Manners
I have been observing people from
all walks of life over the last six decades and have often wondered how is it
that people choose to be lacking in manners. All the literature, our parents,
our teachers, other elders have insisted on our being well mannered all the
time – remember our school days – you are told to be on your best behaviour
when the Inspector of Schools visits your class; in your office, you have to be
well mannered when your Chairman/President visits your office. Given this kind
of training in our lives, it surprises me that many of us are ill-mannered!
I have been compelled to write this
piece as I often see how ill-mannered people can be in office life. We spend
major part of our lives in office and it is therefore necessary that we respect
and get along with others in as polite a manner as possible. People who have
implicitly obeyed commandments when they were subordinates are the ones who in
their ‘other avatars’ as bosses are most ill-mannered.
It is considered the most courteous
thing to offer a seat to whoever visits you in your office/home. It is good
manners to attentively listen when someone is speaking to you.
When I see someone not offering a
seat when you enter his/her cabin, whatever be your station in life via-a-vis
the person you are visiting, I feel revulsion. Worse still, the person carries
on with his work on the computer indifferent to your presence. He/she does not
even raise his/her head to enquire what the purpose of your visit is. I am
fairly certain that he/she is not dealing with such grave matters of earth (or
for that matter of heavens) that his/her work cannot be deferred for 5/10 minutes.
(I know that these persons, most of the times, are busy sending e-mails (most
of them on inane subjects) to his/her colleagues (I am using the dignified word
–colleagues) - these persons would insist on calling them subordinates only! And he/she expects that he/she will be
respected! How incongruous!
Then there are people who preach
something and practise something else. For example, in some academic
institutions, use of mobile phone by students is a strict no-no in the campus.
The person/s who framed the rules do not hesitate to destroy the phones if they
find students using them. They will frown at members of the teaching fraternity
allowing their mobiles to ring. But what do they do? They can use their phones
wherever they are. Even when they are in some meetings, they will be
receiving/initiating calls totally indifferent to the presence of others and
without even a courteous ‘excuse me’ (causing annoyance to the participants). I
am not sure if they are discussing earth-shattering and death-defying matters
that do not brook delay!
If these are not bad manners, I
request you to tell me what ‘bad manners’ is!
These people perhaps are not aware of
(and if they are aware, are indifferent to) the fact that bad mannered people
are abhorred by society and they become misfits in society. People remain away
from them because they cannot stand them or because they create a non-conductive
atmosphere around them. We have to decide which side of the fence we want to
be. Man is a social animal and society is our base so manners have to be a part
of our life.
Perhaps we need
to follow Margaret Mead who said ‘I have a respect for manners as such, they
are a way of dealing with people you don’t agree with or like’
"Manners are sensitive
awareness of feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good
manners..." said Emily Post.
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