Business
We don't know how to behave in the office anymore, bosses say. The solution? Charm school
You walk into the office kitchen to heat up your lunch and are greeted by a mess. Your co-worker Bridget has left the communal area in disarray — again.
You’re frustrated. Where do you go from here?
Do you shame Bridget and make her feel bad? That might make you feel righteous in the moment, but is that actually helpful? Are you helping to improve your workplace — and most important, ensuring a clean kitchen the next time — by unloading on her? What’s the end goal here?
This is a hypothetical scenario, one used frequently by business etiquette trainer Kate Zabriskie as she helps office workers and managers think through best practices for harmonious and productive workplaces. But workers throughout the U.S. are dealing with their own Bridgets every day — or are one.
As companies increasingly recall workers to the office, employees and managers alike are finding that the pandemic made us all a little rusty with in-person conduct. Co-workers are too loud at their desks. People are on their phones during meetings. Shaking hands is no longer a given. Small talk at networking events is … awkward.
Bosses’ solution to this stilted behavior? Charm school.
Business etiquette instructor Theresa Thomas works with student Tran Phat Chau to teach the proper way to hold utensils while cutting food during a dining etiquette class for students from Irvine Valley College.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
More than 6 in 10 companies will send their employees to office etiquette classes by 2024, according to a July survey of 1,548 business leaders by ResumeBuilder.com.
“It’s a shifting environment,” said Zabriskie, president and owner of Maryland-based Business Training Works Inc., a workplace etiquette and soft skills firm that has recently gotten more requests from companies for basic civility training. “We’re all coming back together. We want to … make sure we have a shared agreement about what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable in the workplace.”
Before the pandemic, the Swann School of Protocol would go out to workplaces about once or twice a month to help train staff on business etiquette. Now, it gets four to six requests a month, said Elaine Swann, founder of the Carlsbad-based training institute.
“The soft skills that are necessary to have a harmonious workplace were not being used” when everyone was home working in their pajamas, she said. “Utilizing those skills is almost like a muscle. If you’re not using that muscle, it can become weak.”
Business etiquette training can include a wide variety of topics — professionalism in the office and on Zoom, giving feedback, proper dress code, remembering names and how to conduct oneself during a business lunch.
On a recent weekday, a group of Irvine Valley College students dressed in their professional best gathered at an Italian restaurant to learn how to navigate a multi-course business meal with savvy and finesse. In hushed tones and with minimal clinking, the students handled the multiple utensils, broke off small pieces of bread to butter and resisted the impolite urge to blow on their hot soup.
The fine dining class was the last lesson in their course on business etiquette. The students are in the Guaranteed Accounting Program, or GAP4+1, a partnership between Irvine Valley College and Cal State Fullerton that sets up participants to get associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting in five years.
Student Simran Bhogle learns the proper way to eat soup during a dining etiquette class for accounting students from Irvine Valley College and Cal State Fullerton at Il Fornaio restaurant in Irvine.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
So much of accounting involves face-to-face contact with clients, or at a minimum, extensive interviews with employers to get a job. It’s why Irvine Valley College has placed so much emphasis on this business etiquette course, which a school representative said turns students into highly recruited “diamonds.”
Kevin Nguyen, 32, an Irvine Valley College sophomore, said previous lessons on professionalism taught him the importance of introductions and proper business attire — key components he plans to use in future interviews.
“When you come from high school, there’s no formalities. It’s very informal,” said Nguyen, who previously worked as a high-class server, caterer and driver before deciding to go to school for accounting. “I think this course makes me stand apart. There’s not really any classes that teach you how to be business professional.”
In a recent survey on office decorum, nearly 75% of respondents said they’d take advantage of business etiquette courses if they were offered by their employer, including 93% of Gen Z survey respondents.
Common complaints from hybrid and in-office employees included loud talking, office gossip and not being prepared for meetings, according to human resource consulting firm Robert Half. (The meeting etiquette faux pas also included arriving late and dominating the conversation.)
To be clear, bad behavior didn’t start with the pandemic. There have always been messy kitchens or loquacious colleagues. And to some extent, workers may have gotten used to solitary setups at home and are now less tolerant of typical office distractions such as crunchy chips or co-worker chatter.
There are also more serious workplace issues that etiquette training won’t fix.
Some ResumeBuilder etiquette survey respondents mentioned other topics of interest, including “what conversation isn’t acceptable,” that “discussion of political standpoints and/or religion is discouraged” and that every person should be treated “equally and fairly.”
