The end of etiquette

0:00Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting, to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at Wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweetgreen's fall harvest menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured.

0:41Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed Brussels and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate and roasted bacon Brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to Sweetgreen featuring fall's best dressed. Make your move. Order on the Sweetgreen app. The etiquette has been lost that you're not an island alone. I don't understand. Like, I just wouldn't do that. I think it's so annoying. Let's just talk. Let's be civilized.

1:17Jonquilyn Hill:Okay, this morning, I was trying to get to work and racing for the train. I'm about to swipe my card so that I can step through when this woman blatantly pushes ahead of me in line. We end up both getting to the train just in time. But I'm like, are you really so much more important than the rest of us that the rules don't apply to you? When we're children, we learn how to stand in line. That you wait for your turn at the water fountain. You wait for your turn to grab a pencil. You wait for your turn to tap your card so that you can get on the metro. She did not wait her turn. I'm not the only person who's irritated by this kind of thing.

2:05Jonquilyn Hill:Almost a half of Americans say that they've noticed people have gotten ruder in the wake of the COVID pandemic. It's like people don't know how to act anymore. This week I'm writing for Basic Manners. I'm curious, where did the days go where people were kind? No excuse me, no pardon me, no hey man. Can I get by you? How do you walk past somebody and don't even acknowledge them? Everybody's got no manners. I'm John Glyn Hill. This is Explained to Me from Vox. And today, we're going to learn some manners.

2:50Manners, of course, are a really good thing because they encourage us to think about others and to behave in ways that are not antisocial and potentially even dangerous.

3:01Jonquilyn Hill:Kirstie Sedgman is a professor at the University of Bristol, and she wrote the book On Being Unreasonable, Breaking the Rules and Making Things Better. For me, it boils down to, was it a rule that was built for a particular time that is now obsolete? Who was it built to benefit in the first place? and how can we have these conversations so that we figure out what we want, what we all want social life and public space to be like in a way that benefits everybody and doesn't accidentally exclude.

3:37It's not inherently elitist at all to ask people to adhere to what we call the social contract, which is that system of rules and norms that encourage pro-social behavior and discourage deviance and in fact when I started researching on being unreasonable I found out that the social contract is the only reason that we were able to form societies and civilizations at all and it's really common to say that the reason that we're able to form these societies is because we developed the ability to use tools, but actually just as fundamental was the ability to develop these contracts that would encourage us to trust strangers rather than to see them as a threat.

4:25Jonquilyn Hill:Oh, I think that's so interesting because this idea of a social contract, you know, this responsibility we have for others, putting your trust in others, being dependable for others. how is that holding up these days? Are we still abiding by our social contract? That's what troubles me. So as far back as the ancient Greeks, people like Plato were complaining about people who used to be respectful and quiet and care about their elders, or at least able, he said, to be controlled with a stick if they became deviant. had suddenly found their tongues and were talking back to the people in power in a way that he felt to be completely disrespectful.

5:13Sound mindedness is doing everything in an orderly manner and quietly in walking on the streets, in conversation and doing everything else in a similar fashion. So to some extent, we've been thinking that the social contract is on the verge of collapsing for over 2 ,000 years now. But it is uncontrovertible that we are now in an age where we are being encouraged and indeed deliberately incentivized to think in individualistic rather than in communitarian ways. So to ask ourselves not what is best for us as a society, but what is best for me as an individual.

5:55Jonquilyn Hill:One of the places where I see people thinking like individuals is on public transportation. Why are people acting out there? I think one of the problems is that we're being increasingly crammed into tightly contained spaces. But what we have been seeing increasingly is people breaking rules. And when you see other people not moderating their behavior for the good of everybody, but instead doing the things that are right for them, that they want to do, it can start to seem a bit like a mugs game. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? Yeah, and I feel like you see that a lot on airplanes.

6:42Jonquilyn Hill:I saw a lady walk down the aisle on the airplane, barefoot, go use the restroom, barefoot. That's insane. We've got to do better. We should get rid of the reclining button on airplane seats. 100 % agree. That's amazing. Either give us more room or take the button away. Are there any rules we can agree on there? There's a really easy answer, I think, to that question of should we or should we not recline our seats on an aeroplane? So I call it the reasonable tango because on the one hand, you have one person going, of course it's reasonable to recline seats. They are made to recline. How else are you meant to get a good night's sleep?

7:22And on the other hand, you say, but what about people with long legs? He'll be made physically uncomfortable. And we go round and round like that. Should we or should we not? But for me, it's not so much about yes or no, but how. If we want to recline our seat, how might we go about it? So I try to make a point of turning to the person behind me and saying, do you mind if I recline my seat now? And if they say no, then I'm in a bit of an uncomfortable position because if the person behind me has already reclined their seat, then I've got a much narrower gap. But so far, not a single person that I've ever asked has said no.

