By Robert Plunket

The author went to manners camp in Palm Beach to clean up his act. He left shaken by a series of extraordinary events.

I don't care what people say-I have wonderful manners. And why not? I was raised around the swimming pools of some of the finest and most discriminating country clubs in Westchester County. Wykagyl. Winged Foot. Apawamis. (But certainly not the Westchester Country Club. No one belonged there. In those days, it was much "too Irish" and had "advertising people.") As a result of growing up in this privileged atmosphere, I have that annoying self-assurance so prevalent in the WASP that everything we do etiquette-wise is automatically right and that everything everybody else does is not only wrong but hilariously so.

No, the problem is not my manners-it is the execution thereof. Let's face it: I've gotten sloppy. I can't recall the last time I wrote a thank-you note. Or entertained people I "owe." I wear shorts to work (I know I shouldn't, but I live in Florida and you're a fool if you don't dress for the heat). And even though most people in the office love him, perhaps I shouldn't bring my dog to work quite so often. Or take him to meetings with clients. The mayor of South Port* seemed quite taken aback when Peanut showed up with me to tour the latest public works. (I later heard that Her Honor didn't want to be seen riding around in a city van with a dog, for political reasons.) And I do agree completely that I should no longer drink beer at my desk, particularly since our biggest client happened to walk in looking for the receptionist, whom he couldn't find because she was sitting next to me, drinking her own beer.

Then one night I had a dream. It was one of those nightmarish ones that keep getting worse and worse. It seems I was up for a new job, a job I was perfect for. It was a foregone conclusion that I'd get it. Then, at the last moment, they gave it to someone else. Brent Brubaker. He is famous for a being colorless workaholic, a "business nerd," and worst of all, he has no discernible breeding whatsoever. I went over to his house once for a dinner party. He and his wife-you should have seen her!- served things like peas and potato salad.

And they hired him instead of me!

The next morning I was in a foul mood. But by that afternoon, I started thinking. Maybe it was time to clean up my act. Maybe it was time to play the game by the rules. Of course, I'd need a little help, a refresher course, so to speak.

In fact, I'd need something exactly like etiquette camp.

The business protocol seminar for adults held each summer at the Breakers hotel in Palm Beach has become quite an institution. It's an outgrowth of the Breakers youth camps, of which there are currently two, one for money and one for manners. I must say that if I were a child and I found out I was being sent to a camp for manners, I would not be a "happy camper." But there are children for whom it is perfect; indeed, I was about to meet one.

But what about the adults? Who on earth would come to this sort of thing? Would they have noticeably bad manners that they were trying, AA- like, to overcome? Would they be nouveau riche lotto winners who were planning to storm society? Would they be foreigners? Germans? Arabs? One thing was certain-they would not be poor. Etiquette camp cost $1,400 for the six-day course, and that did not include food and lodging.

I sent in my money, thinking, Well, at the least it's a week at the Breakers (which turned out to be not actually true, as the Breakers was full that week with a convention and I had to stay a mile or so away, at the Colony). At any rate, on the appointed day I got in the car and drove over to Palm Beach.

The first event on the suspiciously skimpy agenda I had been faxed was a Sunday-evening welcome reception in one of the Breakers' vast Italianate lounges. All the participants were there, but I got only a hazy perception of them. The children campers had also been invited, and I kept wondering exactly when the little darlings were going to be segregated and how high the fence would be.

The adult participants I warmed up to the most were Frank and Sue, a 60- ish couple from Chicago. Frank, I pleasantly discovered, is the president of a big, important company. He does business all over the world with government leaders and was here because he wanted to polish up his Midwestern style. His wife, Sue, a former nurse who is very active in the Lutheran Church, is also very Midwestern, with that innate kindness many Midwestern women have. If you scraped your knee, she would be the one you'd run to. We chatted over a drink or two, and I thought, So far so good.

