Stop Rudeness With Polite Request

Dear Miss Manners: It happened again! After I stood in line at the airport for about half an hour awaiting my turn at the counter, and while the airline agent was helping me, at least five different people interrupted my transaction. There were three other agents helping other people and none of them were interrupted.

This happens to me all the time, in stores and other places where there are lines. I believe it is because I am a short Asian woman.

Frequently, the interrupter is a white person.

You probably will not publish this, as whites are afraid of the race issue. I believe, though, that there is a big need to bring this act of incivility to the fore.

It should not be a question of whose ancestors came to this country first, but who was in line first. Whites do need to fall in line, just like anybody else. And next time someone in the area thinks about interrupting a short Asian woman who has waited her turn, watch out! She bites.

Gentle Reader: Yes, she certainly does. Poor Miss Manners wasn’t anywhere near the airport - she was home quietly minding her own business - and yet she was bitten for being a coward, if not also a racist.

Yes, it is annoying to be interrupted when one is in the middle of a transaction. But occasionally people interrupt for somewhat reasonable reasons - such as having a quick question connected with an immediately departing airplane.

Even if the interruption is rude, there are better ways to deal with it than biting - or than assuming even viler motives than the simple wish to avoid waiting, which is rude enough.

Try saying politely but firmly to the clerk, “I’d appreciate it if you would finish helping me before you start helping anyone else.”

This saves face in more ways than one. It allows people to do what you wish without feeling challenged to defy you further, and it avoids leaving incriminating teeth marks on their cheeks.

Dear Miss Manners: At a banquet with a round table for 10, the place settings were close, and the napkins were not in the proper place to the left (no room) or in the center but were folded and in the coffee cups to the right.

After the invocation, I took the napkin from my cup to the right and the woman on the other side of the man to my right loudly said, “That’s his.”

I said, “It was in my cup.”

She said, “You take the napkin from the left.” Then she said loudly, “Henry, pass me the napkin by you.”

I immediately tossed my napkin in the lap of the man to my right and said, “Here!”

The other napkin was passed around the table and handed to me; I put it in my lap and said no more because I was embarrassed and uncomfortable. The evening had been spoiled for me.

When I called the restaurant the next day, they confirmed that the napkin in the cup to the right was for the person seated there.

Is there some strange new custom to reach to your left and take the napkin from another person’s place setting? I believe the best-mannered person is the one who makes others comfortable and certainly not uncomfortable.

Gentle Reader: Is there some strange new custom by which people who toss around insults and napkins at the dinner table constitute themselves arbiters of manners?

And another by which restaurants that mess with conventional table settings can grade their patrons on the manners they improvise to cope?

Napkins don’t belong in coffee cups; coffee does. For that matter, coffee cups don’t belong in a place setting; they are supposed to arrive when the coffee is served.

But Miss Manners considers that a minor issue. The best-mannered person is the one who refuses to allow imagined or real etiquette violations as an excuse for squabbling.