Tipping is the worst, part 894

Dear Miss Manners: What are you supposed to tip if your meal is free due to bad service?

The other night, we went out to eat. The hostess seated us with menus, but then no one took our drink order or spoke to us for quite a long time. They continued waiting on customers who arrived after us, some of whom already had their food before they realized the mistake. They apologized repeatedly and said our food and drinks would be free of charge.

We estimated what the bill probably would have been and gave them about 50% tip, feeling generous due to the fact that we weren’t paying for dinner.

Gentle Reader: Well, this is a fine conundrum. You were given bad service, but the food was fine. So you paid for the service, not for the food. What a world.

Miss Manners will refrain from lecturing the country yet again on why tipping is a terrible custom (workers should instead be given a decent wage), because this ridiculous situation defies logic itself. Until we reform the system, however, your solution — for what seemed to be an honest mistake — was as good as any. The irony is rich, however, that the only one who did not come out ahead in all of this was the innocent chef, who did his or her job well.

Dear Miss Manners: My husband and I are raising two children, ages 4 years and 17 months. One of our favorite go-to breakfast foods is a bowl of cereal. Here’s our kitchen quandary: When all the cereal is gone from the bowl, my 4-year-old drinks the remaining milk from the bowl.

I did that growing up, and I thought that’s what most people did, but apparently not. My husband thinks it is terrible, so he started teaching her to drink the milk from the spoon.

I never paid that much attention to how he ate cereal pre-kids, but it is somewhat amusing to watch the two of them ingest what seems like endless teaspoons of cereal milk, when they could save time by just drinking the remainder directly from the bowl. However, the big mess on the table my 4-yearold makes from scooping and splashing the milk compelled me to seek answers.

Can you solve this for us? Is it a ghastly sight to drink the milk from the cereal bowl, or is the bigger faux pas the loud, repetitive suctioning of milk from a spoon at a fast pace?

Gentle Reader: Are these the only options? While there is such a thing as at-home manners versus public ones, Miss Manners is in agreement with your husband that it is never too early to start instilling social ones, particularly at an age when it is too easy to conflate the two (e.g., “But Mommy, I’ve seen you eat food from other people’s plates when we’re at home”).

If your husband is going to the trouble to teach the children how to use a spoon, then he — and you — must also have the patience to wait out the learning period, as they master it.