Read the article again and answer the following questions

1) What reason do office workers give for their bad manners?

2) Why is it impolite to answer a mobile phone during a meeting?

3) Are people today more polite than they were 20 years ago?

4) What are some organisations doing to improve workers' manners?

5) What are the benefits of avoiding bad manners at work?

OFFICE WORKERS “ADMIT BEING RUDE”

Most office workers say they are rude or bad-mannered at work. Two out of three workers regularly arrive late for meetings, most ignore e-mails and three out of four use bad language. In a survey of 1000 workers, two-thirds say that pressure of work is the reason for their bad manners.

Other common examples of bad office etiquette include ignoring colleagues and answering mobile phone calls during meetings. Using mobile phones in the meetings is impolite and distracts others. Research by the University of Surrey shows if you respond to a call when speaking to somebody, it means that the phone call is more important than the person, the survey said, if you answer a call during a meeting it could mean that toy think the meeting is not important.

Mr. Jacobs, managing director of Office Angels, a recruitment firm, says it is easy for people to forget their manners in the working environment, which is often very informal and very busy. Workers can forget etiquette such as introducing people at meetings, and this is often bad for working relationships.

Psychologist Dr. Colin Gill believes that people are not as polite as they were twenty years ago. He said: “Courtesy is not longer something that is so much respected in our society”. People think it is “stuffy to be polite or formal”.

Now some organisations are actually investing money in training their junior managers to be polite. Office Angels is encouraging people to arrive on time for meetings, turn off mobile phones and avoid bad language. “Avoiding bad manners at work is such a simple thing to do”, Mr. Jacobs says, ” and it can have a dramatic impact on improving your working environment and your relationships with others”.

(“Intelligent Business”)

11. Do you have experience of the bad mariners described in the article? How do you feel when other people show bad manners?

12. Do you agree that 'courtesy is no longer respected' and 'it's stuffy to be polite'? Why? Why not?