8:00But what you can do is just prepare people, get them to move their legs out of the way. And particularly if they've got a drink resting on it, making sure that you don't just wallop that over their legs and give them a very damp flight. For me, it's less about should we do this, yes or no, but how do we work out the acceptable boundaries of behaviour? And how can we have these conversations when we are being encouraged to yell at each other across a divide rather than to listen to each other and engage in what the American philosopher John Rawls called public reason, which is where you say, well, this is what seems reasonable to me.

8:34And this is why based on my position. But what seems reasonable to you?

8:43Jonquilyn Hill:what about that calculus of someone say say it's rush hour people are on the train someone has their bag in the seat and other people can't sit down right there that's one of my pet peeves same and i was just on a train so i rushed back here from london where i was giving a talk but that's not to say that I never accidentally leave my seat my bag on a seat in fact I found myself doing it just now because I was getting all that all my stuff out I was plugging in my laptop and I was doing some work and then I looked up and there I realized that there were people filtering down the aisle giving me the side eye and I'd left my bag there but that's where actually part of the social contract is literally about how we perform compliance so what i did then was snatch it up and perform a mea culpa and i'm really sorry and actually that's a really important part of what it means to be part of the community sometimes you might inadvertently break the rules but showing that you're repentant is really important

9:58Jonquilyn Hill:It can be really hard to follow the rules when they keep changing. Case in point, our phones. That's next.

10:19Support for the show comes from Upside, which immediately reminds me of when, like, school teachers would smack me upside the head. But let's see what Upside is. It's an app that helps you have money work for you. The free Upside app gets you cash back on gas, groceries, and dining. The three things draining your wallet right now. Here's how it works. You simply open the app, claim an offer, pay with your card like normal, and get paid. That's it. And yes, it's cash back. Not points you'll never use. Not credits that expire. It's just real money you transfer straight to your bank account. Upside has given back$1 billion to its users.

10:56To find out how much you could earn, download the free Upside app and use the promo code EXPLAINED to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas. That's an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas using the promo code EXPLAINED. It's called Upside.

11:20Support for the show comes from Policy Genius. Life insurance is the kind of thing you want to get right. That means having as many options to compare as possible and having the differences laid out clearly. That's where policy genius comes in. This isn't some policy, you know, B plus student. This is policy genius. It's an online insurance marketplace that allows you to compare quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side for free. Imagine that. You can easily find what you need. Coverage amounts, prices, terms even. Their licensed team helps you get set up with a policy fastly so you can get on with your lifely.

12:01With Policy Genius, you can find 20-year life insurance policy starting at just$276 a year for$1 million in coverage. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance codes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's PolicyGenius.com.

12:27Jonquilyn Hill:It's Explain It To Me. I'm J.Q. As Kirstie told me, etiquette can be easy to talk about, but way harder to follow. So I try always to make a point, and I'm not perfect, believe me. So I'm not saying that I know how to behave in every single circumstance, and I'm always right. I'm now Emily Post. As in Emily Post, the socialite who literally wrote the book on the subject. Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home was published back in the 1920s. More than a century later, her family is still in the business of teaching us how to mind our manners. My name is Lizzie Post, and I am an author and a co-president and podcast host at the Emily Post Institute.

13:12Jonquilyn Hill:Does that come with a certain amount of pressure, though? Because I imagine people may hear that and think, OK, so you're on top of it. You must be polite at all times. Did a lot of therapy for a lot of years, yes.

13:28Jonquilyn Hill:Lizzie says etiquette doesn't have to be intimidating or elitist, and that it changes with the times. In Emily's, my great-great-grandmother's previous works from her era, 1922, when she was actually writing, she wrote from 1922 to 1960 for the brand. And she was really interesting because while she talked about the standards of the day, she also allowed those standards to change. I mean, think about 1922 to 1960. Big differences, huge swings in how people behaved. You know, chaperones by her second edition were gone from the book. You know, it was life was changing and evolving and she changed and evolved with it.

14:11Etiquette is not a rigid code of manners.

14:14Jonquilyn Hill:It is simply how persons' lives touch one another. And I think that it can very easily have these connotations of being something that is about a secret society almost, or it's only about formality, or it's only for people who are very wealthy. And that can have a really exclusive feel that's kind of nasty. It can also start to feel a lot like judgment. I know something you don't know.

14:48Jonquilyn Hill:I think one of the reasons etiquette can feel so out of sorts, particularly right now, is because times are changing and they're just changing really quickly. I think phone etiquette is really, really emblematic of that. Like people playing music or having their phone on speaker, no headphones. Do we just not know how to act when it comes to our phones? Like, are there not rules and regulations? Is this a Wild West? What is going on? There are definitely rules of courtesy and blaring anything out of your phone, whether it's a phone call, it's a FaceTime call, or it's your TikTok feed or that movie that you're watching is all inappropriate when other people are the captive audience and haven't asked to be.

15:39It's just this mindful moment where people forget where they are. They're so used to being in their own world with their phone six inches from their face that they forget that anyone can even hear what it is that they are doing on their phone at that particular moment. Really hard to correct this behavior because generally we don't correct other people's behavior. Yeah.

