They're a simple list, really. It's a common sense guide to courteous behavior, a handy packet of ready-made rules to win friends, gain respect and achieve success. In short, it is just the sort of sage advice any mother would want to offer her children. They can be ignored, I should say, until one day we have children of our own. Then the clear need and compelling logic of Flo's Commandments suddenly shine forth.
Common sense has a way of doing that.
It's the most fundamental learning we do, the simple things we get at our parent's knee. Maybe that's why we're so quick to dismiss it. It is after all, simple stuff, and it often seems commonplace, drab and ordinary against the alluring glitter of the ambiguous and complex. Perhaps this was so. We've all heard stories of the famous mathematician who arrived at work in mismatched shoes, or the absent-minded professor who found his ham sandwich on the dissecting board and wondered what became of that frog.