If you spend a large amount on someone, they’ll feel obligated to respond in kind, and chances are that’s not an option this holiday season. So giving could actually be interpreted as rude during a recession because it brings home and personalizes the pain of everyone’s shrinking bank accounts.
Most are well aware of this by now, and they’re not giving gifts this year or are sticking to a Secret Santa/Gift Exchange system. That’s great, but there are a few people who should receive gifts, no matter what:
• Kids
• Those who make the bulk of their living from tips, like hairstylists, manicurists, newspaper delivery people, maids, nannies, babysitters. According to survey data, hairdressers make about 42% of their income in tips on average. Barbers make $1 less per hour, on average, than a hairstylist does in base pay, and tips account for about 21% of their income. Manicurists earn an average 67% of their income from tips. Both massage therapists, who make an average base of $33 an hour, and estheticians, who make a base $15 an hour, receive between 19% and 22% of their income through tips.
• Newlyweds (ahem, kidding!)
Am I forgetting anyone?
Now that the wedding and honeymoon are over, I can leap back into the work world and its companion—procrastination from work, i.e. Facebook. I had coffee with a friend the other day and she mentioned, as friends and family members will, that she had a great book idea for me: a guide to Facebook etiquette. While Facebook might be too fleeting (who knows if it’ll be around in 2010 when the book comes out?) to anchor a volume, it’s certainly worthy of a blog post or two, or seven. Of course, there are some great resources for Facebookian conundrums already— this excellent article in Slate covers the all-important friending issues, for example. But my coffee-date (who is my friend on Facebook and in real life), had an issue with a separate sticky scenario: the ethics of tagging photos.
Consider this:
Q: You’re posting photos from your holiday party, and there’s a less-than-flattering shot of your friend, Patty. Post it? And if you do post it, tag her?
A: I absolutely think photos should only be tagged if the people being tagged a) look their best or at least not their worst; and b) are not doing anything illegal or anything they wouldn’t want one of their Facebook friends to see. Nowadays, moms and great-aunts are signing on, so Patty doing a kegstand might be a somewhat controversial sight when it pops up on her profile page. Of course, people have the option of de-tagging themselves, but by the time they get to it, the damage may have been done. If it’s not a great picture of the person, should you post it at all? If it memorializes a particularly wonderful moment or if it’s the only group-photo of a group that rarely gets together ….. if there’s something overarchingly redeeming about the picture, post it. If it’s one of three similar shots, don’t even think about posting it.
Bottom line: Post and tag with tact and with caution. If there’s any question, wait half a day and see how you feel when you come back to it. And as always, with any etiquette question, ask yourself: If the tables were turned, what would you want them to do?
My husband and I appeared in the New York Times’ Vows column a few weeks after our November 8th wedding. The reporter, Lois Smith Brady, wrote a lot about my books—and about my long-distance relationship with my now husband. She didn’t mention that I surprised him with a groom’s cake in the shape of an Amtrak commuter car, to memorialize our many trips back and forth from Philly to Washington, D.C.
The Vows column is one of the first articles I read when the New York Times is delivered on Sunday. I first noticed when I was in the middle of writing The Long-Distance Relationship Guide how many of the couples featured in this column were long-distance for some portion of their courtship. It was one of the things that convinced me there was a market for the book—and convinced me LDRs have happy endings more often than people think. All of this made our inclusion in the column quite a thrill. We were in the Kauai, Hawaii airport the day it was published, on the first leg of our long trip home to Philadelphia. The end of our honeymoon! I sucked up the $9 price tag and bought a copy—I had to, right?
[illustration by Beto Alvarez, staff artist at the Philadelphia Inquirer]
This illustration of my husband and I is on the front page—above the fold!—of the Image section in the Philadelphia Inquirer today. It’s so funny to see cartoon versions of ourselves. Up top is a close-up of us, sitting on a park bench to indicate that we have finally achieved geographic nirvana, and below it is the illustration in context.
The reporter interviewed me because I wrote a guide to LDRs and because I’m a former LDP (long-distance partner). The topic: how the rising price of fuel is affecting long-distance love.
Here’s a link to the Inquirer piece, and one to a similar piece that was in the Washington Post two weekends ago. They did a good job of hitting the transportation puns—”An Airfare to Remember” and “The Toll on Long-Distance Love.”
My plan is to use this news page/blog as a repository for info on long-distance relationships and for manners updates. People are always inventing new bad manners, and I plan to blather on about it because a) it makes me feel better and b) well, it makes me feel better. Stay tuned and PLEASE feel free to contact me with relevant questions. I want to know what you think about modern manners and LDRs, too.
I also write magazine articles on etiquette and LDRs. Here are a few:
Here’s a clip from an interview I did with Liz Cho on ABC World News Now soon after the publication of my book, How to Behave. (It may take a moment to load.)
Listen to me discuss long-distance relationships on National Public Radio’s Radio Times. (Scroll down and type “Caroline Tiger” in the search box.)
Finally, my radio appearance on the Brian Lehrer show.
