I’m old fashioned, I know. My children remind me of this regularly, particularly when I berate them for not lifting a pen after they’ve lifted a fork as a guest in someone’s house or, more generally, for not saying thank you. But I think good manners have nothing to do with fashion: they should be timeless.
For instance, if someone were to respond to a request to give up their time and spend a Sunday putting on a gundog demonstration free of charge to support an event that was struggling to find exhibitors, as a minimum I would expect the organiser to say thank you. What I wouldn’t expect would be for the organiser not even to be present during the demonstration and not to say goodbye or thank you – even if they didn’t like the demonstration. I also wouldn’t expect the organiser to ignore emails after the event.
If ever that were to happen to me, it would not only chip away at my faith in people’s essential goodness, but I certainly wouldn’t be minded to help them out again. Thank goodness such behaviour is a rarity.
Sep 152013