Caller Must Leave Message For Return Call

Dear Miss Manners: Please help me figure out how to appropriately deal with my new “Caller ID” box.When a discussion of same arose at a dinner with friends recently, I foolishly, perhaps, let it slip that I now have this available in my home.

One friend then inquired, “So this means that if I call you and you aren’t home, you will know that I have tried to reach you, and I can expect you to return my call.”

I was caught off guard and didn’t know quite how to respond. I mumbled something along the lines of “I will return your call as soon as it is convenient.” My friend was a bit miffed and said that I wasn’t a very good friend if I chose not to return the call as soon as was physically possible.

I let the matter drop, though I was thinking, “How about as soon as it is mentally possible?”

Often, when I return home from a long day’s work, the last thing I want to do is to talk on the telephone. I prefer to spend my evenings in solitude unless I choose to go out. Now, however, when I opt not to answer my telephone, a record of who has called is available. If I do not return the call until a later date, perhaps on the weekend, my friend will be insulted.

I suppose this is akin to having an answering machine and not returning calls straight away, or is it? Is there any relation between these new technologies and a butler’s duties in days past? What is the proper way to utilize a “Caller ID” box other than to screen out telemarketers and other unsolicited businesses?

Gentle Reader: Miss Manners can point out some differences between a butler and Caller ID: cost, health insurance, vacations and judgment.

There is also a big difference between an answering machine and Caller ID: the ability to convey the intent of the caller.

Any of these items should enable you to chat on the telephone when it is convenient to you, as well as to the caller, without that person’s having a legitimate reason to take insult. For that matter, you could enjoy this reasonable privilege for free by substituting the will power to turn off the ringer or to ignore the ringing.

Both butlers and answering machines can register the fact that the caller said that the call was urgent, and the former might even be able to make a shrewd guess as to whether that was an exaggeration.

But while Caller ID has many uses - alerting you not only to calls you might want to avoid, but to those that you might be just as happy to take later - it has less judgment even than the answering machine. It cannot let you know whether the call was made by pushing the wrong speed dial number, and it cannot let you know whether the need to talk to you has now passed, because the caller reached someone else who was free to play viola in his quartet that night.

Dear Miss Manners: Is it acceptable to point in the direction of an individual across a room in conversation with another, indicating that is whom you are speaking about? Example: “So-and-so has a business across town…” Is it acceptable to point when making an emphatic statement? My assumption is that it is impolite to point in someone’s face accusingly but acceptable to point in giving directions.

Gentle Reader: Pointing to someone across a room is as bad manners as pointing into someone’s face, and the effect is worse. The person in the distance is left wondering why you singled him out, and so is everyone in between.

So while Miss Manners admits that geographical features don’t grow uneasy when people point them out, she believes it safer to leave all pointing to hounds that have been properly trained.