Generous Gesture Isn’T Really A Gift
Dear Miss Manners: My husband and I recently had a baby, and my cousins donated money to their favorite charity in honor of the birth of our child. This was their “baby gift” to our family.
Despite the fact that my husband and I found this gift to be tacky and insulting, we sent them a brief but courteous thank you note. Our relationship with these people has been a bit rocky lately and we feel their choice of gift might have been their way of displaying their bitterness.
Is this type of gift-giving a common and accepted practice? Shouldn’t a baby gift be something a young and growing family in need could use for the baby - or at least something the family could cherish? Is it possible their intentions were good?
Gentle Reader: Yes, it is possible that your cousins’ intentions were benign, because the practice is indeed increasingly common. But that doesn’t make it acceptable, either to you or to Miss Manners, for people to seek double credit by making the same gesture serve as both a charitable donation and a family present.
No, triple, perhaps quadruple. They also congratulate themselves for not adding to your presumed overflow of material possessions, and for setting you the example of thinking of others less fortunate.
Oops, Miss Manners didn’t mean to increase your indignation. She meant to congratulate you on responding politely to a gesture that might have been only thoughtless, rather than bitter.
Dear Miss Manners: My husband and I get a large number of telephone calls which begin with a polite introduction from someone we have never met, followed with “and how are YOOOU today?”
We know the caller is not the least interested in how we are, but is going to launch into a sales pitch. This type of call is offensive to us, and we have various answers, depending upon how much of an intrusion it is at the time. My husband has been known to answer, tongue in cheek, “You called to inquire about my health?” I usually come right to the point and ask the reason for the call. If I am not busy at the time I just answer, “fine,” and go ahead and listen for the pitch. Then I tell them politely I never buy anything over the telephone.
We realize that the people who call are just trying to make a living, and we try to be understanding, but I believe that if one is making a business call, which this type of call definitely is, then one should do it in a businesslike manner. This insincere question regarding one’s health is condescending as well as a nuisance. Please suggest a firm but polite way to respond to such a question.
Gentle Reader: Miss Manners hates to be the one to tell you this, but even your friends are not ordinarily voicing a sincere wish to probe the state of your health when they inquire how you are. “How are you?” is a conventional question and, barring an emergency (”Can’t talk now, the paramedics are here”), they expect the conventional answer, “Fine, thank you,” so you can pass on to other topics.
But Miss Manners, too, is wasting your time instead of getting down to business. Sincerity aside, you are right that this is not a question to be asked by a total stranger, and the ploy of asking in an attempt to seem like a friend is annoying.
The excuse of earning a living is not sufficient to demand that people who are home minding their own business be subjected to sales pitches. One could consider it polite to save them the trouble of delivering a pitch that will be unsuccessful. But as neither your method of rebuffing them nor your husband’s is rude, Miss Manners has no objections to either.