DEAR MISS MANNERS: Recently I contracted with a company to do some work in my home, and was dissatisfied with the work performed. In response to my letter of complaint, I received a hand-written "Thank You" card (gold lettering on the front), in which I was addressed by my first name. It was a letter of apology, with an assurance that my suggestions would be attended to in future business.

I appreciated the content, and the handwriting, but was annoyed by the assumed familiarity. Since the note did not respond to my request for a partial refund, I had occasion to write again, and sent a typewritten letter on business-size paper. Was this proper?

As my original complaint centered on the lack of professionalism on the part of this company (on a scale much larger than that of correspondence and modes of address), I fear the subtlety of maintaining my distance may be lost on them. Is there anything else I can do (within the bounds of etiquette, of course) to dissuade them from unwanted "intimacy" in the future?

GENTLE READER: Don't hire them again. That way, they will never get anywhere near you.

Miss Manners does not advise this merely to punish the company for annoying you with an all-too-common transgression of etiquette. Saying, "I'd prefer that you call me Ms. Humblethwaite," pleasantly but directly, should be all that is needed to alert someone who means to be polite to you how to do so.

But you are talking about a company that doesn't have enough pride and responsibility about its own work to do it properly, nor make restitution after admitting that it did not.

Yes, a typewritten letter on business-size paper is proper for a business letter. Miss Manners just has a hard time picturing the recipients saying, "Look at this. Why don't we write dignified professional letters like this?"

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When eating soup from a bowl on a plate, where is the proper place to set the spoon between spoonfuls and again when finished? Is it the bowl or the plate?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is going to drive you crazy on this one. You want a simple answer so you can eat your soup in peace and propriety, and she is about to douse you with technical terms.

Soup may be served in bowls or cups with small plates under them, in which case the spoon is always parked on the underlying plate, whether you are finished or just resting up for the next spoonful. That would be a simple answer if this were all there were to it, but there is more.

At more or less formal dinners, soup is served in a so-called soup plate, which doesn't look like a plate because it is a rimmed wide, shallow bowl, but it is called a plate anyway. It goes on top of the service plate, and both are removed together when replaced with the plate for the fish or meat course.

When a soup plate is used, the spoon is parked in it, not in the flat plate below the soup plate. This is a shock to people who only learned soup-bowl etiquette, and will think you don't know any better, but it is the correct method.

You can achieve an even greater shock with two-handled soup cups, where it is not strictly necessary to use a spoon at all, but permissible to drink from the lifted cup. However, Miss Manners does not consider herself responsible for the consequences of Fun With Soup.

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That will be enough, thank you. Now is not the time to giggle about how prissy and trivial etiquette is, and how ridiculous to imagine it can foist its silliness on real people.

Miss Manners has tried to be a sport while the raffish have their tedious little jokes, but her weak smile has grown ever weaker over the years. Possibly this is because the repertory never varies.

Joke one: Tea parties!

Joke two: White gloves!

Joke three, the one that really propels them into the heights of hilarity: Forks! (Apparently, real people consider their inability to manage their food to be an asset.)

Tee hee.

But it appears that Miss Manners is not alone in deploring the demise of manners in society. It was no surprise to her that a poll undertaken by Public Agenda found that 79 percent of those surveyed declared rudeness to be a major problem.

What does surprise her is that there are still so many people trying to sabotage efforts to fix the problem. Statistically, some of them must be those same people.

What is more, she has seen them in action. These are the folks who deplore the awful behavior of modern children, and then break in, when a parent is instructing a child to say thank you or wait his turn instead of pushing, or stop banging on things, with: "Oh, leave him alone, he's only a child. Let him enjoy himself."

And, of course, everyone is after the ultimate sweet deal -- the freedom to do anything you feel like, no matter how it affects others, along with the requirement that those others treat you with strict politeness. If such a situation were feasible, even Miss Manners might be tempted to go for it, but unfortunately, it doesn't work. The same restraints have to apply to everyone.

So how do the scoffers reconcile the desire for civility with undermining etiquette?

That is where the tea parties, white gloves and forks come in. They define etiquette as consisting of rules they don't know and feel do not affect them (never mind how adversely affected their spouses' appetites may be over the way they eat). They ignore the fact that there are rules they do find important, such as returning a high five, not driving slowly in the fast lane, and being waited on first when they were there first.

Then they declare that while people should be nice and considerate to one another, they should do so naturally, without being bound by any rules.

Didn't we just try that? Didn't we just come through nearly half a century of advocating an etiquette-free society, where people would use their own judgment about how to behave, and not have to follow any rules?

And didn't it work out about as well as if we had abolished the legal system in favor of just telling everyone to please behave morally?

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I will soon have handicap license plates on my car, and I have been warned that as a member of the "invisible" handicapped, I will be the target of much abuse.

What is a mannerly response to the people who will inevitably confront me?

I know this is none of their business, but I am a lady and do not wish to be rude by ignoring these ignorant judges of parking spaces. I would happily change places with them, even for a day, to be pain free and "abled."

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners deeply appreciates your supplying your own answer. This saves her a lot of work. The only addition she needs to make, on her way out to the porch swing with a mimosa and the new Henry James novel, is to caution you to use a pleasant tone when you voice your willingness to change places with the vigilantes.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am 22 and have been in a relationship for three years now. My best friend, who is the same age, is also in a relationship, going on over a year. Here is my problem: She seems to feel the need to relay to me every single aspect of their romance, whether it's sexual, emotional, or even "Oh, guess what John said/e-mailed to me today!"

I don't mean to be callous; it's natural for a young lady to be excited about a relationship, but that tell-all feeling usually passes after the relationship has entered the long-term phase. I know I personally still don't feel the need to report to her every detail in the relationship between my boyfriend and me. It's getting more and more difficult to muster up enthusiasm or even interest in the minutiae of their courtship.

I've joked with her that "30 years from now, when you two are married, I might not listen anymore!" but she just laughed and carried on. Should I keep listening, or is there a gentle way to say that maybe it's time she keeps all these details to herself? I'm happy for her, but I'm ready for a new topic of conversation.

GENTLE READER: As you understand, your friend is in the familiar shouting-it-from-the-housetops stage of romance, which, fortunately, does not last forever. The lady in question appears to have less discretion than most, but Miss Manners promises that even she will eventually stop.

In the meantime, best friends do have to endure some of this. From your remark that you don't "still" feel the need, Miss Manners gathers that at one time you must have cornered this lady, or other friends, with similar confidences.

You can make a few protests, such as, "You know I can't keep a secret," and "I'm never going to be able to look John in the eye," and "Stop, please, you're embarrassing me." Beyond that, Miss Manners recommends resigning yourself to using the time for a mental review of your grocery list.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am 9 years old. When I call a friend and they're not home and I leave a message on their answering machine, how long should I wait until I call a different friend? How many hours should I wait until I call a different friend without hurting the first friend's feelings? Then when my other friend returns my call and I already have a friend over, what should I do?

GENTLE READER: If you are old enough to issue invitations, Miss Manners believes you are old enough to learn a secret that many adults get into trouble for not knowing:

Invitations do not have to be open-ended to be gracious. Now is the time to learn to put time limits. Your message should be, "I'm hoping you can come over to my house. Call me by three if you can come today, but if you can't, please call me tomorrow and let's pick another day."

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