It started with suits and ties. Once upon a time, grocers wore brown dust coats, wrapped the cheese for you, and rubbed their hands together obsequiously like Uriah Heep. I remember standing in the queue for twenty minutes at Robson’s, at the end of our road, while my mum chatted to neighbours, and my friend Mickey and I tried to break a few biscuits in the large open tins … broken biscuits were cheaper. She was addressed as madam when she bought them. Then a boy put them in a cardboard box, got on a bike and carried them the 300 yards to our house.
A school friend was a trainee Marks & Spencer manager in the late 60s. Blue suit, crisp white shirt and tie. Very few survived the first year’s cull, though apparently having survived even a few months was a major point on your c.v. He told me initiation for a young male trainee was two weeks on the bra and pants counter … they still had counters. The survivors were important people. Embarrassment had after all been vanquished while discussing cup sizes and gussets. They strode the floors with pride. M&S were the forerunners. We shoppers became rebellious mutterers when two check-outs only were open and four managers were having an important meeting ten feet away as queues stretched to the back of the shop.
It spread. Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsburys. Only this morning in Waitrose, two suited men virtually walked straight through me on their managerial business. Shelf-fillers pushed past me. Another shelf-filler stood slowly contemplating the £20 Valentine’s Day special while three of us vainly tried to get near it. Grocers, or rather managers and shelf-fillers no longer have deference skills. The managers all have degrees instead, I’m sure.
I wrote a book on communication skills for English Language learners, Handshake. I never covered deference skills because in most of our markets, everybody already had them. After years of teaching multi-national ELT classes in the UK, then years of touring schools abroad, I certainly lacked deference skills. I had become so used to students always letting me through every door first that I automatically went first in any 50/50 situation. I saw the extremes of deference too. A colleague in Japan insisted I go with him as a major Tokyo department store first opened in the morning. We entered and walked between two long lines of sales assistants, all bowing to the waist and greeting us … this was thirty years ago, I’ll add.
I don’t mean that kind of bow-to-the-waist / forelock-tugging kind of deference. We’re talking about natural unfeigned courtesy.
My generation learned deference skills at school the hard way. Do not run in the corridor. Walk on the left side. Raise your cap to teachers in the street. Always let the teacher go first. Even in my state grammar school, punishment was swift. I once trotted round a corner and ran into Mr Percy Cushion, Latin master, known to all as Persecution. My progress was indeed cushioned by his ample belly, and his mighty blow to my ear left it ringing for days. Yes, it was illegal even in 1961. Only the headmaster could deliver corporal punishment, and never to the head, but that was a rule ignored by older teachers.
Deference is simple. You defer to the elderly, or even to all who are older than you. That’s why Japanese and Chinese people will ask you how old you are. They need to know who will defer. You defer to the infirm, the pregnant, the women (or men) with small children, to those carrying large parcels. In French subway trains you rightly defer to those mutilated in war. In the USA, pre-boarding on planes includes the infirm, those with small children and adds members of the armed forces travelling in uniform.
Historically, men deferred to women. This became questionable decades ago. I was once at a meeting at my publisher. My male editor was there, along with the visiting female editor from New York City. We set off for lunch through the long corridors with many fire doors. After the third door was opened for her, the female said, ‘Gawd! You Brits are so f***ing sexist! I can open a door for myself!” My editor explained that he had also opened every door for me, and the reason was that he worked in the building, and we were both visiting guests. Therefore politeness dictated that he open doors for us, regardless of gender. He added that he would expect a female editor to open doors for me as a visitor. That’s highly-skilled deference.
You also defer to customers, and that is what has disappeared from supermarkets. When I was sixteen I spent the summer holiday working in a motor parts warehouse. The customers were mechanics in the days when the extent and quantity of oil on your overalls was a badge of pride. We were told even there never to walk in front of a customer or across a customer’s path.
That has long gone. My solution? Bring back compulsory brown dustcoats for supermarket managers and add the obsequious smiles.
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