Maintain Illusion You Are Alone

Dear Miss Manners: What is the proper response - or lack thereof - to a co-worker, acquaintance or stranger who initiates or continues a conversation from the adjacent stall in a restroom? I prefer to maintain the illusion that each person is completely alone in her own stall and well out of earshot of others. What do you advise?

Gentle Reader: Maintaining the illusion that you are completely alone in your own stall and well out of earshot of others.

In other words, Miss Manners advises you not to respond from the stall. When you emerge, you can correct any impression that your silence was a slight by inquiring, “Were you talking to me?”

Better yet, you can achieve more than an illusion of being out of earshot. You need only reach behind you, where you will find a handy device that, like a “white noise” machine, produces the sound of swirling water.

Dear Miss Manners: I am a lady (employed in a large public library) who wears hats. Most are of the old-fashioned, wide-brimmed, straw variety, but I also have cloches, berets, felt hats and one fabulous fez. I don’t wear anything especially tall, feathered, fruited, flowered or electrified.

While I recognize that women no longer wear such hats as often as they used to, it is not that unusual and certainly not shocking to see such apparel in public.

In order to reach my office, where I remove my hat for the working day, I must travel some distance through several floors of the interior of the building. On my way I often encounter co-workers and patrons, most of them strangers or professional acquaintances, who offer warm compliments on the attractiveness of my headgear. As it is my goal to appear smart and attractive, I am flattered.

But after “What a great hat” or “I love your hat,” when I reply, “Why, thank you,” the person invariably follows with something along the lines of, “I wish I could wear hats, but I feel so foolish in them,” or “I would look so dumb,” or “I don’t have the nerve,” or “Nobody wears hats anymore,” or “I just don’t have the guts to go out in a hat.” The implication being that I am engaging in outrageous exhibitionism.

Working in a large public place, I’ve seen shocking exhibitionism. This does not qualify.

What is the proper reply to a friendly compliment followed by a veiled insult - the suggestion that I look attractive but also weird?

As a representative of the institution it is my job to talk to strangers. Having already graciously accepted the flattery, I don’t feel right giving them the icy glare.What do I say; “Thank you, how nice of you to say so”?

Gentle Reader: Rarely does Miss Manners encounter a question with which she can so deeply identify. Even at formal daytime events where hats are required for ladies (not that anyone else wears them, but the rule is still on the books), she is treated to the routine you describe by everyone she meets.

So she is in a position to assure you that none of this is meant to be insulting. It is actually true that most ladies admire hats but are frightened to wear them.

Why this should be the case, Miss Manners cannot tell you. But many a young lady who has no qualms about standing there with practically no skirt on confesses that she lacks the courage to wear a hat. Some admit to having bought hats and then faltered before the daunting task of actually placing one on the head.

Let us be thankful that you and Miss Manners do not have this frightening problem. The proper response to a compliment, even such an odd one, is “Thank you,” and the proper response to the confession is, “Why I’m sure you would look lovely.”