The next morning I dressed with the utmost care. They seemed like a conservative group, and I always believe that having the right outfit is 90 percent of it anyway. I finally decided on my good khakis-the Brooks Brothers ones, not the Dockers-plus a polo shirt, also from Brooks Brothers. I think the color is called oatmeal.

Unfortunately, I spent so much time choosing my clothes that I was soon running behind schedule. By the time I dashed into the Breakers' lobby and collared a bellboy, it was five minutes after nine. He directed me to etiquette camp, all right, but the wrong one-everywhere there were little tots running about. This I found so unnerving that it provoked some uncharacteristically aggressive behavior on my part, and I demanded that the employees drop what they were doing and take me to adult etiquette camp, and I mean now. Amazingly, in a matter of seconds, the director of security for the entire hotel showed up and took control of the situation. He said he would escort me personally.

He couldn't find it either. For the next 15 minutes we ran from one set of public rooms to another-the Breakers has three sets, located in far- flung parts of the hotel. When we finally did reach our goal, the security director gave me his card, with the air of someone who clearly felt I might need him again.

So it was a bit of a jolt to learn that our etiquette instructor was also a part of rock-and-roll history.

By now a little sweaty and disheveled, I took a deep breath and opened the door. In doing so I bumped into the back of a distinguished-looking woman who was addressing the room from a podium. I thought she was going to be mad, but instead she turned around, smiled brightly, grabbed my hand, and introduced herself. She was Dorothea Johnson, our instructor. Out of the corner of my eye, I took in the room. Everybody was seated around a big conference table, and every man was wearing a jacket and tie.

As I slunk to my seat, my WASP self-assurance was still very much intact. Jackets and ties in Florida in July at a camp? What turnip truck did these people fall off of?

After I took a moment to wipe the sweat off my forehead and compose myself, we all went around the table and introduced ourselves. The first to go was Frank, whom I've already described. Next came Jim from California, who said he'd read about the class in Worth magazine (!). He worked either for AT&T or for some company that did business with AT&T. He seemed terribly busy. Apparently, his company required its executives to call in for their messages every two hours. At each break, he would dash for the pay phones. (Why he didn't have a cell phone puzzles me to this day.) He explained that he was taking the course because he had to go to Belgium all the time and wanted to be able to function better in an atmosphere that seemed to revolve around wa±e eating.

Ashley from Boca Raton came next. She was an attractive youngish woman who had a background in international marketing-she'd worked in Japan- and several enormous diamond rings. I was sitting directly across from her, so I got a good look. They were, I figured, gifts from her husband, Phillip, who sat further down the table.

Next to her was Sue, then Zubin. Zubin was still in his teens but already a famous etiquette prodigy. This was his third year. He'd begun in the kids program and liked it so much that he had come back every year. Now he was in the adult program, serving as an intern to Ms. Johnson. Clearly he had found his life's calling. He was half Israeli and half Indian and spoke with what sounded to me like a slight Middle Eastern accent.

Nicole from Montreal was next. She was a good-looking brunette not yet 30 years old who worked for her father in the import-export business. Next to her was Anne Marie, a doctor's wife from Seattle, who was planning to teach the course herself, either as one of Dorothea's staff or under some franchise arrangement-I never could figure out which. And rounding out the group was Phillip.

Although I came to like him greatly by the end of the week, I do admit that I found something a little standoffish about Phillip at first. He was a portly young man in his 40s who dressed in the height of Young Republican chic. If Rush Limbaugh would wear it, Phillip would wear it- an impeccably tailored blazer, an olive-green double-breasted suit-in an even more expensive version.

Ms. Johnson explained to us the benefits that would accrue if we paid more attention to etiquette, and then we cracked open our workbooks. First subject: introductions. It seems there is a certain way to introduce people. "Mr. So and So, I would like to introduce you to Miss Such and Such." That's it. Period. No variations allowed.