16:00Jonquilyn Hill:And I want to get into that a little bit. You want to get to that part? Yeah, I mean, I admit, especially in public spaces, I am team mind my business. I'm like time to mind my business. But at what point do you say like, hey? I feel like it's a really tough judgment call and it's going to be different for every situation. But for me, and just so you all know, the speakerphone in public is like my greatest pet peeve. Like this is nails on a chalkboard to me when it happens. I get irate. A lot of listeners feel the same way. Like people taking a phone call on speakerphone in front of a bunch of other people who can overhear it and pretend like everyone's not distracted by the fact that you're having a personal phone call.

16:45Please stop using your phone with the sound on in the middle of a public place. I thought we all agreed upon this a long time ago, but apparently COVID has changed that. So when do you step in? I think that when I am in a space that I'm only going to occupy for a short time, I am telling myself, mind my own business, don't worry about it. When it's that train ride that we're starting, we're not just getting off at the next stop, we're going to be on this for a while and apparently this person is too, or that four-hour flight that you're on. Now I think we start to have a bit more standing to say something and to ask.

17:28And I think one of the ways that you can ask is to say, hey, could you put some headphones on while you're enjoying that or watching that or on your call? I say could you because they might not have headphones with them. But even if they don't, it's a reminder. It's kind of like that little bit of a check of awareness that, oh, this thing I'm doing is impacting people around me. Here's the rub. You can't control other people's behavior. So you cannot control if this person is going to get defensive, even at the sweetest ask from the sweetest looking person on earth. You have to a little bit, if you're going to ask the question, be prepared for rudeness in return.

18:06And I hate saying that to any audience, but it is the reality. We can't control other people's behavior.

18:14Jonquilyn Hill:Okay, there's clearly a wrong way to use speakerphones and FaceTime. What's the right way to use them? Because we do a lot of talking on our speakerphones, even in our own homes, and you might be moving from one room to another, passing through the living room where people are watching TV, or you're in the kitchen and all of a sudden a roommate has come into the kitchen while you're on a call that's on speakerphone. You really want to let the person on the other end of the phone know that there's other people present now. My cousin is so good about this. He always, like, tells his daughter when she gets into the car, hey, Aunt Lizzie is on the phone.

18:52Like, say hi to her or something. And then we both know. I know to watch my language. There's now a child present. You know, she knows to not, like, ask her dad too many questions or knows to say hi to her auntie, you know. And that's just so much nicer than all of a sudden having a voice pop up and realizing, oh, my gosh, I was just telling a really personal story and I didn't realize there was a bigger audience for it.

19:16Jonquilyn Hill:What about having your phone on the table, say if you're at dinner or off the table? Because that also gets real people very passionately about that one. I am so bad about this one. I often have mine face down on the table. And the funny thing is, is I'm not even looking or expecting, like, I don't have kids. Like, I don't have a partner. I'm not looking for someone to call, like, with an interruption. but it's not good etiquette. It is really best to have that phone put away to make sure that it's on silent and it's not going to interrupt your time together. But to have it there, especially face up, where any message that comes in is now going to catch the attention of everyone at the table, that's an unnecessary distraction for sure.

20:03There's a lot more control than we give ourselves credit for. And the more that you can remind yourself of that and start using the tools available to you, even if that tool is putting the phone away like in your pocket, it is important to exercise those and remember that we have them because otherwise we do get to the point where we use our phones so regularly that we will use them rudely without meaning to.

20:31Jonquilyn Hill:Is there an obligation when you need to text someone back? Like, Like, does it have to be within a certain time? I know people with inboxes of text messages and they pile up. Like, you go about your day and the next thing you know, you look at your phone and you have 80 unread texts. And it's like, oh, no, what do I do? My friends will all be mad at me. Right. I wish. I wish there was. But I do feel like it really depends on the text itself. The one I don't think you should wait on is when friends or potential romantic partners offer a time to get together. That's one that I feel like you should really respond to invitations as soon as possible.

21:13Don't let that sit. If there's a reason why you're letting it sit, talk to someone about that. Say, oh, I've got to check with my partner about that. I know we had talked about doing something else Saturday at that time. You know, give them some kind of an understanding because it's a really beautiful thing to be invited to go spend time with someone. And I think we want to treasure that a little more than we do in today's age.

21:41Jonquilyn Hill:You know where we spend a lot of time with other people? Work. That's coming up.

22:21Jonquilyn Hill:Thank you. when the meeting ends. There's no cumbersome setup either. Granola works through your device's audio, which means it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you already use. It's just your normal meeting with superpowers. So now you actually get to listen instead of trying to catch every important word. You still walk away knowing exactly what was decided, who's doing what, and what comes next. If your meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free. Just head to granola.ai slash explainit. That's granola.ai slash explainit to get your time back.

23:00Jonquilyn Hill:Try it for free at granola.ai slash explainit.