Miss Manners Minds Your Business

June 3, 2013
With her sparkling wit and contrarian wisdom, syndicated columnist Martin, aka Miss Manners (Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior), writing with her son Nicholas (director of operations at the Lyric Opera of Chicago), reminds readers that business and etiquette need not be mutually exclusive, but that crucial distinctions exist between professional manners and social ones. It should come as no surprise that Miss Manners deplores relaxed dress codes (“ ‘casual’ has come to mean all social decencies optional”) and finds them symptomatic of a larger problem—the increasingly blurred boundaries between personal and professional life, with its accompanying loss of civility in both realms. “Be yourself” is the worst possible advice to give a job seeker, according to Miss Manners: “When attempting to enter the business world you need to learn to be someone else. It is called having a professional identity.” Intrepid, practical, and always humane, Miss Manners tackles common workplace hazards: irritating colleagues, rude customers, business travel, and office parties, which she’d prefer to see replaced by “genuine workplace treats such as bonuses and time off.” Agent: David Hendin.

June 15, 2013

The balancing and blurring of work and family roles has created "etiquette chaos," proclaims Judith Martin, who responds with her trademark wit to a host of thorny workplace-behavior questions in this new guide. Martin organizes questions and answers into 15 topical chapters and provides humorous yet helpful advice in the vein of Philip Galanes's Social Q's (LJ 6/15/11). Rather surprisingly, the contributions of Martin's coauthor son, an executive at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, are not particularly clear. An index, to be included in the published edition, was not seen. VERDICT An enjoyable collection that will defuse--if not fully solve--modern workplace dilemmas.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2013
Digital technologies have brought immense changes to the workplace, including the blurring of the line between the personal and the professional, a boundary nationally syndicated columnist and best-selling author Martin, aka Miss Manners, seeks to reestablish. In her seventeenth book, she takes on the challenges of office life and advocates firmly for civility, with the assistance of her son, Nicholas, director of operations at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Responding to hilarious, troubling, and illuminating examples of atrocious behavior and appalling situations, the Martins offer brisk and practical guidance on coping with everything from job interviews to phone, e-mail, and social-media protocol to office hygiene and attire (including nose rings), loud talkers, snoops, snitches, and time wasters. As they parse delicate questions of hierarchy, privacy, focus, gender, age, family matters, illness, gossip, rants, business trips, meetings, and socializing, the Martins broach the very core of human relationships. They also drive home the fact that our lives would be vastly improved if we consistently worked together with dignity, respect, responsibility, patience, and, as they so ably demonstrate, a sense of humor.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)