It’s not that the entire generation of Silicon Valley millionaires is manner-free. It’s not that everybody who ever designed an E-mail software program, expanded his company quickly, went public, and then sold that company to Microsoft doesn’t know the difference between a dessert fork and a salad fork. It’s not that every woman who ever made her first million designing Java applications doesn’t know how to hold a cup of coffee when dining out with Japanese clients. To say that would be like saying that every hypertext program is the same, or that all Web browsers are created equal. Still, it is fair to say that most young computer-industry titans know a lot more about HTML protocol than formal dining protocol.
That’s where Sue Fox comes in. Sue Fox runs the Workshoppe, an etiquette company she founded four years ago in Los Gatos, California, with the help of her friend Lyndy Janes. Fox is tall, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and to an East Coaster, anyway, seems very Californian and sunny. The point is that she’s no Emily Post. She’s more of a Microsoftened Martha Stewart who works tirelessly to bring manners to Silicon Valley. “I think it all started in the seventies,” she recalled. “There was Apple, with Steve Jobs wearing jeans and all. And then everybody did it.” Now an entire generation of software-savvy people in their 20s and 30s has grown up thinking that formal means you use metal utensils instead of plastic with your Mexican food. “We had one man who licked his knife,” Fox said politely.
Before Fox got into the etiquette business, while working for Apple Computer, she made what she regards as her greatest single faux pas. It was at a large dinner table, which, it should be noted, was not formally set, and she accidentally used the bread plate intended for the gentleman seated next to her. She doesn’t wake up at night in a cold sweat thinking about this incident or anything, but she remembers: “It stayed with me.” After she left Apple, she started an etiquette course for children, but she noticed that the adults were asking a lot of questions. The philosophy Fox teaches now is a combination of Catholic school training and a passion for Buddhism, particularly the etiquette-related Buddhist concept of mindfulness. “Manners are about pacing your life, about respecting others, and self- respect. It’s about little kindnesses.”
In fact, Fox believes that manners are on their way back, in both Silicon Valley and possibly the country. Partly this is because computer companies are more competitive now and need that extra polish to attract clients, and partly because kids with money are getting more mature and want to stay in for dinner parties instead of going out for pizza. “I don’t know what it is,” she says. “You’ve seen the movie Titanic. You’ve seen The Age of Innocence. I think the sixties, with the hippies, and then the eighties, with the me-me-me—well, I think now there is this renaissance.”
She is optimistic, that is, except when it comes to the cell phone; the cell phone is, to her, a step back toward the Dark Ages. “We’ve gotten out of control with them,” she says. “You shouldn’t even bring it into a restaurant. We don’t realize how rude they are. Unless it’s an emergency. Or unless you have a baby-sitter.” She adds, “I don’t know if we can ever go back.”
