Are T-shirts for meetings, job interviews normal now?

DearMiss Manners: I am a lawyer in D.C., and I just completed a relatively prestigious yearlong fellowship/clerkship. I have had two job interviews thus far — one for a government position and one for a nonprofit job — and both times, I was surprised to find the interviewers wearing T-shirts, whereas I was wearing a suit.

Is it normal to wear T-shirts for interviews and meetings during the pandemic? It seems almost disrespectfully informal to me. AmI old-fashioned and behind the times?

Gentle reader: After European monarchies discovered the New World — but before they realized that people already lived there, or that those people had dignity and rights — there was a massive land grab as each country tried to annex as much territory as possible.

The pandemic has caused a similar, and equally unjustifiable, etiquette grab.

The logic runs thus: Universal work-fromhome is uncharted territory. Therefore, old etiquette does not apply. Therefore, I can conduct business meetings in my pajamas.

You will not be surprised to hear that Miss Manners disagrees. If you feel silly wearing a shirt and tie in your kitchen, remind yourself how silly the representative of a serious enterprise should feel conducting interviews in a T-shirt. And then keep doing what you are doing.

Just because the person who has the power to award the job is wearing gym clothes does not mean that he will not feel disrespected if you do the same.

DearMiss Manners: My friend had a conflict with her now-former roommate when they were each moving out. When my friend rented a moving van, the roommate asked if she could borrow it to move her stuff across town. My friend was moving across state lines, and needed the van for much longer than the roommate did. The final rental cost was about $600.

My friend believes that the price should be split equally between them; the ex-roommate thinks that because she only used it for a couple of hours, she only owes $50.

I kind of agree with the roommate. But I feel awkward, because my friend was looking for someone to commiserate with her on how badly she got ripped off by this jerk.

I didn’t understand why she was so upset, and kind of froze. I eventually just said, “Yeah, that sounds annoying.” What would you do?

Gentle reader: What you did is acceptable and also makes your point, albeit while leaving you feeling awkward.

Miss Manners assumes you are interested in avoiding the awkwardness next time — not in advocating for the ex-roommate. To do that, you need merely shorten the gap between your casual agreement and your changing the subject.

DearMiss Manners: I come from a large, itinerant family, consisting of my parents and eight siblings. We moved frequently as I was growing up, our possessions packed up and shipped over a dozen times, with some things arriving damaged or going missing in the process.

Money was never overly abundant, and though my mother loved to set a nice dinner table for us all, she quickly gave up on having any matching tableware. Instead, she used whatever was available, interesting and affordable. I came to think of this as eclectic and charming.

Now that I’m grown, I’ve continued my mother’s custom of mixing things up. Guests seem perplexed with my non-matching table items, and will tell me where I can purchase matching sets cheaply. I politely tell them that things are exactly as I want them to be.

A friend sent me a full matching set of tableware, thinking that she was doing me a favor. What should I do to make her happy, yet continue using the items that I’m so fond of?

Your friends must be unaware of a put-down once used by snobs: “the sort of people who buy their silver.” Mixed patterns are a sign of having inherited it instead.

Never mind that your tableware was bought and that it may not be silver; Miss Manners was just reaching for a way to support you against people who have no business criticizing your hospitality. Thank that friend and use the matching set for picnics, when it won’t matter.

Gentle reader: