Guests get in the way when trying to help in tiny kitchen
Dear Miss Manners: I enjoy entertaining in my tiny apartment. My kitchen has only 28 square feet of floor space, and counter space is also very limited.
There is room for only one person in there, and there is no place to set dirty dishes. I have my own system for clearing up, which just takes me a few minutes. Even so, every time I get up to clear the table for dessert, my delightful friends jump up to help.
Despite my best and most diplomatic efforts to explain the above, I have guests who insist on “helping” by bringing stacks of dishes and food platters into the kitchen. There is literally no place to put them until I am ready.
Last night, one guest stood in the doorway with a stack of dishes and asked, “Where shall I put these?” I was tempted to look around the kitchen and say, “Gee, I don’t know. Looks like there isn’t anywhere to put them. Which is why I asked you not to bring them.”
How can I get through to these unhelpful and oblivious guests?
Gentle reader: Ah, yes. Like those kind folks who will help a little old lady across the street without listening to her protests about being headed in the opposite direction.
In your case, the polite thing is for guests to desist when an offer of help is declined. What Miss Manners would have said to that unhelpful one is, “Oh, just distribute them back on the table until I can get to them. Thanks so much.”
Dear Miss Manners: My wife and I got married almost four years ago. We are a lesbian couple and all of our close friends and family attended our wedding. We have different last names, but we believe we are just like any other marital couple, except we are Mrs. and Mrs.!
We recently received an invitation to a party, and the e-invite allowed you to see the other couples who were attending. I noticed that a male samesex couple was given a single invite, but my wife and I received separate ones. I was angry. I felt my marriage was being dismissed. It hurt as a gay woman who has aways felt different and like an outcast.
My wife is going to the party, as she does not want to give this any energy it does not deserve. I am not hurt by her going.
The hostess attended our wedding, so my wife is giving her the benefit of the doubt. Am I making too much of this? I just need an objective perspective. I only want the same inclusion as everyone else.
Gentle reader: An objective perspective would say that one need not look far to find people being treated shabbily for being different — but that what happened here was more likely a mistake than an insult.
Miss Manners agrees that one invitation could have been addressed to you both; perhaps it was the different last names that threw the hostess off. But you are close enough with this woman to have invited her to your wedding — which she attended — and she correctly addressed her invitation to another gay couple, albeit male.
Do you believe, despite all of this, that she does not consider your marriage legitimate — and intended to say so by the way she extended her invitation? Either way, directing anger at someone without being certain of their motives does not strike Miss Manners as fair treatment — which you claim to be seeking.
My co-worker and I have a routine where we eat lunch together. We like to joke and talk during lunch. A new person started working here, and basically invited herself to lunch with us.
We didn’t want to be rude, so we have allowed her to eat with us. However, she seems to get upset when we discuss our personal lives (nothing inappropriate) or make work-appropriate jokes. She ends up leaving.
Should we alter our lunch conversation topics to include an uninvited colleague?
Dear Miss Manners:
Gentle reader: Why, when they have proven so successful in getting her to leave you to them?
Dear Miss Manners: When you invite someone to lunch, on you, isn’t it rude if they ask to bring someone else? It puts you in an awkward position, doesn’t it?
Gentle reader: Not if you respond, “Not this time — I was looking forward to a lunch with just the two of us.”