DEAR MISS MANNERS: When I extend an invitation, and the response I receive ends in “but I think I’ll pass,” I find it a bit rude. Am I being oversensitive? Is that a perfectly acceptable response?

If you decide to respond with “Thanks for the question, but I think I’ll pass,” I will never stop laughing.

GENTLE READER: Tempting. But Miss Manners is in full agreement with you. This phrase might be one of the rudest she has ever heard. Not only is it nastily dismissive, but its implication is that the invitation does not live up to the recipient’s standards -- or that the issuer is hiding something better. Either way, Miss Manners suggests you take a pass on extending further ones.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I are friends with a couple who live about an hour away from us. Whenever they invite us to their home for dinner, they always ask us to stay the night as well (presumably because of the long drive). While I believe this is a generous gesture, sometimes I would just rather sleep in my own bed.

I know that I can decline if I wish. My problem is that when we invite them to our house, they expect that it includes an overnight stay, and they don’t usually leave until noon the next day. I am getting tired of the notion that a dinner invitation necessarily includes overnight accommodations.

Am I being unreasonable to think that an hour isn’t too long a drive at 9 or 10 at night, and that people can temper their alcohol intake accordingly?

GENTLE READER: Probably, yes. Try as you might (and Miss Manners has mightily tried), you cannot control other people’s actions. You can only control how you issue the invitations.

“We would love to have you and Horace over for supper, but we are afraid that we have an early morning the next day and must make it only for the evening.” And if another date is suggested: “And that night too.” “And that night too.” “And that night too.”

DEAR MISS MANNERS: After years of therapy, I made the choice to end all contact with my mother. It has been almost five years since I’ve spoken with her. On occasion, I run into people who know us both, but are unaware of our circumstances; they will ask how she is or tell me to tell her they said “hello.” I also had the experience of a new colleague, whose mother I have met, asking me a question about my mother.

How would you recommend I respond to these questions? I do not want to launch into the entire saga with acquaintances, nor do I want to mislead them into thinking she is no longer with us.

GENTLE READER: Those who have your mother’s information can be told, “I’m sure she would love to hear from you directly.” Those who do not can be given suitably vague descriptions of what you do know, before changing the subject: “I haven’t spoken to her for a while, but I hear that they are having an unusually dry summer out there. How has the summer treated you?”

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: This past winter, I stopped going to most of my usual activities to try to avoid catching the flu. I was successful until the end of February, when I caught something (ironically, not the flu) that put me in the hospital for a week.

I’m still not able to resume normal activities because of medication side effects, and the condition that developed may be permanent. I am very upset -- understandably, I think.

I can’t prove it, of course, but my guess is that I caught the “something” from a worker at a small local business (the one-person post office) who was very ill, which I discovered when I took a chance and went in there about three days before I got sick.

At the time, I commented to her that she should have stayed home, and she pleasantly agreed that maybe she should have. I’m thinking that she probably infected more people, although hopefully without the extreme issues I experienced.

I would very much like to communicate this to the worker, but I don’t know whether it’s really possible or appropriate. I’m not planning on going to that location again, but I don’t think that would be significant to her.

Can I, and should I, report this to the worker? It’s a real-life example of why people should stay home when they are sick, but nobody pays any attention anyway!

GENTLE READER: And what if you are wrong? How do you plan to prove it?

While Miss Manners is sorry that you got sick -- and agrees that contagious people should, to the best of their abilities, avoid being out in public -- she finds the need to target Patient Zero unpleasant as well as unprovable. Also, there is no way to gauge how one person may be differently affected by another’s symptoms.

In the unlikely event that you run into this postal worker again, you might say, “Oh, I hope your sickness did not turn out to be as bad as mine -- and that you didn’t have to miss too much work. I was in the hospital for days.”

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When the lovely people at my workplace want to show their appreciation of my work, they give me a gift card to a well-known online company that is rapidly putting independent booksellers out of business.

My husband runs an independent bookstore. The folks at my work know what my husband does, but have clearly not put two and two together to realize that this gift will make me deeply unhappy and give my husband ulcers.

What would be the best way, in my thank-you letter, to express appreciation for their generosity while requesting that in future, they choose virtually any other gift in the world -- or none at all?

GENTLE READER: Most online book companies inexplicably sell things other than books. If this one does, you could say in your letter, “We greatly look forward to using this card for novelty sweets or toys for our dogs.”

If questioned about why you would not want to get books, Miss Manners recommends you say, “Oh, my husband already owns an independent bookstore. Happily, we can get everything we need there.”

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have been to several places with little kids who are making rude remarks to many adults, including myself, such as “You cannot stay at the table,” “I don’t like you,” “I’m going to shoot you,” “Why do you put your hands on your hips?” and many other inappropriate things, as well as inappropriately touching adults.

Whenever I tell the parents, they say things like, “Don’t take her literally, she’s only 2 years old,” even though people say that one should take all threats seriously. Also, when I was a child, I was always taught things like, “You never insult an adult,” “You never touch an adult,” and “You never correct an adult.”

Is there a reason why parents do not teach their little kids manners these days, and why they can get away with everything?

GENTLE READER: It is Miss Manners’ impression that the people who say “One should take all threats seriously” intend to instill extra, not unreasonable, caution. In these days of both routine gun violence and routine hyperbole, one must constantly distinguish between the two.

Setting aside the possibility of imminent harm from a 2-year-old, Miss Manners agrees with you that parents should teach children good manners -- if not because it is the right thing to do, then because parents are learning that they often are held accountable for the misbehavior of children.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Last year, at the small college where I work, my department took our three student workers out to lunch to thank them for their hard work. There are 28 other student workers in our building who work in other departments, and they receive gift bags during the holidays (as do our student workers), but due to logistics and finances, they did not get taken out to lunch.

This year, we’d like to take our student workers to lunch again, but we found out that the other student workers were unhappy that they did not get taken out. It has been suggested that we refrain from taking our workers out, as well.

Do you agree that this is the right thing to do? We feel bad that the other student workers are upset, but also that we aren’t able to show appreciation for ours.

GENTLE READER: Employee perceptions about the importance of fairness are powerful. They can trump more tangible benefits: Employees who receive significant raises still feel aggrieved when a less hardworking colleague receives more; and they may even accept cuts more readily when times are hard if the pain is shared evenly.

But this need not automatically curtail your lunching. Every employer has someone who feels aggrieved.

Do you see a real inequity? If the college works hard to ensure that student workers are treated equally in all areas, then perhaps it is time to find a less conspicuous way to thank your workers. If differences among departments are generally known and understood -- and there is a belief that “it all works out in the end” -- then one lunch more or less can be swept aside with the crumbs.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)