DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am encountering a new form of customer service with more and more frequency. Often when I walk into a bank, one or two people will shout a greeting to me across the bank lobby. However, they are unable to assist me with my banking needs because they need to be available to shout a greeting at the next customer who walks through their door, so I have to go wait in line for the next teller to help me anyway.

Another example is the video rental store. These customer-service-prone employees also holler a welcome to me from over by the counter as I enter their store. To do so, they must take time away from the customer they are actually helping, and I never hear them say "excuse me a moment" to me when I am the customer being helped and they turn to holler at someone entering their store.

Also, when I wait in line at a department store cash register, I will often be asked, "Miss, Miss, Madam, Madam?" with ever increasing volume until I respond, and then, "Can I help you?"

Sounds good? But they are in the middle of helping a customer who is in front of me, who, for all the logic I can muster, is not signing her credit receipt fast enough for the sales clerk. When I do answer and say that I have a question or a purchase or whatever, the answer I get is that they will be with me in a moment.

Duh! That's why I'm patiently waiting my turn in line. Maybe this last example is just an overly zealous department trying its hand at multitasking.

I appreciate these establishments for trying to provide customer service, so can I try to ignore them, as though I cannot hear them, until it is my turn in line? Is there a better response?

GENTLE READER: That would be to return the greeting upon entering a store, and, at the counter, to reply with your need so that the clerk can be thinking ahead.

Miss Manners is aware that the most unexceptionable courtesy becomes charmless when turned into policy and repeated by rote. Still, it is better than omitting the courtesies. To acknowledge a customer's arrival is polite, no matter how awkwardly done. Please do not discourage it.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was recently invited to a brunch in honor of friends who were recently engaged to be married. The brunch is being hosted by the parents of the groom to be. My question is this: In addition to a gift for the engaged couple, does etiquette also require a gift for the host and hostess?

GENTLE READER: No, but the question that is probably torturing you is: Where is all this going to end? There will be the wedding showers, the celebratory parties, the housewarming, the anniversaries, the re-enactment...

Are you going to have to furnish your friends' entire lives?

Miss Manners assures you not. Neither engagement presents nor host presents for parties is obligatory. You may want to bring one anyway, but two would be overdoing it.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: A lovely friend of mine has a rather annoying (to me) habit, and I would appreciate some guidance on how to address it. Whenever I put several words together that happen to be a song title, or words in a song, she'll start singing.

For example, I might say something like: "I heard the weather's going to be stormy tonight," and she'll immediately start singing, "Stormy weather. There's no sun up in the sky, stormy weather." If I try to return to the conversation, she'll smile sweetly and continue singing, "Since my man and I ain't together..."

I'll try again to return to the conversation, but she'll keep smiling and singing, "Keeps raining all the ti-ime," until she forgets what comes next (but she'll go into another verse when she knows the words).

I find all this somewhat dismissive and more than a little unsettling, and I'm not sure how to respond. We could be sitting in a restaurant, standing in line outside a theater or shopping in a store. It doesn't make a difference. Apparently, all the world's a stage -- literally. Maybe she imagines herself the lead actress in life's musical.

I myself am a professionally trained singer, so I suppose I could join her in harmony, but somehow that doesn't seem appropriate in a public setting. I suppose I should be grateful that she doesn't start tap dancing, too. What do you suggest my response should be when my friend breaks into song? And am I being rude when I attempt to return to the conversation and thus interrupt her impromptu concert?

GENTLE READER: Annoying to you? Miss Manners has already been driven mad by your friend, and she hasn't even met her. Please tell her to stop!

Oops. That is what you want Miss Manners to do.

You would not be interrupting a concert to resume your conversation, because it is the conversation that has been interrupted. However, knowing your response was not rude is likely to be cold comfort, since it was ineffective anyway.

Miss Manners is afraid you are at the stage of begging for mercy, which you ought to be able to do in dire situations: "I'd love to hear you sing sometime, but not in the middle of a conversation, please. It gets me rattled."

If this only spurs her on to keep singing, she is not as lovely as you think.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I loaned some children's videos to a friend/acquaintance. I asked her how her daughter enjoyed the videos and she responded that her daughter had not watched them (it's been over six months). How do I get my videos back politely?

GENTLE READER: By saying politely, "I'd like to have them back for now, please. Let me know when your daughter wants to watch them."

Miss Manners assures you that it is no less polite to ask for something you own than for them to ask for something you own. And if your own children do not get around to watching them until they are requested again, surely your friend will understand.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My friend went to a wedding one month ago and has yet to give the couple a gift. She fully intends to (intended to?), but that is beside the point.

She received an e-mail from the groom that read, "Did I send you our address? We have a nice little thank-you note waiting with your lovely name on it, but nothing to write in it yet."

My friend is mortified that he would have the nerve to ask her the whereabouts of his wedding present. How should she respond?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is always gratified to hear of those who write prompt thank-you letters, if less enthralled when these turn out to be extortion notes. But as the gentleman seems to appreciate them, she suggests your friend sends him one. It could say, "Thank you for thinking of me," after which you can call it quits.

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