Dinner guests on restrictive diets want to dictate menu

Tell me, Miss Manners: What do you think of dinner guests who tell you they are on a special diet?

I have invited two people to dinner who have told me they are on a weight-loss keto diet. It’s pretty restrictive. They are not diabetics and do not have other health concerns.

I will absolutely accommodate their wishes. But is it polite for them to tell me what I can/can’t serve? To my eyes, they aren’t overweight.

I have been on diets myself, but when invited to someone’s home for dinner, I just shelved the diet and went back on it the next day. I don’t want to dictate to my hosts.

Gentle Reader:

People looking to lose weight should be grateful for a meal in which they can eat some, but not all, of the dishes. And probably, Miss Manners would think, not to have you speculate about whether or not they need to diet.

Dear Miss Manners:

We’ve been friends with a couple for over 20 years. Our son grew up with theirs — elementary through high school, afterschool sports, etc. Their son is getting married out of town — it’s drivable for us, but would mean a flight and hotel for our son and his wife. Our friends just informed us that while we are invited, our son and his wife are not, “due to cost.”

Our son will be hurt knowing that we, who are capable of giving a generous gift, are invited, but he and his wife, who are scraping by (he is in school and she is teaching), are not. They would have spent their “gifting” money on expenses for attending the wedding — had they been invited.

Are we out of line to think that this is just bonkers? Surely the groom would much rather have his buddy (my son) at the wedding than us. We thought that this was weird. Do we ask his parents to exclude us from the festivities and invite our son and his wife instead?

Gentle Reader:

As a society, we have a disturbing inclination to use money as punctuation in social situations: ”So-and-so was rude to me — and it’s worse because I paid a lot of money for the gift.”

Miss Manners finds this disheartening. But if we are going to talk about money, let us at least be clear. You say that the host excluded your son “due to cost.” This is a rude, clumsy — and all-too-common — way of explaining why someone was not invited. You believe the motive was even grubbier: that potential guests were evaluated based on their ability to pay (in the form of wedding presents).

Whether or not you are correct is irrelevant to etiquette — though Miss Manners might wonder why you consider people you think so little of to be friends.

Nevertheless, it is clearly impolite to negotiate someone else’s guest list.

Dear Miss Manners:

What should I do when an elderly relative says she wants to get me a birthday present and, when I thank her for her generosity, follows that up by instructing me to order myself something online and then tell her how much it cost? (This relative is not homebound and does know how to use the internet.)

Gentle Reader:

Apologize for not having gotten to it yet, each time you

are reminded.

Dear Miss Manners:

I work in a large building and have adjoining offices with a new employee. She has a rather annoying habit: She sneezes about three or four times a day.

At first, I would say “bless you” every time I heard her sneeze. But after about the third month, I went to her and asked if she would mind if I didn’t acknowledge her sneeze with a blessing every time. She told me she had allergies and that she’d had trouble adjusting to our high altitude; she did, however, say she wouldn’t mind if I stopped blessing her.

Last week, I sneezed, and I heard her call from the other office, “Bless you!” Now I am wondering if I need to rethink my position. It seems like such a strange thing to say, anyway; are there etiquette limits on how many times a day you must bless someone?

Gentle Reader:

Perhaps you can compromise. One “bless you” per day, with subsequent ones implied.

Whether you work this out in advance or go with your instinct on any given day, Miss Manners does not much care. Neither, it seems, does your co-worker. However, should you repeat any wayward bodily outbursts of your own, one hopes that you will be gracious about any spontaneous decisions made in the moment.