DEAR MISS MANNERS: The invitation to my office holiday party just arrived and I'm fuming. The invite says that I should bring "a spouse, significant other or date." Is it acceptable for the hosts to specify what categories of guests are permissible, or have these people stepped over the line?
GENTLE READER: Those poor people who were assigned to write the invitations! Miss Manners' heart aches for them.
They used to send these invitations in the names of employees and their husbands and wives. But then they began getting angry reactions from female employees and wives of employees who had not taken their husbands' names or who had, but wanted to be addressed by their own given names as well.
To avoid dealing with these complications of names and honorifics, there was a switch to the generic "spouses." This produced angry reactions from employees whose marriages had ended and who wanted to bring new interests, from employees whose marriages had not ended but who wanted to bring new interests and from employees whose interests had not ended but whose marriages had not begun.
So they added "significant other." This produced angry reactions from the single employees who were not significantly attached but who did not want to attend alone, so they added "date."
Now what are you fuming about? If you want to bring your nephew, your neighbor or your fourth-grade teacher, there are not likely to be objections.
They could have added that everyone could bring "a guest," but by this time, their nerves were shot. What if it turned out that some of the employees lived in menages a trois?
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was at the bank the other day to straighten out a statement issue and something odd occurred: As the gentleman tended to my business, his phone began to ring. And ring. And ring. Then it stopped. He then briskly wrapped up my business and bade me a good day.
I have three questions:
Did he exercise proper manners? I thought that in present day America, when one received a phone call one answered it, regardless of circumstances. Was I out of line to be utterly stunned by this turn of events. Is the end of the world nigh on?
GENTLE READER: It must be, if it is possible for you to believe it rude not to desert a live person -- and not just any person, but yourself -- who has come into someone's work place in favor of taking a telephone call.
True, someone should be taking that call. Miss Manners sympathizes with the caller, who is listening to a recording about how important the call is to the bank and being asked to punch an endless series of buttons that he cannot find while listening to the instructions because the buttons are in the part of the telephone he has to hold to his ear.
But this should not be done at the expense of leaving you sitting there while someone who presented himself later is helped.
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