Manners matter. Imagine that, Mom was right. Listen more, talk less, be polite, consider others, work hard, team play, show up on time, shine your shoes and don't slouch. Think before you speak.

But many recent graduates cannot communicate or play well with others. They lack critical "soft skills" such as basic office etiquette, communication, leadership and team skills. In a business setting, where customers, sales and the company's reputation are on the line, employers are increasingly unhappy with the graduates available for hire.

Our graduates have technical skills, more computer aptitude than ever before. But without the soft skills to honor others and themselves, they have little chance of successful long-term careers. After all, even the best of us loves to watch "rude guy" get kicked to the curb. Business leaders are eager to comply.

Nationally, the picture is bleak. In a 2006 survey of 400 employers, three quarters of respondents said that high school grads lack interpersonal skills. The problem is so bad and enduring that bookshelves are being stocked with titles like Peggy Klaus' "The Hard Truth About Soft Skills: Workplace Lessons Smart People Wish They'd Learned Sooner."

Klaus coaches soft skills for clients such as JP Morgan Chase, Chevron, and the National Football League. In a recent New York Times article about soft skills in the workplace, she noted, "recruiters come back and say ... second-year M.B.A.s are brilliant at quantitative skills, but they don't know things like how to get along, work in a team or be good communicators."

The news is not much better closer to home. A 2006 survey of members of the Institute for Emerging Issues' Business Committee on Higher Education revealed similar problems. Over half of the respondents, representing 19 industries and over 65,000 employees across the state (and many more than that outside of North Carolina), said that the current labor pool lacked the necessary level of soft skills.

As a new crop of graduates readies to cross the stage, we must ask ourselves as educators, friends and family whether we hold our young folks to the line. Have we prepared them with the simple manners, the soft skills, they need to succeed? If not, why not?

Where do businesses expect students to get those skills? If not at home, then they must get them in our schools. As educators, friends and family, we must require more. If we care about the success of our children, we must strive to model manners, respect, timely arrival and active listening skills ourselves. Once we've set the example, we must actively require them in our homes and classrooms. Sometimes this requires some tough love.

I teach developmental English at Fayette-ville Technical Community College. Sometimes a bright and dedicated student thinks it's OK to arrive late if they are stuck in traffic or due to a myriad of personal problems. Day after day, they drag the drama in the door and disrupt the class.

But I've warned them -- in person and in writing. They know that one minute late is a tardy and three tardies equal an absence. More than 20 minutes late -- absent. Miss four classes -- failed. I warn them and then let them make their choices.

I've had other students who talk to others as I lead the class, interrupt incessantly for personal questions, and degrade others with constant criticism and discouragement. Each time, it's clear that the other students want the self-absorbed, time-eating interlopers stopped. Even though I stop them, talk to them, and work with them, it can take a semester for them to see how their behavior turns the class team against them. In a work setting, this behavior certainly frustrates the boss and dims any prospects for success.

Failure IS an option -- even for the bright and beautiful. But more than one of them has come back to me later, apologized and sheepishly admitted they were wrong. Tough love can work and most of these students did shape up and move on. For them, failure ultimately ensured success.

We must be willing to fail a student if they refuse to develop their soft skills. Daily we must require our young to speak with respect. We must accept only their best -- and teach them how to reach it. If we don't, if we accept less, we ensure their failure in the "real world."

(Annette Dammer is a GlaxoSmithKline faculty fellow at the Institute for Emerging Issues at N.C. State University. She is also a developmental English and reading instructor at Fayetteville Technical Community College.)

Today's comfort is yesterday's luxury

In a "Talk Back" letter ("Spoiled by inflation? Pay stubs from the '70s tell the tale," Work&Money, May 4), Robert Harris laments that it is much harder to maintain a comfortable, but not luxurious, standard of living. He says it was easy for his parents to do so on one salary, but today it is difficult for two working parents to do so. He blames this on a high rate of inflation, but I have other thoughts.

Here is a list of things that a household today would have if they were living comfortably, but not luxuriously: Computer with Internet connection, cell phones, microwave oven, DVD player, video game system, two or three TVs (maybe even HDTVs) with cable or satellite connections, and a few iPods. None of these things would have been in a comfortable household 30 or 40 years ago. We also have safer and more fuel-efficient cars, a wider variety of products in the grocery store, and the tendency to fly to vacation destinations rather than drive. The standard of living is much higher now than it was then. Anyone who chooses could go back to those days without these items, but who would? Although increased productivity helps pay for these items, it makes sense that to have them all, you would have to pay a little more.

A note on the claim of greater than 50 percent inflation rate in that letter, too: That $4.50 meal would cost more than $259 just 10 years later if the annual inflation rate were 50 percent. Robert's own assertion that this meal costs just over $40 now disproves his inflation rate claim.

Tom Karnatz

Raleigh

Headline is off base: 900 nuclear jobs are just projection

Why the double-standard with the headline in [the May 1] paper "Nuclear revival bringing 900 jobs" (Business, May 1)?

Upon reading the article, it becomes clear that this is more of a projection than a certainty, especially with the overall uncertainty of the nuclear revival, which the article alluded to.

It was a good article, but the headline created a false impression.

The headline should have read "Nuclear corporation could possibly create 900 jobs."

Mark Marcoplos

Chapel Hill

Nuclear story is just lipstick on a pig

Your Business section headlined a "Nuclear revival" is a total mischaracterization of the current situation. It's not until an inside page, below the fold, that a single paragraph gives even a partial recitation of nuclear's problems.

1) The economics don't add up. Venture capitalists and Wall Street want nothing to do with nukes, the principal reason none have been built in many years. No nuke has ever been built on time or without huge cost overruns. Moreover, at a budgeted $10 billion to $18 billion apiece, the country can't afford the number of plants necessary to start reducing the country's carbon footprint. Japan and France, with sizable nuclear programs, must subsidize their nuclear industry for it to continue.

2) The construction of these plants takes an extraordinarily long time, in one case about 20 years. Before any possible environmental impact could occur, it would take decades just to construct a significant number of plants.

3) The massive costs of debt repayment ("stranded costs") require higher and higher rates consumers must pay. In addition, the costs of decommissioning plants and storage of high-level radioactive waste are never included in the budget for these plants.

4) The safety of current plants remains dubious.

5) We live in a world where terrorists, commandeering a large commercial jet, could smash it into the holding pool of hot radioactive waste, causing many deaths and incalculable losses. Large areas around Chernobyl will remain uninhabitable for many, many years, a nightmare we don't need.

The so-called Clean and Safe Energy Coalition is nothing more than an industry cheerleader for nukes, and "Nuclear Revival" and "Nuclear Renaissance" are nothing more than propaganda slogans, putting some pretty lipstick on a truly ugly pig.

M. David Preston

Hillsborough