Such diversity, equity and inclusion training or anti-harassment courses are outside the purview of most business etiquette classes and are typically handled through a company’s internal HR department, specialized cultural sensitivity experts or law firms. But related topics can sometimes come up.
Nisha Trivedi, founder of NishaTri business etiquette training, said she got a question during a training session last spring about how to respond to a microaggression. She encouraged the person to pose a neutral question, such as “What did you mean by that?” to give the other person the benefit of the doubt, while also not letting the comment go.
“That would give the person a chance to respond either with their sincere meaning, or to acknowledge an issue with what they previously said,” Trivedi said.
Annoying or off-putting office behavior can be costly to employers already struggling with retention or recruitment in the still-tight labor market.
“If somebody isn’t fitting into a culture — and that can be because of some of these workplace habits — they often become unhappy,” said Alexandra Von Tiergarten, district president of Robert Half, who is based in Los Angeles. “And an unhappy worker doesn’t want to stay.”
Business etiquette firms say requests are coming from all sectors — engineering, insurance, luxury car dealerships, healthcare, finance and even architecture.
Corrugated box manufacturer New-Indy Packaging decided to enroll sales employees in a business etiquette class after managers saw a representative give a lackluster presentation during a business trip. The Cerritos firm’s sales representatives went through six three-hour training sessions to polish up their skills in professional presentation, proper attire, attending lunch meetings and client interactions.
“There isn’t one session that didn’t open the eyes of our employees,” said Brad McCroskey, executive vice president of sales.
Interpersonal conduct is also a major topic of training.
Uncertain about handshakes because someone once left you hanging at a business event? Next time, confidently extend your hand and make eye contact. If the other person declines because they’re not comfortable, bring your palm to your heart and say, “It’s good to meet you,” which shows respect and avoids dangling hands, said Becky Rupiper, a longtime senior training and image consultant with Des Moines-based firm Tero International.
Trouble with networking skills? Small talk is a popular topic of training, as is how to get out of a conversation you no longer want to be a part of. (“There’s a whole template to that,” Rupiper said with a laugh, but did not divulge.)
Deciding what is “professional” for each workplace is another major issue.
Office kitchens often are the source of drama. This one, at the Oakland corporate offices of secondhand clothing reseller ThredUp, looks tidy.
(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)
Returning to the office means a return to kitchen drama, as with the hypothetical Bridget — burned popcorn wafting its pungent odor throughout the office, constantly full dishwashers, or paper towels piling up on the floor because there’s no trash can nearby.
How does each workplace want to define what is and isn’t OK? How does that work when that extends to dress code or even open-door policies?
It’s discussions like these that Zabriskie helps facilitate for her clients. She and her team will meet with employees and managers at a company, break down what professionalism means in that particular workplace and identify behaviors that support that idea.
The price of these classes can range from $4,100 for an in-person, half-day program with a handful of people that doesn’t require Zabriskie or her team to travel far from their home bases (she also does business in California), to $7,850 for a full-day class with 36 people. The average price of a class is $6,500.
The classes don’t teach anything so mind-blowing that couldn’t be read in a book, she said, but they do help flatten the learning curve so what may have taken six months to figure out on your own is addressed instantly.
Students learn the proper way to hold utensils during a dining etiquette class. The accounting students from Irvine Valley College and Cal State Fullerton hope the fine dining skills will help when entertaining clients.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Another big topic — best communication practices among different generations.
“We all have value,” said Lisa Richey, founder of the American Academy of Etiquette, who is based in Raleigh, N.C. “That’s kind of an underlying theme with dealing with multiple generations.”
To help workers of different generations understand one another better, Richey has her clients play a game in which people fill out a worksheet with their favorite candy bars, favorite movies of their time or popular styles or hairdos. It usually elicits a lot of laughter.
“If there’s somebody from a Baby Boomer generation, then they like it when you stand up and shake their hand and show respect. That’s meaningful to them,” Richey said. “Whereas another generation wants a text and wants it quick and that’s it. So we talk about the benefits of knowing all the different generations and how they like to be communicated to.”
Part of the push for training is to help people get comfortable with going back into the office, and for everyone to realize that this takes some sensitivity, said business etiquette instructor Theresa Thomas, who taught New-Indy Packaging employees and the Irvine Valley College students and has more than 20 years of experience in the field.
