Please and Thank You!

I was 15 years old and out on a shopping trip with a beloved female relative in the New York / Metropolitan area where I was born and raised.

It was a hot summer day, and we stopped for lunch.  As we perused our menus, our waitress came to our table to take our drink order, depositing glasses of ice water in the process.  "I'll have an iced coffee," my relative said, not looking up from the menu and sipping her ice water.  "Debbie, why don't you try one?"

I smiled up at the waitress.  "I'll have an iced coffee too, please."  The waitress smiled back.  "Sure thing, sweetie, I'll be right back."  (Note:  the waitress had not smiled at Beloved Relative.)

Beloved Relative touched my arm affectionately as the waitress padded away from our table.  "Debbie, you don't have to do that."  I was confused: were the rules looser with Beloved Relative than when dining out with my Marine Corps father?  "You mean I don't have to keep my elbows off the table?"  I guessed.

"No," she said sotto voce as the waitress approached with our iced coffees.  "You don't have to say 'please' or  'thank you' to a waitress."  The waitress reached our table and served our iced coffees with dishes of creamers and Sweet 'n Low.  "There you go girls, enjoy!  Let me know when you're ready to order lunch."  On auto-pilot, I replied "Thank you." to the waitress.  "You're welcome!" she replied back and walked over to another one of her tables.

The coaching from Beloved Relative was now earnest and unsmiling. "Debbie, now what did I say?"  I didn't like displeasing Beloved Relative.  "Sorry, I couldn't help it."  I was puzzled at her rule, however.  "Why don't you say 'please' and 'thank you' to a waitress?"

Beloved Relative was hungry, and waved at the waitress to return to our table to take our lunch order.  "So she knows who's in charge," she said, affirmatively and definitively.

Well, the coaching from Beloved Relative didn't work: I still say please and thank you, whether I'm addressing a waitress, my son or husband, a customer, a vendor, my boss, the folks I work with or a colleague.  And I teach my son Noah to do the same.

And while it's sometimes hard work, especially when the other party is insufferably rude, whether it's in writing or in person, I pretty much mean what I say and affect the matching tone of please and thank you.  That's part of my customer service training, and the rest is Marine Corps' good manners.  I'm certainly not perfect, or always 100% successful.  However, my intent is consistent.

When managers at any level order work direction from their teams like Beloved Relative ordering iced coffee without saying "please" and "thank you," I suspect it includes but is not limited to at least one or all of the following possible scenarios:

• Like Beloved Relative, they think the absence of "please" and "thank you" lets everyone know they're in charge;
• They weren't raised with good manners;
• They were mentored by an asshole (in the spirit of full disclosure, so was I);
• They're afraid, insecure, etc.;
• They speak without thinking or caring about the impact of their words or behavior on those around them;
• They're delirious or otherwise impaired.

Now, I've worked with organizations where extensive work was done to improve employee engagement and retention, including but not limited to elaborate surveys and subsequent analysis paralysis.  These same organizations also continued to employ managers and executives who not only did not use please and thank you as simple yet consistently effective engagement and retention tools, but these same managers and executives also regularly terrorized anyone in their radius, subordinate or colleague alike, while playing up sweetly and cloyingly to compensation and promotional decision-makers above them.  Bleah.  It was not only inauthentic and the polar opposite of engagement, it was also nauseating.

Bob Sutton, author of The No-Asshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss, sums up the power of thank you eloquently in his blog post, Thanks. A really neglected form of compensation.  No surveys or analysis paralysis needed here to achieve authentic engagement.

My friend and former colleague Elaine, a career customer service pro, doesn't need Bob Sutton to point out these basics to her.  "Please and Thank You!"  she'd sing all day long in a one-phrase mantra, her glass full of motivation to get the job done for her devoted customers.

Thank you for reading my blog post; please have a great week!