flight attendant said, “Well, you’re not getting any help from me. That’s not what we’re here for. When you get to your seat, you’ll have to ask someone.”

“And if they won’t help me?”

“We’ll have to check it.”

She had a curtness and a dismissiveness that I found very unpleasant.

And she later did something even worse. During the safety demonstration, she was pantomiming along to the safety instructional. I was reading a book. Others were engaged in their own work. Suddenly, she stopped what she was doing, paused the recording, and, with her two-inch-heeled foot, kicked the newspaper of the person in the first row! She shouted, “I’m not doing this demonstration to entertain myself!”

Frankly, I worried about her blood pressure.

Carrying around anger like that is really dangerous, but I think it’s up to each of us to deal with it on our own time. I hate confrontation and am so turned off by people who insist on starting fights all the time. Some people are so insecure that they will push a confrontation at every opportunity. There are even people who at a party (often after a few glasses of something) will blurt out things to others like, “I feel like you don’t like me.”

It’s so childish, and it never ends well. Either they say that, actually, they don’t like you, and then there’s awkwardness. Or they say they do like you, but you’ve just put them in an uncomfortable position, so you’ll never know if you just coerced that answer—or if at that moment, because of the question, they actually stopped liking you.

Remember at the playground when kids would ask each other a million times, “Are you my best friend?”

After the tenth time you want to say, “Well, not anymore!”

I still remember the grade-school drama involving my oldest friend, Doug Harbison, and my new friend, Craig Smith. I felt confident enough about Doug’s friendship that I could assure Craig that he was my best friend because I thought nothing would alienate Doug. I was wrong. It really hurt Doug’s feelings, and I felt terrible.

Bad manners often come from a place of deep unhappiness. It’s almost a declaration of bad citizenship, a way of challenging the world: “Why should I be a good citizen? You haven’t been good to me!”

Frankly, in my experience, people who try to put you on the spot about your feelings are just angry with you, and they’re projecting negative feelings onto you. They want to start a fight so they have an excuse to be so upset. Often the anger is based on your aloofness. They’re thinking, Where does he get off not liking me? I’m very likable!

You know, this book started out as an etiquette book, but at times I’ve thought, Maybe it’s too tough to behave well under all the crazy circumstances modern life throws at you.

Do you know how Amy Vanderbilt, the etiquette maven, died? In 1974, she fell or jumped out of the second-story window of her East Eighty-seventh Street town house. It was mysterious. I wonder sometimes if the number of things that could go wrong between people just overwhelmed her and she lost all interest in avoiding pitfalls like open windows.

In fact, when you start thinking about how cruel people can be to one another, you wonder whether you should become an advocate not for manners but for living in a cave with a boulder rolled in front of it. Life is full of many shocking surprises and upsetting interactions. Maybe we should all opt out.

Especially because becoming a hermit brings up some great design opportunities. We can bring back the fifties bomb shelter.

My mother was very into that idea back in the day. She was looking at plans right and left and stocking up for it. I think I was in my twenties when she finally got rid of all the boxes with the gallon plastic containers of distilled water and the by-then-exploded canned food.

I didn’t care about preparing for the apocalypse, but I did love the architecture. The shelter was basically a submarine with a big periscope. The thought of a nuclear war terrified me, and I didn’t enjoy the nuclear drills we had to do at my school. I used to think, I don’t think hiding under our desks is a useful exercise. Will it really protect us if bombs fall and the whole building caves in?I was a critic even then.

Ultimately, though, I think leaving your subbasement is well worth the trouble. And what else can we do? We’re human beings. Try as we might to avoid it, and as hard as it might sometimes be to act civil, the truth is this: We need one another.