Hostess was sick but didn’t disclose until guests arrived

Dear Miss Manners: I visited my brother and sister-in-law with my husband and our two young children. Upon arrival, my sister-in-law was sick in bed, and apparently had been for two days prior.

Although she did not leave her room while we were there, I was upset I was not informed before staying in her home.

To add to the situation, her younger daughter was also sick. My brother originally told me it was allergies, but later said she had a cold (and my children stayed in her room that evening).

Is what they did considered rude/inconsiderate? I would have gladly rented a hotel room if I had known, but I wasn’t given that opportunity, and my husband felt it would be rude if we left. It really put me in an awkward situation. It has only been a couple of days since we left, and so far we are all still healthy, thank goodness.

Gentle reader: That is a

relief.

Although entirely rational, it does seem rude to run screaming from your relatives’ home for fear that they will infect you. But this rule can only be upheld so long as the contagious assume responsibility for protecting everyone else.

Your brother or sisterin-law should absolutely have warned you — and tried to help mitigate the situation, whether that meant renting a hotel room for your family or agreeing to postpone the visit.

As Miss Manners fears that conspicuously washing everything you touch is not endearing, she would have recommended that you decamped to a hotel — not, you would explain, out of fear for yourselves, but so that your poor sister-inlaw could have some quiet in which to recover.

Dear Miss Manners: I called a member of a social group to follow up on a question. The matter was time-sensitive and needed to be resolved before the next morning, and it was the kind of thing that would be difficult to do in an email exchange.

The member and his wife are in their 80s, I believe. When I had called the night before around the same time, the husband said they were eating dinner. I offered to call back, but he said no, and we spoke briefly.

It seems that the older people get, the earlier they go to bed and the less they like being “disturbed” by calls in the evening. Maybe they eat and then want to cozy up and watch a movie. So in general, I try to call earlier rather than later.

Even if I say, “Am I interrupting your dinner?” (which he didn’t give me a chance to), it seems I would still be in the doghouse for not accurately guessing exactly when they eat. Any tips would be helpful.

Gentle reader: Like ... asking? “I seem to keep guessing wrong about the best time to reach you. In case I have any follow-up questions, when is generally a good time to call?”

Miss Manners further points out that you are doing all of this “old person” speculation and proposed doghouse arresting purely on your own. All your elderly friend did was say that your call was perfectly all right.

Dear Miss Manners: Here is an issue for our times: I was in a coffee bar recently, and a person sitting a few feet away from me was listening to some sort of recorded content on his mobile phone without the benefit of headphones. It was annoying, particularly on top of the shop’s programmed music and other face-to-face conversations taking place.

After a while, I asked in a very polite and civil manner, “Sir, do you happen to have earbuds or headphones that you could use?” He bristled slightly and said that he didn’t realize the sound was annoying, then simply shut the device off, for which I thanked him.

Is what I did within the bounds of reasonable and polite behavior? While I would never question someone’s right to engage in a face-to-face conversation or telephone call in this situation, my feeling is that playing anything loud enough for someone else to hear amounts to forcing your choice on others, and is therefore inconsiderate. I would appreciate your thoughts on the issue.

Gentle reader: Certainly, this is rude. Bristle as this young man might, you did nothing wrong by politely and reasonably asking him to use headphones in a public place. In fact, Miss Manners assures you, you likely saved him from a ruder patron’s much more indignant objections.