Miss Manners: Repay volunteers with lots of thanks

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When our club hosted an equestrian event, we didn’t have enough club members to help out, so I asked two nonmember friends to give us a hand with the event. They did. Hard work, hot day.

I wanted to get a gift card for those “volunteers,” but the club thinks this is stupid. What is the etiquette to give a $10 gift card to those nonmembers who spent two to eight hours of their Sunday to help our club with an event they didn’t even get to participate in?

GENTLE READER: Not paying them between $5 and $1.25 an hour.

People work for either love or money, and if it is money, the law requires more than the laundered payment you propose.

But volunteers are in the love – or at least friendship – category of worker. You repay them by thanking them profusely and reciprocating when they need help.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When well-meaning people refer to persons of a certain age as “young lady” or “young man” when they clearly are seniors, it is condescending and really rather insulting. It indicates that the speaker has taken notice of how old the “young” lady or man really is.

Similarly, to be called “xx years young” rather than “old” is just unbearably cutesy and cringe-worthy.

Do these folks, who apparently think they are being sweet, believe that we are so simple-minded with age that we will not catch the implicit insult?

GENTLE READER: They at least assume that old people share their feeling that old age is embarrassing, if not shameful.

Unfortunately, many do. But while such people may cherish the idea that they pass for younger than they actually are, Miss Manners agrees with you that they cannot be so naive as to believe that these half-jocular comments are proof of having done so. Rather, as you say, this is patronizing evidence of focusing on the actual age of people while pretending to mistake them for youths.