“People have made major changes in their life,” she said. “Many of us have gone through difficult things. It’s important to have an increased ability to have empathy and be more caring.”
Fernando Flores can spend eight hours a day pouring the same cup of coffee.
He is not a barista. He’s a robot puppeteer, trying to train humanoids.
He manipulates mechanical arms remotely, using hand and arm sensors to make them pick up a pot of coffee, pour it into a mug and put the pot back in the coffee maker. Flores checks for spills, then empties the mug back into the pot by hand and does it again — hundreds of times.
“The repetitiveness, it can cause some discomfort,” said Flores, who has the title of senior robotic pilot at San Francisco startup Encord. “It becomes second nature after a while.”
This Sisyphus of Silicon Valley is on the front lines of a rapidly expanding industry of robot trainers, preparing to teach and operate the army of humanoid robots scheduled to march out of nearby factories in the coming year. Encord practices, records and sells data about movement to the companies racing to bring humanoids to homes, offices and factories.
If tech companies’ optimistic plans are to be believed, a swarm of American-built robots is about to hit the market.
Tesla’s Fremont factory stopped car production this year to make way for production lines for its Optimus robots, with unbelievable plans to ramp up capacity to 1 million units a year. Palo Alto-based 1X Technologies is already manufacturing its 66-pound, 5-foot-6 humanoid named Neo at its factory in Hayward. The company received 10,000 preorders, and its first shipment is expected later this year. Figure AI’s humanoid factory in San Jose has increased its manufacturing capacity to produce one Figure 03 robot an hour, with the goal of producing 12,000 a year.
Fernando Flores demonstrates the articulation of a robot performing a whisking motion at Encord on May 21.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
Goldman Sachs projects the global market for humanoids could reach $38 billion by 2035.
The AI of these humanoid robots needs an immense amount of data on human movement. How humans write, speak, code and compose was easily scraped off the internet, but the bots need more information to master how to stand, step, lift, squeeze, pour and perform other physical movements. That is where companies like Encord come in.
The $10 billion invested in robotics in 2026, according to CB Insights, has spawned an industry focused on training robots. Initially, that meant humans strapping iPhones to their foreheads, recording actions like cooking, cleaning and performing household chores. That, however, doesn’t capture the exact torque, force and grip required for a robot hand to work flawlessly.
Now, humans are directly guiding robots through expensive rigs that let them control the robots’ movements. Data collected using robot arms offer richer insights into motor skills and object manipulation. Encord charges clients up to $1,000 per hour for training data.
The information gathered from trainers controlling robots is “super important to bridge the next level of learning,” where robots will learn to correct mistakes and do the chores on their own, said Vineeth Velmurugan, head of robotics learning at Encord.
The company is already working with some of the top companies in robotics, but said it couldn’t share most names. Among the clients it could mention were Toyota Research Institute and Weave, which already has laundry-folding robots in a few homes.
Brian Gonzalez pulls an ethernet cable using a robotic arm at startup Encord on May 20.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
Many of the new robotic data companies are focusing on industrial use cases. Robots can perform better in a structured, predictable environment, like a factory or warehouse.
Home tasks are tougher, as layouts and tasks are more varied and messy. While many bots have mastered walking, they still struggle to open doors, fridges and washing machines smoothly. They don’t know where or how to grasp a doorknob, handle or door edge or how much pulling, pushing or twisting force to apply.
Flores has mastered making the robot arms pour coffee, but he still often spills. When that happens, he deletes records of the attempt.
“Typically, we don’t want any mistakes,” he said. “If we have more than three consecutive mistakes within a 15‑second window, that’s not going to be good data.”
Inside Encord’s test facility in Hayward, it has replicated a standard American home with a fully furnished living room, kitchen and bathroom.
In the living room, a pilot rearranges an untidy study desk. She first scatters AA-size batteries, pens and scissors on the table, and walks back to the nearby control rig to make the robot arms place each one inside the tray of a desk organizer.
Depending on the day’s training, the pilots could be opening and closing refrigerator doors, whisking liquids in a bowl, sorting silverware or turning a water faucet on and off over and over until the robot arms get it right.
Cortney Weintz, left, and Tony Schiller record data with cameras at Encord.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
In another corner of the facility, people wearing smart glasses place and pick up playing cards and sort plastic plates by hand, collecting first-person videos.
