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Gary Krupa, CPA's Six Rules of Office Etiquette

by
Gary Krupa
on
2/8/2026

Gary Krupa, CPA

A full-service CPA firm for a strategic approach to financial managementDecember 16, 2015

If you follow these rules your office will be a more pleasant place to work!

1. E-mail “copying”.Be selective when copying e-mail to others. Don’t include more than one recipient in your e-mail unless your message is important for all recipients. What you say to the intended recipient may be none of the copied recipients' business. Besides, sending a message to one person at a time maintains a sense of intimacy with the other person. A copy is less authentic than the original, even if everyone receives the same message. Especially don’t degrade or humiliate anyone when sending the e-mail to more than one person. It can only result in hurt feelings.

2. Communicate face-to-face whenever practical.Doing this increases the personal interaction between office members. Expressed another way, would you communicate with family members at home by text messaging or e-mail? It doesn’t mean you should only meet with your colleagues when you want to speak with them, but it should be done more often than by using technology as the medium.

3. Don’t come to work when you’re sick.In the filmThe Devil Wears Prada, Emily Charlton, first assistant toRunwaymagazine’s Editor-in-Chief and fashion legend Miranda Priestly, entered a planning meeting coughing and sneezing. Miranda presided over the meeting. She reacted by calling Emily after the meeting an “incubus of germs”, and eventually taking her second assistant Andy Sachs with her to Paris as her personal assistant instead of Emily, much to Emily’s chagrin. You wouldn’t want something like what happened to Emily to happen to you, would you?

At a small company I visited, an employee was ordered to go home by her supervisor because she came in sick. The supervisor admonished herin front of everyone. The employee, a foreigner, accepted being singled out with grace and quietly left.

Do everyone in your office a favor and take a day off when you’re sick. You can always make up the work or do it at home.

4. Let someone know you’ll be paying them a visit before meeting with them.Would you like it if someone barges into your office unannounced while you’re working on an important project? Show consideration for a co-worker especially if they’re busy by calling, sending e-mail or knocking on their office door before entering their office. Your colleague will appreciate the advance notice.

5. Leave a quiet footprint.Listen to your music with headphones, at a respectable volume. Be sure, however, that this activity either enhances your productivity or has no effect on it. It mustn't diminish it.

6. Treat others the way you would like to be treated.This is a universal rule of etiquette, but it’s especially important for office life that this rule be observed because office workers are usually thrown together in impersonal circumstances, when the pressure to perform can strain relationships. A little kindness goes a long way. Also practice the motto ofThe Three Musketeers, “All for One and One for All”. Everyone in your office and in your organization is in this together!

There’s a tendency by management to view employees as disposable commodities who can be easily replaced. Any manager who has that attitude should change it. They can be replaced just as easily or more easily because they’re most likely being paid a higher salary than other employees.

Don’t hesitate to add other rules of etiquette based on your own experiences. These are based on mine.

My name is Gary Krupa. I’m a CPA living in Sedona, Arizona (updated February 8, 2026). If you like what I wrote I’d appreciate hearing from you about it. My cell phone number is (805) 320-8503. My e-mail address is [email protected]. My fax number is (866) 486-8328 (e-mail and fax numbers updated February 8, 2026). I believe in following my own rules of etiquette and treating everyone with dignity and respect.

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Gary Krupa

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Gary Krupa, CPA
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