Don’t jump to conclusions about your friendly neighbor

Dear Miss Manners: My husband and I are in our mid-70s and live in a condo townhouse development. Six months ago, I went to the hospital by ambulance after an outpatient procedure was botched. After two weeks, I came home and spent several months recovering.

Several neighbors saw the ambulance, noticed that I wasn’t around and expressed their concern — or curiosity — to my husband. Friends with whom we’d visited seemed genuinely concerned, so we told them the specifics of my condition. Others with whom we have only a nodding acquaintance, not a social relationship, seemed inquisitive and gossipy. To them, my husband said I was doing well and didn’t provide details.

I am now pretty much back to normal. I go for walks in the area almost every day and see our fellow condo dwellers around. One homeowner, whom we knew slightly and liked, seemed genuinely happy to see me up and around.

However, shortly after that, she stopped my husband on the way to the mailbox and said that she and her husband were looking to replace their car and would like to buy one secondhand from someone they knew. Were we interested in selling one of our cars to them? He said no.

I think she has one hell of a nerve. She has her eye on my vehicle, the newer of our two. While I was recovering, my husband usually drove my car, but I’ve been driving again lately.

Having found out the nature of my health issue and assessed my age, she sees an opportunity to benefit from my situation — to swoop in like a vulture. Furthermore, I resent her asking my husband behind my back on the assumption that he makes the decisions about our automobiles.

What should I say if she brings up the subject again? “No means no”?

Gentle reader: Are you sure you are all right? That is quite a leap you took, assuming that someone who rejoiced at your recovery now wants you dead so she can buy your car.

There is no evidence in your letter of your neighbor having done anything untoward — not even that she asked about it a second time. If she does, you need only say, “I thought Phil told you that it is not for sale.” And please, Miss Manners begs you, do not continue to conjure grisly scenarios.

Dear Miss Manners: Before the pandemic, I applied for a promotion at my workplace. I was told that the job was mine, and I just had to wait for the paperwork to go through.

Then the pandemic hit. My employer instituted a hiring freeze, and the position vanished. I’ve asked a few times since then for an update and was told that there was no news.

Because I don’t know if or when the position will reappear, I have been applying for other jobs. I expect to be getting an offer soon from a company that I interviewed with. The job is better than my current position, but not as good as the promotion that I was supposed to get. I’m worried that if I accept this job, the other position might materialize.

Is there a minimum length of time one should stay in a position before moving on to a better offer?

Gentle reader: Promotions have a miraculous way of materializing just as one is making an earnest attempt to move on.

Ideally, you would work this out as a bargaining ploy with your current employer before your actual departure. But if that is not possible, Miss Manners sees nothing wrong with using the tactic on the new company as well — as long as this trend does not take on a pingpong effect and continue indefinitely.

Dear Miss Manners: I ordered a seafood salad, and the shrimp arrived with the tails on. What is the correct way to eat such shrimp: with your fingers, or by cutting off the tail?

Gentle reader: How about cutting off the restaurant?

Diving into your salad with your fingers is a bad, not to say messy, idea. So leaving the tail shells on makes it impossible for you to eat your entire costly shrimp. Miss Manners has never understood why restaurants have taken up this affectation.

Dear Miss Manners: Upon entering a meeting room, who makes the first greeting? The one coming into the room or the person already inside?

Gentle reader: “Welcome” is usually the first greeting and is therefore best issued by the person already present.

To send a question to the Miss Manners team of Judith Martin, Nicholas Ivor Martin and Jacobina Martin, go to missmanners. com or write them c/o Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.