One key skill for the coming bot invasion: plugging in cables.
Companies want robots that can crawl into duct spaces, identify ports and plug cables to help build the massive data centers needed for AI. Encord replicated a real data center server rack, where an operator inserts blue cables into penny-sized sockets all day.
Many companies have entered this business. Meta-backed Scale AI and Palo Alto-based Micro1 are major players in the space. China has more than 40 state-owned robot data-collection facilities where hundreds of on-site humans mimic train bots how to move in the real world.
In Watertown, Mass., Tutor Intelligence has set up a 100-robot facility dedicated to harvesting movement data. Its robot arms, which are being trained to do factory work, are controlled by a human team split across Mexico, the Philippines and Boston. This is in part to train its robot, Sonny, which will hit the market later this year.
Elaine Batchlor sorts screws and bolts with a robot in a mockup at Encord.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
“We built the Data Factory to bootstrap the initial intelligence for the Sonny robot, so that we can begin to deploy Sonny into the field,” said Josh Gruenstein, co-founder of Tutor. Ten of its remote operators are based in Boston, and the rest are international.
Remote operation is emerging as an integral part of the humanoid robot business. Employing teleoperators in countries where wages are much lower than in the U.S. could, in theory, mean a robot controlled by a human in another country could do a task at a fraction of the cost of having an American do it.
This month, a humanoid robot cleaning service in San Francisco called Gatsby completed a robot cleaning of a U.S. home using a teleoperator in Mexico.
The technology is still evolving, said Aron Frishberg, co-founder of Gatsby, but being a first mover means Gatsby is getting more training.
“There’s obviously stuff that goes wrong,” he said. “It’s really hard to get precise hand movements or arm movements and grab something.”
Encord co-founder Ulrik Hansen said it will be setting up a teleoperations center in its Hayward facility in the next three months. Even as more robots are deployed and master increasingly sophisticated tasks, they will still need humans to occasionally take control remotely.
“They will need some exception handling when they get things wrong,” he said.
Hundreds of teleoperators will learn where the system succeeds, where it breaks and step in when needed. Once those patterns emerge, Hansen said, they can move teleoperations to cheaper locations abroad or to the Midwest.
Back in Hayward, Flores created new coffee-pouring challenges for his robot arms. He changed what was on the counter around the coffee maker and moved the mug to different spots. It takes a lot of know-how to puppet and train a robot, he said.
“A lot of people would (guess) this might be easy, this is dumb,” Flores said. “There actually is thought here. There actually is critical thinking.”
A Carl’s Jr. franchisee is trying to close and sell his 59 locations in California after filing for bankruptcy protection in April.
The franchisee, Harshad Dharod, who has branches mostly in Southern California, intends to close 10 of the branches he controls and find a buyer for the remainder, according to a broker helping find buyers.
In earlier bankruptcy filings, Dharod had blamed California and Carl’s Jr. for his stores’ struggles. Dharod said a lack of support and innovation from Carl’s Jr. and an increase in labor costs from a $20 minimum wage left him unable to cover his expenses.
Dharod couldn’t be reached for comment.
A spokesperson for Carl’s Jr. and its parent company CKE Restaurants, said they are aware of Dharod’s decision to sell.
“This situation is specific to this individual franchisee’s financial and business circumstances,” said the spokesperson. “This has no impact on the operations of any other Carl’s Jr. locations.”
National Franchise Sales will oversee the sale, which spans Southern and Northern California.
A spokesperson for the broker said it already has interest from prospective buyers. The spokesperson said that when a franchise changes owners, employees and managers usually keep their jobs.
Carl’s Jr. began in 1941 as a hot dog cart on the corner of Florence and Central in Los Angeles and grew into one of the region’s best-known burger chains. It opened its first sit-down restaurants with expanded menus in Anaheim in 1946. Its smiling yellow star was born in the 1950s and rapidly spread across California throughout the 1970s.
Although it moved its headquarters from Carpinteria to Tennessee in the last 10 years, its menu still reflects its California origins, with items such as the Cali XL, a double cheeseburger. The chain was among the first to spot the meat-free trend and introduced plant-based burgers and the charbroiled turkey burger. In the early 2000s, it made a splash with commercials pointing to its California origins.
It has had a tough time this year remaining relevant amid new competitors and fast-food consumers who are becoming more picky about what they will pay for and eat, analysts say.