We got up, moved to the lobby in front of the elevator (where there was more room), broke into groups, and began to practice introductions. What with keeping the proper wording in mind, plus keeping the names straight, plus deciding who was the most important person and thus was mentioned first, I found the whole thing an extremely difficult task.

"Why can't I just say, 'Mary, this is Sue'?" I asked Ms. Johnson in frustration. "That's what I always do."

She shook her head with a sad little smile. "No, no, no," she said. "It's an indicator of class."

"Huh?"

She drew closer.

"It's lower-class."

Fortunately, I don't think anyone overheard this exchange, as she said it in almost a whisper. But as we headed back to the room to discuss name badges and eye contact, I admit it. I was the tiniest bit shaken.

A few words about our instructor, Dorothea Johnson. She was an elegant, soft-spoken woman, a patrician of the old school, with ash-blond hair becomingly coiffed and the best posture I've ever seen. I wouldn't dare guess her age, but she did have a grown granddaughter.

Her life story, as I was able to piece together from anecdotes she told, might well interest Danielle Steel as subject matter for a novel. Dorothea was a Southern belle by birth and upbringing, and she still had a lovely drawl, particularly the way she pronounced "handshakin'." She had married into the military and apparently took to it immediately. She loved learning all the rules about who sits where at a formal dinner and soon became quite an expert. After years of honing her skills, she opened her own business, called the Protocol School of Washington.

So it was a bit of a jolt to learn, as I did during a break on the second day, that she was also a part of rock-and-roll history. It seems that her daughter is Bebe Buell, one of the great groupies of all time. Bebe had an affair with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith (just in case you don't know-I certainly didn't-Steve is definitely in the megastar category) but then lived with Todd Rundgren. She and Todd raised a child, named Liv, after Bebe's friend Liv Ullmann. But then it turned out that Liv was actually Steve's child, a fact the child didn't learn until she was about ten. But then it turned out that the child went on to become Liv Tyler, supermodel and movie star. Though Dorothea beams when she talks about her granddaughter, one can't help but wonder what it must have been like for a woman like her to undergo such an experience. Today, everyone seems to be the best of friends, and she often attends Steve's concerts, particularly if he sends a Learjet for her.

I was fascinated with Dorothea's clothes. Every day she wore a different outfit-a suit, actually-each one very elegant and perfectly cut. Then it dawned on me: It was the same outfit. She must have had dozens of them, each with a slight variation. She had literally designed herself a uniform. And on her chest, where a general wears his medals, was her trademark-a black lace handkerchief peaking out of the breast pocket. You can't imagine how disappointed I was when she showed up at the farewell dinner in a floral dress, quite nice but totally unlike the uniform. I had been hoping for the full-dress version, perhaps with sequins or bugle beads.

Dorothea taught us in the mornings from 9 to 12. Then, after a lunch break, we had something called Presentation Skills, which was actually good old-fashioned public speaking. Amazingly, everybody in the group was a natural public speaker. I'm good, but these people had no trouble whatsoever keeping up with me. And some left me in the dust. When Zubin had to deliver a two-minute impromptu speech on a subject he drew out of a hat-he got "the Lutheran Church"-I saw what had made him such a legend around etiquette camp. "Everywhere you look there is sin!" he thundered and then proceeded to deliver a sermon worthy of the young Jimmy Swaggart.

Our instructor for Presentation Skills was Steve Earnest, a handsome young actor/college instructor with a new baby. He was always having car trouble, or about to have car trouble, or worried about having car trouble. He was the nicest guy in the world and visibly relieved that none of us was going to be a problem. (Sometimes people cried.) We were already bonding as a group, he told us. Usually it took Miss Betty and her ballroom dancing to do it.

"Ballroom dancing?" we all said.

"Yes," he said, surprised. "Aren't you all getting ballroom dancing?"

Nobody had mentioned anything about ballroom dancing. It didn't appear on any of the agendas. We all sat there for a moment, a thought starting to form in the backs of our minds.

