DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a bit put off yet confused about how to address the lack of fairness in birthday lunches at a company I've worked at for a year.

I'd been there three months when my birthday loomed, and teammates suggested a lunch to celebrate my and another new co-worker's birthdays. It was a $7 buffet and we birthday girls bought our own lunches, despite it being someone else's invitation. A few weeks later, it was another, more-tenured teammate's birthday. It was proposed that we go to an expensive (on my salary) restaurant for dinner; I stayed for a drink and departed, and got the impression that my co-workers split the cost of his drinks and meal.

Two weeks later, there was another birthday lunch that cost quite a bit more than my birthday buffet, and when the bill came, the supervisor announced that we were paying for the birthday girl (again, more tenured but not a supervisor).

Obviously, this isn't fair, nor do I have money to regularly contribute to everyone's birthday lunches, yet the trend selectively continues. My birthday is in two and half months. If faced with paying for my own birthday lunch again, do I laughingly point out that I paid for others'? Or do I keep quiet and fork over my money?

GENTLE READER: Or do you ask your mother to talk to the teacher about making sure everyone gets a fair birthday celebration, not forgetting to make a provision for those whose birthdays happen to fall during vacation time?

Miss Manners apologizes for seeming harsh, but such problems as you describe exist exactly because the office birthday party is a ridiculous concept. There may be some who have tender feelings toward the honoree (and nothing stops them from having their private parties). But for the rest -- you among them, from your account of others' celebrations -- it has become just another impersonal form of pseudo-socializing on the job, and an expensive one at that. In the absence of emotional ties, it should not surprise you that high-ranking people get better treatment than lower-ranking ones.

But your lunch hour is supposed to be your own, and you should be able to opt out of the whole silly business. Make a lunch date on your birthday with some non-office friend who would enjoy being with you, and excuse yourself from others' luncheons with previous engagements, errands to do or working at your desk. If this brings criticism, it will be time for you to enlist others in an office policy freeing lunchtime.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have been asked to prepare an obituary for a terminally ill friend who has been divorced and remarried. Let's say her maiden name was Jane Smith. Her first married name was Jane Jones. Her present married name is Jane Long. In the proposed obituary should she be Jane Smith Long, Jane Smith Jones Long or Jane Jones Long?

GENTLE READER: She is Jane Long, nee Smith, and the obituary would probably include the fact that her marriage to Mr. Jones ended in divorce. As amusing as it is to celebrity reporters to string together surnames for much-married movie stars, a lady who changes her surname changes it, however many times. She does not make a collection of surnames.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Can you assist with some advice for managing longer skirts, especially on stairs? I have a raincoat that I find especially difficult to maneuver during my fraught commute.

GENTLE READER: What you need is a skirt lifter. Neither a pervert nor a trainbearer, this a Victorian gadget with a hook to suspend it from the belt and a clamp to lift long skirts above what was left in the streets by those charming horse-drawn carriages.

As skirt lifters are scarce and expensive, Miss Manners is happy to be able to tell you that it is also correct to use the hands. You hold them straight down your sides, and each of them gathers a handful of material and then moves upwards, a rather graceful gesture. Of course you need your hands free to do this, so you will have to hang your other stuff -- purse, briefcase, telephone, umbrella -- elsewhere on your body.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I work for a company that specializes in wedding products for gay and lesbian couples and, because we offer wedding invitations and bill ourselves as "mother-approved shopping," we often get questions about proper etiquette when addressing envelopes and wedding gifts to gay and lesbian couples.

Though this seems to be somewhat uncharted territory, I find that I am able to offer recommendations to my clients that follow the basic rules of respect, or that can be modified off of traditional etiquette for heterosexual unmarried couples or those married couples who do not share the same last names. With the recent shift in legal marriage, however, I have found myself stuck in how to best answer this question:

How do I address a wedding invitation to a lesbian (gay) married couple who have the same last name? Can one add in both names with something along the lines of Mrs. Sally & Betty Jones, or is it most proper to drop one name (Mrs. & Mrs. Betty Jones)? If so, how does one determine which name to drop?

GENTLE READER: "Mrs. and Mrs." not only encounters the problem you mention, but it is jarring to those who know the traditional rule that "Mrs." is never used with a lady's first name. Furthermore, those who violate that rule do so to indicate divorce or widowhood, neither of which is appropriate here.

You should not be looking to the Mr. and Mrs. form, in which one person's given name disappears, and which is increasingly avoided for that reason. Sally is not becoming Mrs. Betty Jones nor is Betty becoming Mrs. Sally Jones.

After all this carping, you will be surprised to hear that Miss Manners has a simple solution, which she could have come out with in the first place.

Use the plural form of "Mrs." or, in the case of two gentlemen, the plural form of "Mr." These are, respectively, "Mesdames" and "Mssrs" ("The Mesdames Sally and Betty Jones," "The Messrs. Trevor and William Cartwright").

All right, Miss Manners admits that these are odd plurals. But they are at least traditional and dignified.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I invited a couple for lunch. After accepting, the lady called and left a message on my answering machine saying that she would bring sandwiches, dessert, plates, napkins, silverware and cups. She requested that I have iced tea available.

I returned her call telling her that was unacceptable to me. I asked that, if she was unable to eat any particular food or was allergic to anything, I would prepare and serve the lunch as I had sufficient dishes, etc. I'm sure my tone of voice showed my frustration. How should I have handled this situation?

GENTLE READER: By thanking her for her offer, rather than declaring it unacceptable, but rejecting it just as firmly. Miss Manners is afraid that your friend is one of those people who, in the hope of being no trouble, makes a perfect nuisance of herself. Attempting to hijack someone else's hospitality may be well-meant, but it is rude.

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