(FORTUNE Magazine) – We live in perilous times, but I never realized how perilous until I read Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to Executive Manners (Rawson Associates, $22.95). Like every business author of recent years, Ms. Baldrige describes her book as being ''about . . . excellence.'' What it's really about is the hundreds of ways you can humiliate yourself on the job. Ms. Baldrige's detailed instructions constitute a code of business etiquette and reflect her view that ''good manners are cost effective.'' She says at the start that manners are important, ''whether in the coal mines or in a mahogany-paneled boardroom.'' In fact, there is little here of use to a miner. Is coal passed up the shaft to the left or the right? We'll never know. Yet Ms. Baldrige is pretty encyclopedic, with strictures ranging from the obvious (wash your neck every day) to the puzzling (don't ask to use the phone when visiting someone else's office). There have been etiquette books before, of course, including Ms. Baldrige's own classic 1978 update of Amy Vanderbilt. But this book is the first detailed offering of rules for the business world. We learn about proper behavior in an elevator, about ''door protocol,'' about ''corporate jet etiquette.'' (''When you land, always thank the crew and compliment them on a 'beautiful flight.' '') Whereas Ms. Baldrige's 1978 book listed the appropriate gifts for wedding anniversaries -- silverware for the fifth, diamonds for the tenth, and so on -- she is now specifying the appropriate levels of publicity for a corporate anniversary: a ''special press release'' for the fifth, ''an entire press kit'' for the tenth, and a ''full-scale publicity launch and media treatment'' for the 25th. Rituals for marking births and deaths are well established, but what is the proper way to observe a merger or acquisition? According to Ms. Baldrige, the C.E.O. of the acquiring company should give a present to the C.E.O. of the company being acquired. Now you know. She argues that instructions in manners are especially needed at this moment in business history. The lower executive ranks are being filled with post- Sixties children who, however great their current dedication to capitalism, grew up without much training in establishment formalities. Meanwhile, the business establishment also must mend its ways to accommodate new social realities. So here are instructions for dealing with people who don't eat meat and for leaving a message on an answering machine. (She warns against jokes: they waste time and tape.) The biggest new social reality in the business world is the changed role of women. Among the book's fascinating recommendations for dealing with this reality: if a traveling woman executive must hold a meeting in her hotel room, she should group chairs around the bed and use it as a conference table, in order to make it ''a very nonsexual object.'' I wonder if this works. In general, Ms. Baldrige is scrupulously, even strenuously, nonsexist. She takes a hard line on ''Ms.,'' asserting that ''a woman may call herself what she pleases in her personal life'' but must be ''Ms. Jones'' in business correspondence. The only sexual archaism I detected was the instruction that a host shouldn't light up a cigar ''without offering one to his male guests.'' Why only males? (But then the author makes clear her general distaste for cigars.) Ms. Baldrige's modernism is a touching combination of stuffiness and sang- froid. Private behavior is up to you, she seems to be saying, but public behavior is up to her. A section on ''The Unmarried Executive Mother'' discusses, without a hint of disapproval, the proper management response if a single woman in your office appears to be pregnant. (Be supportive.) Yet the author is sternly disapproving of ''men or women who wear running shoes to parties after work'' and positively vicious about people who switch seating cards at parties (''despicable''). And don't get Ms. Baldrige going on the subject of ankle-length socks! Some of her declarations strike me as a bit arbitrary. I'm not sure I share her horror of ankle socks. On the other hand, I very much approve of her emphasis on inviting journalists when you're having a nice dinner party. In dealing with foreigners, Ms. Baldrige is strictly nonjudgmental. Don't talk about ''your lousy socialism'' in socialist countries, she advises. Other tips: ''Don't embrace, hug, kiss, or pat a Chinese.'' Also, ''Refrain from making the okay sign . . . in Greece,'' where it's an obscene gesture. And (my favorite) ''Never give an Argentinian a set of knives.'' Words to live by. Is it really worth devoting half a page, though, to explaining ''the classic way of folding a piece of paper and inserting it into a horizontal envelope'' ? (The classic way is just what you've been doing all along.) And can any executive who needs, and uses, Ms. Baldrige's detailed instructions on making small talk expect to have much of a career? Her brother Malcolm, the Secretary of Commerce, will be glad to hear that it's apparently considered rude to disagree with anyone who ''makes a strong positive statement about the economy.'' Just say, ''I certainly hope you're right,'' Sister Letitia advises. IN FACT, better to avoid controversial subjects altogether. Ms. Baldrige provides a list of approved small-talk topics. She urges that you practice a few in advance and be ready to draw on them as the occasion demands. Among her suggestions: landscape gardening, Princess Diana, ''women astronauts having babies in space,'' ''helicopter safety,'' ''nutritional treatment of arthritis,'' and different kinds of teas. (Is there extra credit for twofers such as Princess Diana having a baby in space?) Ms. Baldrige prescribes exactly how much of this must be endured before business may be discussed in a variety of social situations. Come to think of it, maybe I don't want to be invited. The essence of etiquette is artifice. Devotees argue with some passion and much justice that there's nothing wrong with this. Artificial rules of behavior and insincere words of flattery make life with other people bearable by padding the sharp edges of human selfishness. The suppression of true feelings and natural habits is essential to civilization. Fair enough. But what of etiquette in the service of business? Isn't this doubly artificial? Ms. Baldrige asserts flatly that ''good manners . . . play a major role in generating profit.'' Such an attitude complicates the case for etiquette. The , artifice and even hypocrisy that are a necessary part of ''good manners'' lose a bit of their justification when the purpose they serve changes from the suppression to the fulfillment of our crass motives. QUESTIONS OF MOTIVE and purpose arise most forcefully when Ms. Baldrige offers her elaborate instructions for business entertainment. She observes in passing that overly opulent entertaining can be in dubious taste ''during poor economic times.'' Not, of course, that you should be contradicting anyone who denies the times are poor. But what is the reason for lavish business entertainment in the first place? The most extravagant partying in America these days is sponsored by corporations, presumably to augment their profits. A growing industry, of which Ms. Baldrige is a member, helps companies to plan and execute their costly fetes. Such gestures of hospitality can seem especially empty since neither the guests nor the hosts are paying for them. The stockholders aren't invited, nor are the taxpayers who pay indirectly because it's all tax deductible. Ms. Baldrige urges corporations to stage charity benefits. Corporate charity, it seems to me, is almost an oxymoron. The imposition on the shareholders is justified on the ground that charity is good public relations. The P.R. derives from the impression that the company is being selfless. But if it really were selfless, the imposition on the shareholders wouldn't be justified. Ms. Baldrige explains, with apparent approval, how a corporation can spend $75,000 -- including party and P.R. professionals -- on a benefit that will generate $105,000 for charity. These aren't great odds. By the time you've figured in the lost federal taxes on that total of $180,000, the ratio of artifice to sincerity could look embarrassing. Indeed the party might not be cost effective.