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Business Etiquette
I enjoy giving gifts, especially when I pick just the right item and the recipient is thrilled with the present. Because of this, I’m not a fan of white elephant gift exchanges. It seems wasteful to give people gag gifts or gifts no one wants. It can also be offensive if a risqué gift is…
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It’s snopocalypse in Seattle! It started snowing yesterday and didn’t stop until late last night. True, we only got 2 to 4 inches, but it was enough to cause mayhem in the evening and now morning commute. Those of you who live in colder weather areas probably think we’re crazy that a little snow is…
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This is a guest post by blogger Abby Reph. If you were going on a trip overseas, you might research the cultural etiquette of your destination — give a gift in Japan, don’t use your left hand when eating in India, kiss twice in France. You might not realize that traveling domestically will entail cultural differences in etiquette…
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There was an article in BusinessWeek about how the demand for etiquette training is up because millennials are entering the workforce clueless about how to interact properly with others. The article stated among other things, that they don’t use email properly — using acronyms, abbreviations and emoticons. That they don’t know their place as the new…
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I was recently a judge for a DECA mock competition. DECA prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in marketing, finance, hospitality and management in high schools and colleges around the globe. The competition is one where the participants are given 10 minutes to read a business problem and come up with a solution following 5 key…
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As you may know, I write a business etiquette column for the Puget Sound Business Journal. Each week when the Journal arrives I eagerly open it up to the “Growing your Business” section to see if my latest column has run. Seeing my name in print is still exciting.
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This is a guest post by Lisa Samuelson, founder of Samuelson Communications. Recently Steve Jobs was incredibly rude to a journalism student who was working on an assignment about iPads as a teaching tool. When the PR department at Apple didn’t respond to her many calls and emails, she found Steve Jobs’ email and reached…
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This is a guest post by Matt Heinz, founder and principal of Heinz Marketing, LLC. You’ve seen what not to do. You’ve likely experienced it more than once. The guy who talks only about himself. The contact who’s constantly scanning the room for someone else. The sales rep who paid good money to be there,…
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I was talking to a colleague yesterday about an encounter she had with a young salesperson. My colleague, let’s call her Carol, and I were co-presenters at a networking event and met the salesperson there. After the event, the salesperson, I’ll call her Sue, called Carol.
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Recently, a 16 year old employee was fired from her job for writing on her Facebook wall “I’m bored at work today.” Agree with the firing or not, the reality is everything we do online is visible to the world. This young lady had to learn this the hard way. Networking online is just like…
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