No need to be polite with robots

Dear Miss Manners: Caller ID and other technologies made it possible, for a few years, to screen out telemarketers by ignoring phone calls from unfamiliar numbers. But technology marches on, and now telemarketers are using false phone numbers, lifelike recordings and intelligent voice recognition to fool people into accepting calls from those who may not even be human.

What’s our obligation to be polite when a call is deceptive and the caller possibly a robot? May one talk over a caller who never stops to breathe, saying, “Thank you, but I’m not interested”? Is it acceptable if the rambling persists to hang up the phone wordlessly?

Gentle Reader: Yes. If you have made every effort to politely interrupt the caller but to no avail, then they have themselves to blame for a disconnection.

And as well-mannered as Miss Manners may be, she does not require being polite to a robot.

Dear Miss Manners: My mother and I attended the funeral of a beloved aunt. After the service, my mother offered to cook my uncle a meal at his home.

Somehow this escalated into the entire family being invited, which my mother graciously accepted. The next day, she went out and purchased a 10-pound roast, along with food to make sides.

Upon returning to the house, my cousin’s adult daughter (21 years old), looked at the food and asked how many people it was for. When I listed off the people, which amounted to 21, eight of whom are small children, she bluntly told my mother that she hadn’t purchased enough food and that she would still be hungry after dinner. Her mother supported her in her criticism.

My uncle, mother and I found this very rude. Are we overreacting? Who was in the wrong?

Gentle Reader: Preemptively claiming future hunger — or criticizing anything about a meal that one has been invited (or especially invited oneself ) to — is clearly rude. If she insisted that she would be hungry afterward, you could have politely suggested that she procure more food. For everyone.