Judith Martin Quotes

After a couple of years in a professional setting, you'll get used to dressing presentably, preparing for meetings, speaking appropriately, showing up on time, writing professional correspondence, etc.

To make a pleasant and friendly impression is not alone good manners, but equally good business.

I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm also not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords.

Office life is very, very strange. It's like no other way of living. You have an intimacy with people who you work with in the office, yet if you meet them on the streets, you both look the other way because you're embarrassed.

We never have business meals at El Bulli. If it's about business, you're probably not paying much attention to the food.

I'm a businesswoman, and Ms. is an appropriate form of address.

Corporate jollies are generally speaking the kiss of death to an audience.

A lot of the companies I work with, they're not returning my calls or emails on weekends. So weekends are weekends for Ultimate.

I think all the business stuff - the promotion, the hype, the high-power lunches, and the permanently injected smiles - is boring.

I don't talk during production meetings, people don't generally say anything.

All businessmen - how do they communicate? God knows. Sign language, probably.

In my line of work, I frequently communicate with CEOs and their executive assistants, and nowhere is the need for gratitude more clear.

I really liked playing [Wilson]. I started to really - I mean, I think the thing about him is he's not really a curmudgeon, he's very gregarious. And he's a people person.

There would be no sunshine in society if the born flatterers, I mean the so-called amiable people, did not bring it in with them.

If you make believe that ten guys in pin-striped suits are back in a kindergarten class playing with building blocks, you'll get a rough picture of what life in a corporation is like.

In the corporate community the key word is respect. In the corporate community you don't get a relationship until they respect you first.

In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst.

One of the biggest mistakes women make in business is that they aren't friendly enough.

She was doing that thing some people do when they act nice and chipper and interested, while just below the surface they’re thinking really mean thoughts, and you can never call them on it because they’d just accuse you of being paranoid.

By all means, fire the customers who aren't worth the time and the trouble. But understand that the moment you insist the customer is wrong, you've just started the firing process.

The fawning courtier and the surly squire often mean the same thing,--each his own interest.

Be nice wont you?" "I am nice, I'm always nice." "But not too nice. I mean don't make a religion out of it, niceness.

Friendly makes sales - and friendly generates repeat business.

So our building of the visible Church becomes much like any natural business function, using natural means and natural motives.

People think, mistakenly, that etiquette means you have to suppress your differences. On the contray, etiquette is what enables you to deal with them; it gives you a set of rules.