So many people have no manners these days. Have you noticed that? I blame the internet.

At risk of sounding like my Gran (again), whatever happened to common courtesy? I'm sure people were (marginally) politer ten years ago – when it took you ten minutes to load a single webpage via the dial-up, you needed a bit more patience. These days we have wi-fi and people have no patience at all, which just makes them ruder. Imagine how bad things will be if we ever actually get super-fast broadband?

If you're wondering what sparked this sub-Daily Mail rant, it was an email exchange I had with one of our suppliers this week. I reckon this person may have got 'Seven Habits of Highly Influential People' or something for Christmas, because they've suddenly become unbelievably pushy - continually trying to push me into decisions and next steps that I don't really want to take. But much more annoying than that, she's started signing off her emails with ‘Rgds’. Of all the sign-offs in the world, there is nothing more irritating than 'Rgds'. 'Regards' is anodyne, dismissive and thoughtless even in full - abbreviating it suggests you can't even be bothered to be dismissive. That hurts.

Perhaps she'll argue that it saves her valuable time. Perhaps she's done the sums and calculated that skipping those three letters is actually saving her an extra ten minutes a week, which translates to an extra 5% on profits over the course of the year. But if she has, I'm here to tell her that she's dead wrong. Every time someone uses 'Rgds' in an email to me it degrades my opinion of them by 16.4%, according to a statistic I've just invented now. So rather than boost her bottom line, she may be causing it irreparable long-term damage. (If only with me.)

In fact, I was so annoyed by this that I took the unusual step - for me, anyway - of sending an email around the entire office imposing a blanket ban on the 'Rgds' sign-off, and making it grounds for immediate dismissal on the grounds of gross misconduct. I'm not convinced a tribunal would buy this, but at least it sets the tone.

I realise there’s one big problem here, i.e. what do you use instead? Lucy Kellaway did a thing about this in the FT a while back, and all she could come up with was to use ‘Best wishes’ for people outside the company and just her name for people inside. Now I know that none of the options are ideal – so you could argue that if you take that to its logical extreme, the name-only option makes the most sense. But I think this a) adds nothing (people already know who it’s from) and b) looks cold and unfriendly (although maybe that’s the impression Lucy wants to give). It’s like a tax on bankers – it only works if everyone else does the same, or you suffer in comparison. Even people who put something awful have at least made some kind of effort. Putting nothing just looks contemptuously lazy.

Personally, I start with ‘Best’ and then push on to initials, to kisses, to nothing at all as we go up the familiarity scale. But that’s not really the point; I don’t really mind what people do, just as long as it looks like they’re making some kind of effort. Because if people can’t even be bothered to make an effort with me – which is basically what good manners are all about – then I’m not going to buy from them. Simple as that.

The only problem might be that if things go on like this, before too long people will have no manners at all. Then I’m not going to be able to buy anything - which will make running a business a little tricky.