Eat how you like; don’t get caught

Dear Miss Manners: My wife caught me eating at the sink.

I said: “I bet Miss Manners eats at the sink.”

She said: “Miss Manners gets served by waiters and footmen.”

Please resolve the correctness of standing and eating at the sink.

Gentle Reader: You are both wrong about Miss Manners’ dining habits, but that is not the issue. The issue is not whether one should eat at the sink.

Rather, it is getting caught eating at the sink.

Unlike morals, manners apply only when they affect other people. Much as we admire those who behave perfectly (or so they say) when they are unobserved, their virtue is unconnected with etiquette.

Dear Miss Manners: It seems many people use adages stressing the importance of laughing at oneself a bit too far.

Many times, I have been inconvenienced by the small mistakes of others and stood ready to forgive and forget, if only an apology were provided. For example, the teacher of an exercise class might forget to bring a necessary item, thus diminishing the students’ experience, or a doctor’s desk staff might be away from the desk, with their backs turned and munching cake, ignoring patients. In one case, I attended a party during which a fellow guest soiled my friend’s floor with dirty shoes.

Small apologies were the only things necessary in each case, but they were not offered. Instead, each offender broke into laughter, adding jovially, “Oh, we’re too busy eating to care about patients!”

Personally, I have trouble laughing at anything but a good joke, and the fact that others do not care if they inconvenience me does not cause me to giggle.

What is the proper response? Am I correct that the minor offenders are behaving improperly by substituting laughter for an apology?

Gentle Reader: There is nothing that chills misplaced laughter so much as a blank look and silence, Miss Manners has observed. But if that doesn’t prompt an apology, you can say, “I don’t get it. What’s so funny?”