DEAR MISS MANNERS: I employ five people in a small manufacturing setting. I encourage my employees to be friendly and have no problem with them talking during work or listening to the radio with their ear buds.

During the course of the day, I have occasional questions regarding the work flow or job completion. I will walk into the manufacturing area, and if I determine that the conversation is of a personal nature, I will politely stop the conversation and ask the business question at hand.

One of my employees has complained that I am being rude and ill mannered when I stop their conversation. She feels that I should allow them to complete their personal chatter and when they are finished, I can speak to them.

My feeling is that this is my time and I pay the salary. I think I am being very generous with allowing them to chatter about personal things during the day. But, when I have business to conduct, all should come to a stop and the business should be taken care of.

Am I being ill mannered to expect that the work day is to come first? Let me know your thoughts.

GENTLE READER: Your employees have gone from friendly to cheeky, is what Miss Manners thinks. That is the danger of slipping from a professional demeanor into one where people feel there is no hierarchy, and that their leisure should be respected.

Professional manners require attending to business when there is work to be done and not keeping the boss waiting. The sooner you explain that to your employees, the better. And never mind whether they grouse about it -- you are supposed to be their boss, not their buddy.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Am I mistaken? Aren't a cocktail party and a dinner party two different things?

I have been blessed recently with invitations to two different friends' homes for formal dinners. They usually ask us to come at a certain time. When my husband and I arrive (on time), our hosts display a tray of cheese, chips, dip, crudities, etc., along with an offer of wine (or sometimes mixed drinks). After at least an hour and a half of these munchies, dinner is announced, and a full formal sit-down dinner with several courses then progresses. By then, I am not hungry, it is usually at least well after 8:30 at night, and while I am enjoying their company, I really don't want to eat everything that is presented before me in all of their courses. I then go home to retire and am very uncomfortable from all of the rich, plentiful food, and sleep is difficult.

Why would a hostess fill us up with cheese, chips and dips, when there is a fabulous dinner cooking in the kitchen? When I issue an invitation for a dinner at a certain time (usually 6:30 or 7 p.m.), that is what time dinner is served. Are my dinner invitations too abrupt?

GENTLE READER: They are certainly compelling if you can count on all your guests showing up at the time they were invited, in which case Miss Manners congratulates you. Many hosts find that they need a long cocktail hour just to get everyone there.

But since you know there is a meal coming, why don't you stay away from the cheese?

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: As the managing partner of a law firm, I receive a steady stream of (mostly) unsolicited letters from attorneys seeking a position at the firm. I say "mostly," because occasionally we advertise for an attorney with specific qualifications, e.g., expertise in water law.

Yet, even when the advertisement is very specific, I receive dozens of letters and resumes from attorneys who do not meet the specified qualifications. Clearly, these people are simply taking a shot in the dark and hoping for the best. Do good manners and etiquette require me to respond to all these letters?

GENTLE READER: Funny that you should ask about the obligations of both manners and etiquette. Miss Manners makes a distinction between them, with manners being the principles of courteous behavior and etiquette being the particular rules that apply to a particular situation.

No, etiquette does not require that you reply to unsolicited job applications. However, it does require a response to candidates you have interviewed, a courtesy often neglected.

But Miss Manners begs you to consider the state of mind of the job seeker: hope, followed by increasingly painful doubt. Finally, the silence indicates that the application, complete with this person's professional history and hopes, was regarded as trash. Could you not find a minute to say "Sorry, we're looking for an expert in water law"? Even people who don't follow instructions have feelings.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: While having dinner, a friend of mine pointed out my lack of manners. Let me explain. While eating with my right hand, I use the left hand as a "shelf/barrier," underneath the fork or spoon in the opposite hand. I do this to prevent spillage on my blouse.

Is this inappropriate? Should I wear a bib? Ha! Do you have any suggestions about this eating technique and/or what to say to my eating companion? Now, every time I eat with this friend, I am paranoid that she is watching my every move.

GENTLE READER: It is no fun to dine with a critic, Miss Manners agrees. But neither does it sound like fun to dine across from cascading food.

Eating is a basic survival skill and is worth your learning. Presumably you do not have a medical problem, or your friend would know about it. Surely you could practice putting less food on your fork and bringing it up slowly as a more efficient way of preventing spillage on your blouse.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Our friend just called to tell us his wife had a miscarriage. My husband told me to send flowers, and I said I wonder if it is appropriate to send flowers because it might be a reminder. What is the proper thing to do? And if we should send flowers, what would you suggest we put on the card?

GENTLE READER: That fear of "reminding" people of a tragedy they have suffered should never be a consideration. Trust Miss Manners, they have not forgotten. What they need to be reminded is that other people care and sympathize. So do, please, send those flowers, with a card that says that you are thinking of them and send your love.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My problem is not one of mistaken identity, but rather one of accidentally revealed identity!

I am a regular participant in an active online discussion group, and while heated debates over politics and religion are the norm there, we usually manage to keep things civil.

One prolific participant is a sort of self-appointed expert on many things, and makes quite a thing of the fact that she has two bachelors degrees and reads a lot. She goes to great pains to try to make people see her as smart and interesting.

As a result, she is one of the people most likely to end up embroiled in a personal argument, and has revealed a lot about her off-line life. She recently posted a link to something with her real full name on it, and it turns out that this is someone I have known, or at least known about, in the past. She is a former friend of a friend, who was known, years ago, to have stirred up quite a bit of controversy, told a lot of damaging lies about someone and generally hurt a lot of people.

It also appears that she has told some blatant lies about herself and her past in our online forum.

I'm trying to decide how to proceed with her, and with the rest of the group. Would it be wrong of me to continue to participate in discussions with her without revealing that I know who she is? Do I have any responsibility to point out to the rest of the group the posts where she's lied about her life? I have no idea what etiquette dictates in a situation like this.

GENTLE READER: Excuse Miss Manners for being naive, but don't we assume that most self-sketches on anonymous groups are at least embroidered, if not outright fantasy? Surely the question is whether you should reveal her identity, not whether you can keep participating without doing so.

Where anonymity is presumed, even by the careless, you should not spread her name. Where is the clear and present danger from which you would be protecting the other participants? It isn't as though you had discovered that your friend's fiance was wanted for the murder of his first three wives.

You do note that this person is being contentious with the other participants. But that is one nice thing about unpleasant people -- they can be counted upon to identify themselves as such. She sounds well on her way to alienating the others without your assistance.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Will you please give me some rules of etiquette for people staying at someone's home for periods of three days or LONGER?

GENTLE READER: Does your putting LONGER in capital letters mean you want Miss Manners to tell them to GO HOME? If you did not take the precaution of setting the date in advance, you should start thanking them for coming.

Getting them to pitch in may be harder, except for the kind of guests who take over when you don't want them to. They should be cleaning up after themselves, inviting you out to dinner, falling in with your plans yet leaving you free time by making plans of their own, volunteering for specific tasks but asking you how you would like them done, being good company, using their own telephones and pretending not to hear anything they shouldn't.

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