Settle This Beforehand - Explicitly
Dear Miss Manners: When you invite a couple to go out to dinner, I contend that unless you state that you are paying or treating them, the inference is that we each pay our own. My wife contends that it is appropriate, and maybe expected, that the couple doing the inviting should pay for everything.
Gentle Reader: The way the system of eating out works now is that the people issuing the invitation always assume that the others will pay for their own food, and the people accepting the invitation always assume that the inviters mean to pay for everybody’s.
This is not working, folks. Unpleasant surprises at the end of the meal are not good for the digestion.
As long as some people use restaurants to entertain as they would at home, and others use them as meeting places to get together with friends without anyone’s being a host, people will have to be extra-clear about what they mean.
Miss Manners’ formula for the first case is “We would like to invite you out to dinner,” naming a date, time and place as hosts do when they entertain at home.
For the second, it is “We were thinking of going out to dinner - would you like to meet us somewhere?” A restaurant can be suggested, but when people are paying for themselves, they get a say in where they are going.
She probably needs to work out a more severe warning. But in the meantime, she urges all parties to such events to listen carefully.
Dear Miss Manners: I live in a housing development with a communal pool - a very large lap pool, although no ropes are provided to mark off individual lanes. The pool is seldom crowded, so lap swimmers (I swim laps nearly every day) and casual bathers seldom have problems sharing.
However, during school vacations, the pool becomes very popular with children and teenagers, who frequently get in my way and sometimes crash right into me. I take great pains to avoid them, but to no avail.
Even when the pool is far from crowded, if I start to swim in a vacant section, within minutes there will be roughhousing youngsters blocking my lane.
Since most of these children are old enough to swim without adult supervision, there is no parental authority to which I can appeal. My polite requests that they try to be more courteous of other swimmers are seldom heeded.
Outright scolding sometimes works, but seems awfully harsh. After all, I do not want to spoil their fun or squelch their high spirits. I just want to swim in peace.
Gentle Reader: Miss Manners is glad that you recognize that full-scale naval battles do not fit in swimming pools. As you point out, the children are not purposely annoying you, but merely enjoying a different kind of fun in the pool.
What they need is not scolding, but rules, and reminders about rules. In a communal pool, you cannot make rules unilaterally, but you can appeal to the development managers and the other tenants to draw up rules that will allow everyone to enjoy the pool. If separating the lanes does not work, perhaps regulating the hours by activities will.
Dear Miss Manners: My family and I had family who came to stay with us for a couple of weeks. Being family, we welcomed them.
The weeks eventually turned into months, which ended at a year. For the year they stayed, they never washed a dish or brought a piece of food. Are we wrong to make them go? Other family members say we are.
Gentle Reader: Miss Manners suggests that you make sure that your departed house guests know the attitude and the address of those hospitable relatives who have criticized you for putting up with inconsiderate house guests for only a year.
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate