-OSCAR WILDE
Emily Post, meet Animal House. With graduating seniors facing the toughest job market in years, universities from coast to coast offered etiquette classes this spring to finish students off as they finish school. Some fraternities, academic societies and job-placement offices hosted workshops and extravagant banquets. The popularity of the programs has even spawned a cottage industry of entrepreneurs who sell etiquette seminar packages to groups for $500 to $6,000 a day. The curriculum ranges from the fine points of firm handshaking to networking at cocktail parties. Says Rose Ann Pastor, a career-planning official at DePaul University and a certified personal-image consultant: “Manners are the new status accessory.”
Why take a course to learn what your mother should have taught you when you were 5? Etiquette expert Marjabelle Young Stewart says that many students in the fast-food age either don’t know-or don’t take the time to practice-good etiquette. A self-proclaimed “crusader for couth,” Stewart transforms college student unions into well-appointed banquet rooms complete with candles, finger bowls and seven-course meals, and educates attendees on the most common dinner-table faux pas. Her biggest pet peeve: people who saw on or stab at their food. “The silverware should seem to grow out of your fingers,” she says dramatically.
It’s hard to tell just how far proper etiquette goes in helping to land jobs. But Eric Harris, a recruiter for Prudential Insurance, says that students who are mannerly and have a good handshake and eye contact project the kind of confidence employers are looking for. That’s not to say, of course, that breaking the rules will necessarily stall your rise to the top. Stewart tells of attending a White House dinner where finger bowls were served. Two Japanese dignitaries mistook the water for an after-dinner soup, a traditional Asian dish, and proceeded to drink it. So did the host. His name was George Bush.
