Gentle tactic to discourage unwanted forwarded emails

Dear Miss Manners: Iama freelance writer who has had articles published in several magazines. I just received a mass email (a mass forwarding, I think) from an editor to whom I have sold material on three occasions.

This email was a lengthy and nasty criticism of a prominent political candidate, related neither to any work I had done for this editor nor to the magazine’s general publishing mission.

Although I was not entirely unsympathetic with all the political views expressed in the message, there were some I strongly disagreed with; and in any case, I was annoyed that a professional editor would use my being on her email list as an excuse to hit me with something totally irrelevant to our working relationship. (At least I hope it was irrelevant. If this is her way of ferreting out and dropping any regular writers who disagree with her political opinions, I quit!)

Besides, I am long fed up with the “badmouth your opponent” approach that dominates political campaigns.

Rather than risk saying anything that might hurt my own professional reputation, I simply deleted the message without answering it. I wonder, though, if there was any possible way I could have replied that would have tactfully discouraged anything more of this kind?

Gentle Reader: “I’m afraid I must have gotten onto the wrong email list” is a perfectly reasonable response to unwanted emails, particularly mass forwarded ones. Miss Manners notes that you wouldn’t mind being dropped by this editor for political differences (which would be highly unethical on her part anyway), so you have little to lose.

Dear Miss Manners: When interviewing for a job, is it considered bad manners to ask how much the job pays? Ironically, it is not bad manners for the employer to ask how much

you have earned in your previous jobs. Do you see a problem with this practice? Isn’t the real question how much are both parties willing to agree upon in the business relationship?

Gentle Reader: Your tone suggests a certain impatience with Miss Manners, who is forced to point out, in her own defense, that her only action thus far has been to open a letter addressed to her. Who says that it is bad manners to ask how much a job pays? Certainly not Miss Manners. Bans about discussing money in personal situations do not apply in the business world. Dear Miss Manners: A friend’s husband suddenly died, and he did not have life insurance. His widow has planned a party asking for donations to cover her expenses in paying for her husband’s funeral.

My husband and I went to the wake and funeral to pay our respects; however, we are both uneasy about making a donation to pay her expenses. Is this the new normal for funerals?

Gentle Reader: Actually, this is the old normal. Parties thrown by working-class families for the purpose of raising burial funds date back at least to the mid-19th century, when impoverished families found themselves unable to afford to meet the increasingly expensive Victorian standards of “a decent burial.”

Let us hope that the American love of fundraising will not cause the well-off to ape those original poor souls, who resorted to such methods out of a mortifying and immediate need. Now, as then, only a friend of the deceased is in a position to gauge the need of the widow against his own ability to give.

Send questions to Miss Manners’ website: www.missmanners.com; to her email address: dearmiss manners@gmail.com; or through postal mail: Miss Manners, Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.