Feeling horrible over gift from employee he let go
Dear Miss Manners: My husband and I are expecting our first child, a fact he has shared with his employees at the grocery he manages.
He received a present from an employee moments before he had to let him go (my husband had known for two weeks that he had to terminate his employment but was waiting for him to come back from vacation). My husband accepted the present but feels horrible about it.
Was it OK that he accepted the present? Should we send him a thank-you card? How should that card be worded? Gentle Reader: Your husband feels horrible because he fired someone who was at that moment acting as a friend. His error, however, occurred earlier: It was in allowing, if not encouraging, the fiction that employment relationships and personal friendships are the same.
It is, Miss Manners believes, time for a new office policy barring supervisors from accepting gifts from employees. This will protect employees from feeling pressured to give such gifts, and it will give supervisors a graceful way to avoid both the implied obligation and the impossibility of rejecting an act of kindness.
In the meantime, the present on your kitchen counter demands a letter of thanks. As personal and professional relationships are properly kept separate, no reference should be made to the termination. Dear Miss Manners: We are holding off on a memorial service for my mother, with a notice of the delay in her obituary, until my two sisters can come home. I have not received any condolences from my place of work yet. I don’t really expect much, but an acknowledgment of her passing would have been nice.
Am I reading too much into this, or is it normal not to do anything until the memorial takes place? Gentle Reader: It is sadly normal for no notice whatever to be taken by employers and professional colleagues of the death of a member of an employee’s immediate family — but this does not make it right.
It would have been right and kind for not only your close colleagues at work, but also your boss, to offer condolences when aware of the death, as well as attending the memorial service. Such duties are exceptions to Miss Manners’ rule about separating personal and professional life. Dear Miss Manners: I felt compelled to apologize to a friend for a careless remark I made at a dinner party because, although it was of a general nature, on reflection I think it might have caused offense. I composed a sincere apology and sent it by email. She replied by saying she didn’t recall anything that was offensive and jokingly asked what I had said.
Should I have politely said, “Let’s just leave it in the past,” and left her wondering? Or am I now worse off for having offered up my stupid statement again, but with fewer words? Our conversation ended amicably, but I am not sure I handled it well. Gentle Reader: Your friend handled it well, reassuring you to the extent of claiming that she didn’t even remember your saying anything that could have been construed as offensive. Even her little joke offered you the opportunity to edit your remark, or to add, “... but what I meant was” and then declare the opposite of what you said.
You missed doing that, but Miss Manners would not have advised you to leave your friend guessing. You wouldn’t want to challenge her to find something that can be interpreted as rude.