Were we somehow being cheated?

The next morning began with no indication of the drama to come. Oh, there were a few minor hints, perhaps. Jim seemed to be spending more and more time at the pay phones. And Anne Marie was said to be up in her room, fighting the flu. But the rest of us were there, even more impeccably dressed than the day before. We were so impeccably dressed that after Ashley spilled coffee on her suit she ran off to change. Sue confided that she didn't feel she had brought the right clothes. I still wasn't wearing a jacket, but I had gotten up early to iron my pants with spray starch.

Actually, I had awakened at dawn to iron my pants and to work on introductions. We were being tested today. I had been practicing all last night, feeling like Valentina Cortese's character in Day for Night: 72 takes and I still hadn't gotten it right.

Anyway, things were going along fine for about an hour and half into Dorothea's lecture. (She spoke from a podium, and we followed along in the workbook.) We had progressed to strange and unusual introductions you might have to perform someday. We discussed a situation in which someone walks into a room while a business meeting is in progress. Dorothea informed us that the person who walks in should go around and shake hands with everyone in the room, introducing himself.

Phillip's hand shot up. "I disagree," he said. "The person who's running the meeting should introduce him."

"No," said Dorothea. "That's incorrect."

Phillip pursued his point. "If I'm running a meeting, I'm certainly not going to relinquish control of it."

Dorothea shook her head. "No. The person should introduce himself."

They continued with this for quite a while. I agreed 100 percent with Phillip. Who's going to let some clown who shows up late hog the spotlight and stop your wonderful meeting in its tracks? It's just not going to happen. But they kept arguing the point, each one unable to let it go.

I must say I didn't see it coming. When Phillip announced "Well, if that's the way you feel, I'll see you at the end of the week" and grabbed for his briefcase, I thought he was joking. I even laughed politely. But it was no joke. He snapped his briefcase shut, turned, and stomped from the room. As an exit it was somewhat marred by the fact that he had to return ten seconds later to retrieve his portable phone, but still, it was one of the most awkward moments I have ever witnessed.

We all sat there a little stunned, uncertain what to do next. But if Dorothea was upset, she did not show it. She didn't miss a beat. The lecture continued apace, as if nothing had happened. Her mind must have been reeling, but her surface composure was total.

In fact, she was so resolute, so authoritative, that we all adopted her attitude. No one went after him (not even his wife), no one suggested we talk about it, no one so much as looked at his neighbor. Lunch came, then Presentation Skills. In the halls that afternoon, we talked about golf, travel, food, the shocking performance of the Breakers staff- everything but the extraordinary event we had witnessed that morning.

Tuesday turned to Wednesday, and things began to sag. An air of uncertainty hung over the camp. Jim didn't show up at all; Sue charitably surmised that something urgent had come up at the office. But whatever happened, one thing was clear. The group had lost two of its alpha males.

And there were so many problems with the hotel that Frank formally complained to the management. Everybody had a horror story: rude room service, reservation screwups. One manager was a particular villain. She seemed to be hiding from us. Frank, the fairest man in the world, said she would be "out in the street by noon" if she were working for him.

To complicate matters further, the convention had shown up, a large Italian-American association from New York. Their "Hey, Lou"-style of greeting and their casual way of dress seemed uncomfortably at odds with our highly polished decorum.

Late in the afternoon, I spotted Phillip in the lobby. He was dressed in a blazer and carrying a little shopping bag, the kind that might hold a trinket from Cartier. I asked Ashley about him, and she told me he had spent the day getting a massage and working on a plan with NASA to put a man on Mars by 2010.

Still, I was surprised to get back to my room after dinner and find a box of cookies from the manager of the Breakers, along with a letter saying how sorry and embarrassed he was about all the problems with this year's etiquette camp. "We have tarnished an event that we have hosted with great pride over the years." It was the sort of letter that usually includes a rebate or gift certificate, but as much as I searched the cookie tin, I could not find one.

