FREE online courses on Etiquette in Business - Etiquette In
Reverse Gear
Etiquette, remember, is merely a collection of forms by which all personal
contacts in life are made smooth. The necessity for a “rough” man to become
polished so that he may meet men of cultivation on an equal footing, has an
equally important reverse. The time has gone by when a gentleman by grace of
God, which placed him in a high-born position, can control numbers of other men
placed beneath him. Every man takes his place to-day according to born position
plus the test of his own experience. And just as an unlettered expert in
business is only half authoritative to men of high cultivation, so also is the
gentleman, no matter how much he knows of Latin, Greek, history, art and polish
of manner, handicapped according to his ignorance on the subject of another's
expertness. Etiquette, in reverse, prescribes this necessity for complete
knowledge in every contact in life. Through knowledge alone, does one prove
one's right to authority. For instance:
A
man in a machine ship is working at a lathe. An officer of the company comes
into the shop, a gentleman in white collar and good clothes! He stands behind
the mechanic and “curses him out” because his work is inefficient. When he turns
away, the man at the lathe says, “Who was that guy anyway? What business has he
to teach me my job?” Instead of accepting the criticism, he resents what
he considers unwarranted interference by a man in another “class.”
But supposing instead of standing by and talking about
inefficiency, the “gentleman” had said, “Get out of there a moment!” and
throwing off his coat and rolling up his silk shirt sleeves, he had operated the
lathe with a smoothness and rapidity that could only have been acquired through
long experience at a bench. The result would be that the next time he came on a
tour of inspection that particular man (as well as all those who were witnesses
of the former scene) would not only listen to him with respect but without
resentment of his “class,” because his expertness proved that he had earned his
right to good clothes and silk shirts, and to tell those beneath him how work
should be done.
The same test applies to any branch of experience: a man who knows as much about
any “specialty” as an expert does himself, makes the “expert” think at once,
“This man is a wonder!” The very fact that the first man is not making the
subject his specialty, intensifies the achievement. Everything he says
after that on subjects of which the second man knows nothing is accepted without
question. Whenever you know as much as the other man, whether you are socially
above, or below him, you are on that subject his equal; when you know more than
he does, you have the advantage.