What Do I Do With This Thing, Anyway?

Bum Phillips, the coach of the Houston Oilers in the late '70s and early '80s (Luv ya Blue!) famously wore his silverbelly cowboy hat everywhere except while coaching the Oilers in the Astrodome. Why didn't he wear his hat in the Astrodome? Why, because his momma taught him that a gentleman didn't wear his hat indoors, of course!

With all due respect to Mrs. Phillips, that's not quite right. There are two reasons why a gentleman must take off his hat: if he's indoors in a private space or if respect obligates him to do so. It's perfectly appropriate for him to wear his hat indoors if he is in a public space. Thus, he can keep it on while in the lobby or corridors of an office building or walking around a mall. It comes off once he enters a private space, like his office or a house or a table at a restaurant. It also comes off when he wishes to pay respect to someone or something, meaning that going hatless at funerals or during the playing of the national anthem or when talking to a lady.

Of course, there are always exceptions. Rules of etiquette need not be followed when doing so would result in a manifest absurdity or violations of other rules of etiquette or decorum. Consider, for example, the rule that a gentleman takes off his hat when talking to a lady. What if it's raining or a gale is blowing? Etiquette does not require that he freeze to death, and so he may put his hat back on after taking it off to pay his respect. How about a diner lunch counter? If he takes off his hat, he has to put it somewhere; and given the layout of a lunch counter, that somewhere would be a place where someone else could have sat. What's more discourteous? Keeping the hat on, or taking up a space with a hat that another customer might want to use to sit and eat? And so he keeps his hat on. Normally, he would take his hat off in an elevator if a lady is present, but what if the elevator is crowded? Taking his hat off and holding it makes the elevator more crowded, and so he need not and should not do so. The point is that etiquette is supposed to be a set of rules based on common sense and common decency. It is not an excuse to inconvenience those that one comes in contact with.

Yes, Virginia, Japan's a Bit Different From Here

Lexus is a fantastically successful luxury car brand in the United States, but Toyota (which owns Lexus) is having a difficult time establishing it in Japan. It was only introduced there in 2005, and, according to a front-page article in today's Wall Street Journal ("The Samurai Sell: Lexus Dealers Bow to Move Swank Cars", p. A1 -- yes, I know that half of the moderately interesting things that I write about come from articles in the Journal; my existence is circumscribed), it's struggling to get traction. BMW and Mercedes-Benz have a stranglehold on the Japanese luxury car market, and most Japanese associate Lexus with the middle-brow cars from Toyota that dominate the market in less-expensive cars. So Toyota has tried a number of tactics to dissociate Lexus from the larger Toyota brand and to compete with BMW and Mercedes. Some of them sound like things that a company might do in the United States. For example, because of the price of real estate in urban Japan, most car dealers have minuscule showrooms and do most of their sales via home visits, but Lexus has opened a number of spacious and luxuriously-appointed showrooms. But other tactics are, well, very Japanese. Lexus sends its employees to a three-day etiquette training course at Fuji Lexus College, where they learn elaborate, traditional Japanese etiquette. This etiquette, at least as interpreted by Lexus, calls for them to

[point] with all five fingers to the [car door handle], right hand followed by left. Then, [they] gracefully [open] the boor with both hands, in the same way Japanese samurais in the 14th century would have opened a sliding screen door.

Sound a little odd? Well, consider how Lexus salesman serve potential clients coffee or tea:

When serving coffee or tea, employees must kneel on the floor with both feet together and both knees on the ground. The coffee cup must never make a noise when placed on the table.

Can you imagine the awkwardness if someone did this for an American client? The point is not to hold the Japanese up to ridicule. After all, I'm sure that we have more than a few etiquette norms that would mystify and amuse the Japanese. The point is that despite the similarities in our economic systems and material accouterments, we're still very different from one another.

An Etiquette Question That May Interest Only Me

Around here, men typically wait for women to board an elevator before they get on, regardless of who was waiting for it first. The reasoning behind this, I suppose, is "ladies first." Is this correct etiquette? Miss Manners has pointed out that the ladies-first policy is not always the most polite one. For example, when accompanying a woman through a circular door, a man goes first so he can push. Likewise, when a man and a woman are descending a flight of stairs too narrow for them to walk abreast, the man should go first so that the woman will fall on him if she accidentally falls. In the same vein, the ranking officer present would always board a boat last and get off first because an open boat was dangerous, wet, and uncomfortable; and it was a privilege of rank to endure that for as short a time as possible. So is an elevator the modern-day equivalent of an open boat in the Age of Sail? Well, probably not. But I have to think that men preceding women into one may be more polite than allowing women to go first. Of course, I doubt that I'm going to buck convention any time soon.