Fox's company now
counts among its clients such firms as Guidant and Texaco,which
last year sent her to New Orleans to teach a continental dining
and etiquette course to newly hired foreign and American MBA
students.
Manners may be
all the more important today, particularly in a world where
the next deal is as likely to be made in Japan or the Middle
East as in the United States. But for all of our gains in
paving the way to new markets overseas, Americans continue
to trail their foreign counterparts in the fine art of etiquette,
Fox says.
"If you are a director
or above and you are going to be interviewing clients, entertaining
them and traveling abroad to meet them, then table manners
- manners of all kinds - will definitely matter," Fox notes.
"The Japanese, for example, understand that. They spend a
considerable amount of time and money teaching employees how
to behave. There, a majority of business meetings are conducted
over meals."
Their children
answered differently. "Only 45 percent of the children said
they ate each day with their parents," recalls Galinsky. "When
we talked to single parents, 57 percent with kids age 8 to
18 reported that they ate with their children at least once
a day. Yet only 37 percent of the kids said that was so."
These findings
suggest that many children have an old-fashioned view of what
eating together means. For them, it still means sitting down
and eating rather than grazing, which occurs when a parent
eats while standing over them.
Fox believes that
young adults who never learned the proper way to conduct themselves
at mealtime would do well to learn. More and more U.S. companies
are using sit-down meals at restaurants to screen potential
candidates.
What to do? Fox
offers some advice:
-- Study standard
table settings.
-- Begin eating
by using the utensils farthest away from a plate and work
in with each new course.
-- Do not use bread
to dip, dunk or wipe up sauces.
-- Gently stir
hot soup. Do not blow it.
-- If you drop
a utensil, politely beckon to a waiter and ask for a new one.
If you've finished eating, place your knife and fork together
on your plate to signal that you are finished.
