It is fitting with father's Day close upon us that I remember again the most important lesson my beloved father, dead now 14 years taught me.
He treated everyone the same, everyone with respect. A tall, good-looking Irishman, he was greatly respected in his profession - he was an arbitrator and loved by many.
I was reminded when I read Janice Turner's piece in the London Times.
The real test of character: how big people treat little people
OVER THE YEARS I have improvised my own psychometric tests for evaluating a person’s character. I determine someone’s profligacy with money by how deeply they are prepared to fish around in a full kitchen bin to retrieve a lost knife. I rate their joie de vivre by whether, if a child’s football crosses their path in the park, they step over it glumly or boot it back with a grin.
But my definitive test is how someone treats the people who serve them, those over whom, if so inclined, they can exercise cruel and arbitrary power. I once listened to a teenager boast, while her mother giggled indulgently, that she had tormented their Austrian au pair until she’d left. That one remark told me all I needed to know about that family. Men who are churlish to waiters, women who berate their cleaners, mothers who brag that they’ve run through 14 nannies in seven years: can’t middle-class professionals learn how to behave with all these newly acquired staff?
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A colleague who had lunch with the Prime Minister told me that even deep in conversation about the euro he always made eye contact with the waiter each time he was served. Of course, it would be crass to judge someone entirely on their private good grace, to rate US presidents not by, say, their foreign policy but the fact that the Clintons were cold and haughty with their security detail while the Bushes are affectionate, informal and kind.