Let Management Handle This

Dear Miss Manners: A gentleman who attends the same health club I do has gotten into the habit of taking his 3-year-old daughter into the men’s locker room to prepare her for swimming.

I suppose he can’t make other arrangements, and I certainly don’t want to deprive this darling little girl of her fun, but the fact remains that she’s getting quite an early anatomy lesson. When she shows up while my clothes are off, I find myself trying to cover up and/or stay out of her sight while resenting the necessity of doing so.

Am I being overly sensitive? Would I be justified in saying something to the father or to the club management? If so, what?

Gentle Reader: Only in Miss Manners’ dreams would a word to the father produce a reasonable discussion of how better to supervise the little girl so that you can have your privacy and she can have her swim without too much extra entertainment.

Alas, approaching him is only too likely to result in his contrasting the virtues of his own fatherhood with the sinfulness he will attribute to your thoughts.

Miss Manners therefore prefers that you take the problem directly to club management - but the entire problem, not just your sensible embarrassment. It is not only a question of getting the little girl out of the gentlemen’s dressing room but of finding a way for club members to bring small children to swim.

It seems obvious to Miss Manners that a private space could be found for the father to help her change or that a volunteer could be found from the ladies’ dressing room. If management does not take the initiative, you might quietly suggest that it would be easier to solve the problem than to deal with any ugliness that might occur from allowing things to remain as they are.

Dear Miss Manners: I’ve invited 30 people to a cookout, including a married couple I’ve been friends with for approximately 15 years. The wife will know virtually everyone who will be at the party.

Yet she recently had her husband call me up and demand to know how many of my guests would be female, as this would affect her decision whether to attend.

This hurt my feelings, but her husband was quick to jump down my throat defending his wife’s right to know the demographics of the party.

Is this a proper question? When I am invited to a social function, I don’t feel it is my place to put pressure on the host to create a social atmosphere set up according to my standards. For example, I don’t demand they have X number of single people so I don’t feel like the only single person at their affair.

Gentle Reader: Miss Manners is dying to know whether this lady wants more ladies in the company or fewer, and why.

But never mind. She doesn’t have the right to ask.

Guests have limited rights, too. They have only the right to ask the date and time - and maybe the nature of the occasion, if they suspect mountain-climbing or poker - before they must exercise their overpowering right to accept or decline the invitation.

To ask about the composition of a party before agreeing to attend is doubly insulting. It suggests that the hosts’ company alone isn’t enough to make the party enticing and that they certainly can’t be counted upon to produce a congenial group.

However, to ask about it after having committed oneself shows a flattering eagerness - unmarred, Miss Manners hopes, by the sudden memory of a previous commitment.

xxxx

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