Meeting neighbors key to holding door open

Dear Miss Manners: I live in an old mill that has been converted to apartments. I know some of my neighbors, but there are many I do not. People move in and out frequently.

I like holding the door for others. But because our apartment has a vestibule door that requires a residency key to enter, other tenants often seem uncomfortable with it.

What am I to do — pull the door closed and mouth apologies through the window? Or ignore the person and hope I never see them in the laundry room?

Gentle Reader: Spy movies in which the good guy gains access to the old mill by defeating a hightech, highercost security system bore Miss Manners. Partly this is because she is unsporting enough to notice that a halfway attentive guard (the other half presumably playing sudoku) would have foiled the whole plan.

The lesson is that now is the time to introduce yourself to your new neighbors. This will spare you from the other reason Miss Manners avoids the abovementioned movies, namely, her inability to tell the good guys and the bad guys apart. Dear Miss Manners: I don’t speak much Spanish, but I’ve studied it enough to know how to pronounce words and names correctly, more or less. Should I do so in casual conversation? I often cringe when I hear Americanized pronunciations — by, for example, sports broadcasters who, as part of their preparation, surely could learn how to pronounce athletes’ names.

Is it pertinent whether the person I’m talking to is a native Spanish speaker? I want to put people at their ease, but I don’t want to seem presumptuous. Gentle Reader: Ideally, one can find a compromise between atrociously mangling a word and affecting a noticeable accent (which, depending on your fluency, may or may not fool anyone).

Attempts to render the word as would a native speaker are too easily misunderstood — sometimes as pretentiousness or a sneer, sometimes as simply unrecognizable. Miss Manners notes that names are trickier because mispronunciations can give offense. Fortunately, they come with corporeal owners who can dispense guidance and, as needed, tolerance and forgiveness.

Dear Miss Manners: My husband and I alternate taking our dog on morning walks. He thinks it’s acceptable to dispose of bagged pet waste in strangers’ garbage cans, if they’ve been rolled out to the sidewalk for pickup that day or if they’re permanently stored at the end of a driveway, adjacent to the sidewalk. I wait for disposal until we’ve reached the public garbage cans at our neighborhood park, or until we’ve gotten home. What do you think?

Gentle Reader: That no harm is done by additions to a trash can that cannot be seen or smelled. Miss Manners also recommends not getting caught, which will require Mauser to be a cooperating coconspirator.