How you treat your friend’s parents becomes the review your friend reads.

People build their sense of you partly out of how you behave around the people they love. Your friend hears about it afterward, usually in a sentence or two that hardens into a lasting impression. That is not a reason to perform. It is a reason to be genuinely decent in the moments where skipping it would be easy.

Say hello properly, learn their names, offer to carry something. Take the two minutes of conversation instead of heading straight through the house. It costs almost nothing and it comes back to you.