Extreme Etiquette

A relentless, competitive business strategy:
Being Nice.

By Jay Heinrichs / Photography By Cedric Angeles

After parking at the Emily Post Institute in Burlington, Vermont, I check my teeth in the mirror, make sure my hair isn’t sticking out, and brush potato-chip crumbs off my lap. I’m about to meet Anna Post, great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post, the woman who did for American manners what Noah Webster did for dictionaries.

Not that Anna or any other Post would stoop to humiliate anyone. Their mission in life is to put everyone at ease, and make everyone put everyone else at ease. But I don’t know that yet. I’ve even borrowed my wife’s Prius, the politest car in America, instead of driving my own beat-up, reeking SUV. Can’t be too careful, I think. I have a lot to learn. (As we shall see, it turns out that you can be too careful.)

The Emily Post Institute authors Emily Post’s indispensable Etiquette, now in its 17th edition, along with books on business manners, manners for men, and coping strategies for brides and young singles. It’s a family business: Seven Posts currently work there full-time, comprising more than half of the employee roster. Anna and her younger sister, Lizzie, both in their twenties, represent the youngest generation, and the one that will take the Post manners juggernaut well into this cantankerous century. Anna has served as a spokesperson for the Web phone service Skype and for Hyatt Place hotels, telling people how to be polite to each other in their phone calls and travels. She herself travels a couple dozen times a year, conducting business politeness seminars, teaching brides the formalities, and doing media interviews. She’s living proof that in our lives and business, etiquette is alive and well.

Either that or she’s living proof that we all desperately need some.

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