Like most restaurants, Carl’s Jr. has been struggling to attract customers at a time when many are increasingly concerned about inflation and the health of the economy. Some chains are slashing prices. Smaller chains can’t compete well in the price wars. Those without a strong brand identity and fan base have been suffering.
Dharod told the bankruptcy court that business had become particularly bad in the last two years, leaving him without sufficient access to cash to cover wages, rent, supplies and insurance. Although his outlets have generated more than $6 million in monthly revenue, they have been losing more than $600,000 per month this year.
He had to ask for special permission to use his daily cash flow to fund expenses, or risk running out of money and being forced to close his outlets.
A small group of the close to 1,000 employees working for the franchisee say the efforts to cut costs to the bone have left them overworked, understaffed and exposed to violence.
Some say they are getting injured as they have to do the work of multiple people. Some detailed violent interactions with customers, including robberies and physical assaults, and said the company didn’t provide safety training. Some have staged multiple walkouts in recent months to bring attention to their concerns.
A Delaware Court of Chancery judge delivered a blow to wrestling impresario Vince McMahon and other World Wrestling Entertainment officials earlier this week.
Judge J. Travis Laster, vice chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, issued sanctions for “spoliation of evidence” in the shareholder lawsuit over the 2023 merger between Ultimate Fighting Championship and WWE.
Laster ruled on Tuesday that WWE executives destroyed evidence by using the auto-delete setting on the messaging app Signal, enabling potentially relevant communications to be deleted.
The ruling means the court will operate under the assumption that five potentially damaging statements are true while allowing the defendants to rebut them.
The statements, according to the ruling, include that McMahon’s decision on the merger was “influenced” by Endeavor Executive Chairman Ari Emanuel’s “promise” to provide him with a continued role at the company and to indemnify him and provide legal support as federal investigators were looking into claims of alleged sexual misconduct.
McMahon pursued a deal with Endeavor in 2022 before WWE initiated its strategic review process, and both McMahon and then-WWE President Nick Khan worked with The Raine Group, a strategic financial advisor, “to steer the process to Endeavor and away from other potential bidders,” the ruling states.
In September 2023, entertainment giant Endeavor, the parent company of UFC, acquired WWE and merged the two sports entities to form a new, publicly traded company, TKO Group Holdings, in a deal worth $21.4 billion.
A month later, a group of shareholders filed suit against McMahon and other company officials in Delaware Chancery Court, claiming McMahon orchestrated a “sham sale process.”
Representatives for McMahon, WWE and TKO were not immediately available for comment.
According to the suit, McMahon, WWE’s controlling shareholder, turned down higher offers and excluded other bidders who would have ousted him and instead chose a deal that favored Endeavor’s Emanuel, a “close friend and longtime ally,” enabling McMahon to continue running WWE and shielding him from federal investigations related to a raft of sexual misconduct claims.
The complaint also alleges that the $21.4-billion deal undervalued the company and was “far below the offers” WWE’s board could have received from other interested parties had they “made any effort to negotiate in good faith.”
The litigation is related to the 2022 investigation by WWE’s board that found that McMahon made at least $14.6 million in payments between 2006 and 2022 for “alleged misconduct.” McMahon has denied claims of misconduct.
The settlements were made to women, including WWE employees, who alleged that McMahon initiated unwanted sexual contact and coerced women into performing sexual acts on him. In one case, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, a woman claimed that McMahon sent her unsolicited nude photos of himself.
McMahon’s alleged misconduct became the subject of ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice.
“I am confident that the government’s investigation will be resolved without any findings of wrongdoing,” McMahon said in a statement to The Times in 2023.
Last January, the SEC announced it had settled charges against McMahon alleging he had violated federal securities laws by failing to disclose a pair of settlement agreements to WWE worth $10.5 million.
McMahon agreed to pay more than $1.7 million in a civil penalty and in reimbursement to WWE, without admitting or denying the agency’s findings. Federal prosecutors also have dropped their criminal investigation.
In January 2024, McMahon resigned as executive chairman of the board of TKO Group, one day after a former WWE employee, Janel Grant, sued the company, McMahon and former head of talent relations John Laurinaitis, alleging sexual assault, trafficking and emotional abuse.
Grant claimed that McMahon agreed to pay her $3 million in exchange for her silence.
The shareholder trial is set to begin on June 8. McMahon, Emanuel, Khan, TKO President Mark Shapiro, and WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque are expected to testify.
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