DEAR MISS MANNERS: We threw a small potluck birthday lunch within the break room for one in every of our co-workers.
About 4 of us contributed; all of us work immediately together with her and know her one of the best.
We put the leftovers within the fridge, and later within the day, a co-worker who hadn’t been on the get together helped himself to them.
I’d talked about that we had been every planning to take our personal leftovers dwelling, however he mentioned as soon as one thing is shared in a public place, it turns into public property. Is that this an actual rule?
GENTLE READER: No.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I’ve a average listening to loss on one aspect and fairly extreme listening to loss on the opposite aspect.
A variety of people don’t know I’ve an issue, as a result of the listening to aids they make now are nice — laborious to see, and my hair covers them. Nonetheless, my listening to is usually affected by issues like seasonal allergy symptoms, and I’m typically the final to understand.
I used to be speaking with some buddies, partly in Spanish (my second language) and partly in English, with some fellow academics. I requested my good friend a query in English, not realizing somebody on my deafer aspect had began speaking.
He had made a joke in Spanish and I didn’t fairly catch what was happening. After he left, my good friend actually doubled down on how impolite I had been.
Clearly I felt sorry as quickly as I understood, which in all probability took a bit further time because of the language barrier. I advised her I actually didn’t hear him communicate and I might by no means have interrupted him if I had. She continued to inform me she felt dangerous for him and that I used to be impolite.
In fact, I advised the opposite good friend later that I hadn’t heard him and I used to be sorry for making an ungainly second. He was actually candy about it as a result of he is aware of I’m not impolite by nature.
I do know listening to loss could be laborious to see and generally troublesome to foretell, relying on the character of it. However I ponder if my good friend, who insisted on calling me impolite even after I defined that I couldn’t hear, is aware of how dangerous that sounds for folk with a incapacity.
I thought of telling her the way it comes throughout, however that might really feel like I used to be simply attempting to get sympathy. I simply wouldn’t need her to point out the identical lack of awareness to another person with a incapacity — for her sake, too. Am I flawed?
GENTLE READER: Demonizing somebody with a incapacity is, after all, unspeakably impolite. (So is demonizing somebody and not using a incapacity.)
However this may be settled with out resorting to such heavy artillery. Even when your listening to had been excellent and also you merely failed to listen to the joke due to a momentary lapse of consideration, what you probably did was not The Rudest Factor That Ever Occurred. It was a minor, unintentional infraction, erased by your subsequent apology.
It was far ruder of your good friend to dwell on it. Neglect about it and, if this particular person raises it once more, thank her and inform her you handled it.
