DEAR MISS MANNERS: My little one’s choir held a live performance at a big, historic church. I arrived early and took a seat on the middle aisle, the place I might have the perfect view of the singers.
A short while later, an older couple arrived and requested to share my pew. I stood as much as permit them to enter. The gentleman indicated that I ought to go forward of them, to which I replied that I want to keep on the aisle. They appeared stunned and walked off to search out different seats.
Does etiquette dictate that these arriving first to an occasion held in a church should at all times transfer to the center of the pew? Or, as I believed, is it equally well mannered to face and permit others to enter?
GENTLE READER: You acted politely throughout the info you describe. However earlier than anybody condemns the aged couple, Miss Manners may also commend you on a second level: not tackling them within the aisle.
Maybe they’re common parishioners who sit in these seats each Sunday and had, mistakenly, come to consider them as theirs. Maybe they’ve a incapacity subject and due to this fact wished you to maneuver apart — however omitted the mandatory politeness of asking you to take action.
If both of these items had been true, your staying put would nonetheless not have been rude. However maybe their shock at your refusal to relocate wouldn’t have rankled as a lot had you identified their causes for asking.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: The workplace the place I work has about 20 folks, half working in particular person and half distant.
A younger lady early in her profession, who works remotely and is on a number of of the common video calls I attend every week, is pleasant and goes out of her approach to say good issues to folks. She is at all times the primary to note a brand new haircut or pair of glasses.
I see that she values all these compliments, and I attempt to reciprocate. The problem is that this particular person attire wildly — far outdoors the corporate gown code, with actually weird outfits and hair and make-up combos that always catch me off guard. Suppose fuzzy bunny costumes with lengthy floppy ears, dramatic eyeshadow, tops produced from repurposed straitjackets, and so forth.
I’m not her supervisor, and it’s not my job to critique her model, however these sartorial selections are going to carry her again if she stays in our subject. I don’t wish to encourage it (“Cool bunny ears!”) and am having a tough time pondering of acceptable, complimentary issues to say within the second.
GENTLE READER: We agree that it’s not your job to critique her clothes selections. Why, then, would you suppose it’s your job to reward them?
It’s immaterial whether or not the assembly is distant or in particular person — or, for that matter, whether or not “in-person” can be the correct approach to describe somebody arriving on the workplace in a bunny costume.
That is imagined to be a workplace. Want her a superb morning and get on with the assembly.
