DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am in need of advice as to the correct name or title I should use in requesting/inquiring about a possible position as a lady's maid. The description seems somehow unusual or out of date. Please allow me to explain.

One of the talents I possess is the ability to improve anyone's appearance. I have a cosmetology license, know textiles, and am very good with the details of dressing properly for any given occasion. I can do some hand sewing and ironing, and can send the person or object of my attentions out to meet the world in the best possible condition. I can make something out of nothing.

I dislike working a 9-to-5 job. Period. I have spent a lifetime caring for other humans and their needs. Now, perhaps it is time to start making a career (a paying one). When I send my letter of inquiry, should I request the position as a dresser?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners hardly knows whether she is sighing over this question because it would be so lovely to have a lady's maid or because it is so lovely that you take pride in having the skills to be one.

For a long time, there was a notion that all ladies were supposed to have such skills, at least in regard to themselves. There was also the odd notion that it was admirable to do these things for oneself but, along with cleaning house and rearing children, shameful to do them for someone else. Even now, when these services are more valuable than ever, they lack prestige, not to mention decent pay and working conditions.

A common way to combat this ridiculous injustice has been to make the titles of the belittled jobs into something that sounds more important. "Estate manager" for keeping house, for example.

It seems to Miss Manners as if doing this acknowledges that the job is not important and must be disguised. She supposes that you would do better offering yourself as a personal stylist or image maintainer than a lady's maid, but she thinks that a pity.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am going to throw my husband a surprise 80th birthday party, but I don't want the guests to feel they have to give gifts and if they do I would like them to give to the place called HOSPICS, because I think they are a great place and do a great thing. We don't need hospices at this time, but might in the future.

How would I put that in the invitation? Or would I just not say anything and let him get gifts which he doesn't want or need?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is glad to be able to retreat here to the general rule that it is rude to look upon guests as a source of either goods or money, and no better when you want to use the money to do good.

Giving to charity is a wonderful impulse, but not when you are being so generous with other people's money. Whatever presents people give your husband will be his, however, and he is free to dispose of them in a charitable way.

This should save Miss Manners' having to mention that while the cause you mention is an excellent one, connecting it with the celebration of someone's 80th birthday is not a happy idea. Please find another way to offer it your support.

:

Having been congratulated for "attempting to preserve the etiquette of a bygone era," Miss Manners was wary. This is the kind of pat on the head that precedes, "Now go play quietly in the corner. The grown-ups are busy doing the real business of the world."

And here poor Miss Manners thought that a chief item on the real world's agenda was what is often referred to as restoring civility -- although it should also mean instituting civility in areas of behavior where it did not previously exist.

As with other aspects of our civilization, this involves both retaining wisdom and tradition from the past and developing and adapting rules for modern life. Like all responsible lawmakers, Miss Manners neither trashes nor freezes our heritage, but adapts it for changing conditions.

"has set the bar unrealistically high for our present social scene." As her object is to encourage people to treat one another better, why would she want to set such an impossibly high standard?

Because it works better than setting a low standard.

With a high standard, many fail to live up to the requirements, but a goodly number of people do live up to them. And those who do not are at least aware what should be done -- as we know from their indignation when others behave toward them the way they behave toward others.

When standards are lowered, as Miss Manners gathers the gentleman would prefer her to do, it is amazing how quickly they are lived down to, as it were. Indeed, in their zealousness to keep up, or rather down, with the new standard, great numbers of people soon bypass it altogether.

To use one of the gentleman's examples, which is a common one: "Certainly no one would write a thank-you note for a dinner when a phone call or an e-mail would suffice." Actually, thank-you letters for dinners are being handwritten, even from the gentleman's very own ZIP code (Miss Manners has spies everywhere). The current rule deems them necessary for serious entertainment and presents, while e-mail and telephone calls are sufficient as thanks for trivial favors.

Do many people fail to live up to this? Legions. But the number of people who thank by e-mail or telephone is vastly exceeded by the number of people who simply fail to thank.

If queried, those who use the halfway measure will argue that no one has time to write letters anymore, and those who omit thanking altogether will argue that it is so old-fashioned and that no one expects it. And if they are correct, then thanking should be changed or abolished.

Miss Manners will leave aside the question of whether there is less time available now than before our wealth of laborsaving devices were invented or whether we just choose to use it differently. It is undeniable that the acts that prompt thanks -- planning and making a dinner party, selecting and purchasing a present -- take more time than the few minutes to write a letter, and the time difference between using paper or using a computer or telephone is miniscule.

For a busy person to express proper gratitude for another busy person's kind generosity is not a requirement that will ever pass out of fashion.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What kind of apology is "I'm sorry I yelled at you, but you made me really mad"?

GENTLE READER: That is a Blame the Victim apology. Other examples would be "I regret that your nose got in the way of my fist" and "I'm sorry you are offended by my calling you a liar." However much they comfort the perpetrator, Miss Manners is afraid that they do nothing to mollify the victim.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a single man in my 20s who goes on many blind dates with women to whom I have been introduced by mutual friends. I often do not pursue a second date and had always assumed that the proper way to do that was not to call for another date. But a woman I went out with only once told me she was hurt and offended because I didn't call to tell her I would not be asking her out again.

I was shocked by her suggestion that it would be polite to specifically phone her to deliver an unsolicited rejection, and there was certainly no relationship to break off. It seems to me more polite and less hurtful to just not follow up when one has had only one casual meeting.

Of course, if I go out with a woman a few times and thus establish the beginnings of a friendship or relationship, I would always tell her honestly and directly if my intentions changed. But, when dating is just casual, under what circumstances is a breakup conversation called for?

GENTLE READER: Do you promise Miss Manners that your exit line on the date wasn't, "I'll call you"?

The meaning of that has long been a source of contention, as gentlemen believe it means "Goodbye," while ladies believe it means "I'll call you" and are mightily miffed when no such call is made.

There is also a dispute between those who want everything spelled out and those who can pick up simple, conventional social signals. Thanking a lady for a pleasant evening and saying goodnight with no mention of the future should make it clear enough that nothing more is planned.

In thinking she wanted more, the lady was hoping to spare herself a week or so of waiting for the telephone to ring. Miss Manners thinks she ought to consider how much longer the memory would last of having been told, however delicately, that she just wasn't all that interesting.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have an odd question, or at least everyone I have asked thinks that it is. My grandmother had the habit of signing all of her correspondence "Mrs. John Brown." I always thought that this was terribly romantic and now that I am married would like to do the same.

I married a man who shares the same name as his father (e.g., John Doe Jr.). When I sign my married name, should I add the "Jr."? I would be embarrassed to confuse someone, who may think that I was married to my father-in-law instead of my husband.

GENTLE READER: What would be odd here would have been if your grandmother had actually signed her name as "Mrs. John Brown."

That is the way she would have been addressed formally, and she might have put it in parentheses under her signature on a business letter so that her correspondents would have known how to address her. But her signature would have been "Evangeline Brown." Those who disapprove of a lady's using her husband's full name do so on the grounds that it erases her identity, but it does not confiscate her given name entirely. Oh, and yes, you take the "Jr." along with his name as long as your father-in-law is alive.

: