Don’t Let Table Be Turned On You

Dear Miss Manners: I am the office manager in a doctor’s office and today, while the waiting room was full, a lady (36 years old) sat on her boyfriend’s lap.

I normally don’t come out of my back office to get involved in the reception room; however, I could not help but make a remark, “Is there no chair available to sit on?” I thought it was a funny comment.

The patient complained bitterly to the doctor that I had embarrassed her in front of everybody and insisted I apologize in front of everybody.

She works at the front desk of a hotel. I wonder if it is appropriate to sit on someone’s lap in the hotel lobby but not in a doctor’s office.

Am I old-fashioned? Should I have made no comments whatsoever, or was there a different way of saying it - for example, by calling her into another room? She may have said it was none of my business how and where she sits.

Gentle Reader: It struck Miss Manners that your story illustrates a fascinating social change. No, not that lovers are carrying on in public. That’s not nearly as fascinating to bystanders as lovers have always smugly imagined.

What has captured Miss Manners’ attention is the switch in defense-of-rudeness techniques.

The response you expected in private was a righteous declaration - “I have a right to be rude” - that has been in use for some time. The one you actually got - “I’m not rude, you are” - is rapidly replacing it. You only expected the declaration of rights in private. The chances of its going over in front of other people is not what it once was.

Miss Manners’ explanation of this development is that years of suffering from the effects of rudeness has worn down the general belief that rudeness is a protected social privilege. So the defense of rudeness has changed to denying it and, as you have found, accusing the accuser.

Do you see what premise underlies this? An acknowledgment that rudeness is wrong! Far from claiming that she has the right to be rude, the patient is arguing that she is polite and you are rude - thus also condemning rudeness.

You may not be quite as elated as Miss Manners over this sign of progress, since the results are pretty much the same: People are behaving ever more rudely, and engaging in nasty defiance when they are caught.

So Miss Manners had better stop dancing in the streets and help you with your problem.

That simple propriety is observed in the waiting room is, of course, your business. The primary embarrassment caused was to everyone else, for being made inadvertent spectators of this cuddling. Her advice is not to be intimidated by etiquette charges from people who have just proved themselves to be badly behaved.

Dear Miss Manners: The bachelor party has a reputation for being all-male, drunken and bawdy - sometimes featuring strippers or even prostitutes.

It seems natural for the guy gang to note the departure of one of its members and perhaps give him a hard time for doing so, but what’s with the sex and excess? Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you will marry and your old fun life will die? Seems juvenile, anti-female and anti-marriage, and therefore a retrograde message for young husbands-to-be. Is there a new and improved model for bachelor parties?

Gentle Reader: Yes, there is. Gentlemen who have dignified dinners with their groomsmen, or couples who have joint parties for all wedding attendants are just as legally married as those who have the parties you describe. Perhaps more so, as they are more likely to have been in a state to listen to the vows they took the next day. So - why don’t all bridegrooms have sensible parties?

Miss Manners can hazard a guess. Probably because such gatherings are not all-male (not counting the strippers and prostitutes), drunken and bawdy.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate