Jenny RogersĪs the District decriminalizes pot and inches toward legalizing it, awkward exchanges over sharing pot at a party in this security clearance–conscious city have never been more likely. It’s a short leap from politeness to heroism. Next: actually helping your neighbors when they’re in need. First stop: not agitating your neighbors by email. When our city is facing challenges like skyrocketing housing costs and record numbers of homeless families, why should manners matter? Call it the broken windows theory of etiquette: If everyone is meeting a few basic standards of decency-not waving dollar bills at the bartender, maintaining manners as the client of a sex worker-then maybe larger ones will follow.
Is it really OK for me to drink that water in my Uber? Is it acceptable to ask someone “What do you do?” five minutes after introductions? These are the questions we seek to answer in this issue. Though plenty of social conventions have lapsed in our pluralistic society, changes in technology and norms have created a new set of etiquette conundrums, some unique to D.C.
Not the failure to reserve black ink only for sympathy notes or some similarly archaic custom you might pick up at Miss Porter’s, but knowing how to act decently in public, which never goes out of fashion. I see sin everywhere, usually in the form of inappropriate phone usage, jerk-like behavior in a bar, incendiary email-list activity, and poor form on public transportation. It’s been said that the only real sin today is hypocrisy.