I went to bed wondering: Could the situation be saved? Or had too much gone wrong? Would Dorothea somehow manage to pull this off? Or would Phillip get his sweet revenge?

And what about ballroom dancing?

Dine like a diplomat was the course everyone was looking forward to the most. After three days of following along with Dorothea as she went through the workbook, it promised to be an exciting change of pace. Best of all, there was real food involved. It climaxed with a formal lunch, or "Tutorial Luncheon," in one of the hotel's private dining rooms. We would actually eat continental-style and use finger bowls.

I sat there remembering another famous toast--Nixon and Mao in China

To many-most, I would say-this was the reason to be here. They were all capable businessmen and -women. And their everyday manners were no problem. In fact, they were all pleasant, amiable, and courteous. But their work included much foreign travel, and this brought them into contact with foreigners. ("Don't call them foreigners," warned Dorothea. "They're internationals.") And these internationals had some strange habits indeed.

They shook hands funny, they crossed their legs funny, and they practiced bizarre and disconcerting eye contact. Most perplexing of all were their table manners. They ate asparagus with their fingers and cut their meat continental-style. Well, we were going to learn how to do this, too. (The meat, not the asparagus; there are some foreign habits that are so clearly beyond the pale that they best not be emulated.)

It turns out that eating continental-style is a major issue in etiquette. Do you cut your meat, then put your knife down, then transfer your fork from hand to hand, then spear your meat, as most Americans do? Or do you put the bite you just cut off directly into your mouth, as do Europeans and the rest of the world? Continental-style is considered vastly more sophisticated and also has the virtue of being more efficient. Luckily, I already do it, having learned to eat from a Spanish nanny.

But before we even began Dine Like a Diplomat, an enormous surprise awaited us. Phillip was back. This was the one turn of events I never expected. I had imagined him leaving the hotel, starting his own etiquette camp, divorcing Ashley...but not this. He was back among us, perfectly charming and gracious, as if nothing had ever happened.

Dorothea was radiant. Clearly, Phillip had come to his senses. He had capitulated. She was particularly animated in her teaching that morning, and Phillip kept pitching in, offering all sorts of little anecdotes that bolstered what she was saying. By the time of our Tutorial Luncheon, a lovefest was in full swing.

It climaxed during the toasts. Dorothea was showing us how to make a toast, and she chose Phillip as her toastee. They tried to outdo each other in their praise for each other, but they were both such pros it was a draw. I sat there remembering another famous toast-Nixon and Mao in China. As the glasses clinked, it dawned on me: It wasn't over yet. A struggle was under way, a struggle for the very soul of etiquette camp.

The graduation dinner and dance was held in a semi-circular dining room, one of the Breakers' grandest, and the setting-for once, at least-reeked of old Palm Beach grandeur. The children had rejoined us-I could hear their shrieks before I even entered-but I must say their manners had noticeably improved. Or maybe it was just their attitude. They seemed to be savoring the experience and eager for the festivities to begin.

The demeanor of the adults was a little different. They stood off to the side, and everybody had a funny look on his face. It looked like guilt.

Almost at once, Phillip came bearing down on me. He pulled something out of his vest pocket. "I want you to read this," he said, maneuvering me over to the bar.

It was a letter addressed to the general manager of the hotel, and in it Phillip detailed the week's problems. His critique was notable for its width and breadth, ranging from the hotel service to the camp activities to Dorothea. He also complained about the lack of ballroom dancing.

I must say that as angry letters go it was a masterpiece. I could see now what he'd been up to for the past three days. Putting a man on Mars was merely a cover story; he'd been honing his prose. It shone like a legal brief or a speech by Winston Churchill: lucid, well researched, beautifully argued.

The first section dealt with the snafus-the way we were shuffled from meeting room to meeting room (at one point we convened in a room used to train staff, right off a kitchen), the noise from construction, the gardener with the loud radio, the air-conditioning that malfunctioned, the feeling that a much more imaginative program could have been put together.

