Thanksgiving Etiquette

Thanksgiving Etiquette: Mind Your Manners

The holiday season has arrived, which means calendars will soon be filled with company dinners and client gatherings. Promotional Consultant Today is preparing you to make the best impression during this festive season with these etiquette reminders so you'll appear polished and professional. Managing your napkin: Your napkin comes off the table when everyone is seated. The dinner napkin is folded in half and placed in your lap with the crease facing your waist. It is used only for blotting your mouth. It is not meant to be a multi-purpose item and never serves as a handkerchief. Starting to eat: Wait until the host has raised his fork before you pick up yours. If he stops with fork in mid-air to answer a question or complete a sentence, you can proceed to eat. It is a matter of who raises their utensil first, not who begins chewing first. Using the correct utensil: Forks are on the left and knives and spoons are on the right. Take the utensil that is the farthest from your plate and work your way from the outside in. Using the right glass and side plate. It's often confusing when there are multiple settings placed closed together on a table. If you're not sure which is your plate or your glass, just remember BMW, or bread-meal-water. The bread plate is always in the upper left corner and water glass in the upper right corner. Breaking your bread: When eating bread, tear off one small piece at a time. The bread and butter knife is used to butter the bread, not to cut it. Placement of used utensils: Once you have used a piece of cutlery, it never goes back on the table. Rest it on your plate. Knives are always placed at the top of the plate with the blade facing in and forks are put in the lower right-hand corner of the plate when you are resting between bites. When you have finished your meal, place the knife and fork together with their handles in the lower right hand corner of the plate. Removing unwanted objects from your mouth: If you have something in your mouth that you cannot swallow, remember this. The item comes out the same way it went in. If it went in with a fork, it comes out with a fork. If it went in a spoon, it comes out with a spoon. If it went in with your fingers, it comes out with your fingers. That's the rule. If this sounds challenging, try it in the privacy of your home. You'll find that it is not as difficult as you might think. Don't forget to pass to the left, and look for PCT right back in your inbox tomorrow morning. Source: Lydia Ramsey is an international business etiquette expert, professional speaker, executive coach and the author of numerous books including Manners That Sell--Adding The Polish That Builds Profits. She has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and many other off-line and online publications. She shares her business etiquette tips in her monthly e-zine, her blog, and on Twitter.

Texting Gloves

At this time of year I have a lot of my clients looking to me for ideas for holiday gifts for their clients and employees.  I think the new texting gloves are very useful in this age of touch screen devices that require a person to use their finger to click, drag and expand photos.  These new gloves have a conducting fiber located in the fingertips that makes them fully compatible with touch screen devices.  Plus, they have black dot grippers on each palm so you can hold on to them firmly. Contact me if you need pricing.

Mail that gets opened!

I think it is great to send a small gift to current or potential clients in the mail.  A bulky package gets opened sooner and more often than flat mail.  I call it the "Cracker Jack" effect, people want to see what's inside.  You can send a 3" x 3" 25 sheet sticky note pad in an evelope with a normal 8.5" x 11" letterhead and not have to pay additional postage! 

Summer Sunglasses

Summer is around the corner and a great item to donate to participants in a golf outing, employees in a company picnic, or use a sales incentive would be sunglasses.  This pair is $2.09 each plus a $40 setup charge for a quantity of 100. Be the Blues Brothers at your event!

Dye Sublimation Printing

Dye sublimation is quickly becoming the favorite way to achieve all-over prints on t-shirts - even if you only want a few. Sublimation printing on t-shirts has a unique look that is different from screen print and tends to produce a lighter feeling result on the tee.
Advantages of dye-sublimation over other methods of textile printing:

• Images are permanent and do not peel or fade.
• Dye does not build up on the fabric.
• Colors can be are extraordinarily brilliant due to the bonding of the dye to the transparent fibers of the synthetic fabric.
• Truly continuous tones can be achieved that are equivalent to photographs, without the use special techniques such as half-tone screen printing.
• The image can be printed all over the entire item, with no difficulty in printing all the way to the edges.

Disadvantages:

• The printer speed is slow.
• Any creases in the apparel during printing leave blank spots behind, although this is an accepted quality issue with all-over screen printing.
• Garments must be 100% white polyester

Depending on the desired result you can have some fun printing on light colored tees or polyester blends for some cool affects.

A great new product is the RFID Blocker Credit Card Sleeve  http://www.americangreenwood.com/UI/ProductDetails.aspx?mcid=36&pcid=36&ccid=143&pid=942

Many credit and debit cards, enhanced drivers licenses, etc have a RFID (radio frequency identification) chip embedded in the card. This chip contains personal and account information necessary to complete transactions. Identity thieves can merely pass you on the street and download your personal data. Our RFID blocker sleeves are made using a patented process and special alloy to protect your data. It is FIPS 201 Approved. All RFID blockers are printed in full color to communicate your high impact message. Perfect for retailers, financial institutions, government and travel agencies, schools, colleges and more!