Next came a section headlined seminar, in which he stated that "the teaching method was pedagogical in style and taught us like children and not as adults." Then he alluded to the problem that had started the whole thing: "There was not enough validation for our personal opinions and experiences." Phillip's major comment about Dorothea was carefully phrased. "We feel that the instructor, Ms. Dorothea Johnson, has far more to offer and we could have learned a lot more from her expertise and we hope that Ms. Johnson will not take these comments as an attack on her character but rather as constructive criticism to be used for improving the program."

Perhaps Phillip's most brilliant stroke, strategy-wise, was to phrase his argument in the collective person. It was all "we," "our," "us." It was signed "The Participants in the 1997 Business Protocol and Etiquette Camp."

I looked at the list of signatures. Everybody had signed but me. Frankly, I didn't want to sign. I was getting out without any major emotional disasters-unlike some others in the group-and had, in fact, felt rather empowered by the whole experience. After a shaky start, I realized WASP manners are still the standard by which the world operates. I didn't need new manners. I just needed a new wardrobe.

But I signed. It was peer pressure, pure and simple. I double-checked to make sure Sue had signed; she had somehow become the moral center of etiquette camp. There was her signature, right beneath her husband's.

Dinner went quite pleasantly, strangely enough. The pressure was off. Plus there was a lot of wine. Anne Marie wore her diamond ring. It was bigger than either of Ashley's. But then Ashley had two, so it sort of evened out. I was sitting next to Dorothea; at one point, the famed ballroom-dancing teacher Miss Betty walked by, a tiny blond figure in a full skirt. Dorothea informed me that Marjorie Merriwether Post used to give Miss Betty her old shoes. I'm ashamed to say that a spasm of hatred passed through me. Where was Miss Betty when we needed her? It was on her delicate shoulders that I placed a large share of the blame for this debacle.

Yet I was going to miss these people. That afternoon, as our final project in Presentation Skills, we had to give a three-minute speech on the topic "What Is the Most Important Thing in the World to Me?" The results had been quite touching. Frank described the day he had accepted Jesus Christ at a Billy Graham crusade. Ashley spoke about her personal growth as a woman in business. Phillip delivered a speech about the crucial elements in a business plan. Sue discussed the practice of sending newborns home from the hospital too soon. Anne Marie and Nicole skipped the class and went to lunch at the Four Seasons. And I spoke about my dog, a speech so moving that Ashley actually began to cry. (I found out later her Lab had just died.)

Yes, I would miss them. Still, I couldn't wait to get out of there. I kept looking at my watch, calculating how soon I could make my exit. As we finished dessert, the graduation exercises began. Starting with the children, each camper went up, received his certificate, then had his picture taken with Dorothea. As I waited for my turn, I kept thinking about Phillip's letter-one sentence in particular: "Although we appreciate your gesture of water and cookies, we do not feel that it is enough to compensate for these difficulties." On this subject I had two thoughts. Number one: What water? I didn't get any water. I just got cookies. You mean everybody else got some sort of fancy water? And number two: Now it sounded as if we really were going to get a rebate. I managed to have several whispered conversations on this subject with the other campers. The leading contender was a full refund, followed closely by gift certificates for free stays at the Breakers.

Finally, my turn came, and I went up to receive my diploma and get my picture taken. Poor Dorothea. She still had no idea about the letter. What a debriefing she and the Breakers were going to have, and thank God I wasn't going to be around.

I left immediately afterward, the first one to go. To tell the truth, I was a little fed up with etiquette, and I couldn't wait to get home and be rude to people. I checked the mail every day for my refund, but it never came. I did receive the picture of Dorothea and me, though. It came out very nicely, but for some reason I can hardly bear to look at it.

Robert Plunket is a contributing editor at Worth. His most recent story, "Going Mobile," appeared in the February issue.