DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a longtime employee of a company that has offered additional work-from-home days to IT workers willing to exchange their spacious and private offices for a desk in a shared room when working on-site. To skip the commute for an additional two days per week, I took advantage of this offer and gave up my office.
What do I say or do, if anything, in response to the inevitable feelings of resentment from employees to whom this tradeoff has not been offered? How do I best respond in a firm but polite way to comments like, “I’m not sure what your schedule is, now that you’re home” or “I’m not sure how to schedule a meeting with you”?
To avoid confusion, I’m always clear about when I’ll be working remotely and when I’ll be at the office in person.
GENTLE READER: As this is your job, Miss Manners advises being businesslike. Answer the question, not the subtext: “Here is where you can find my schedule and here is how to schedule a meeting with me.”
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I’ve never heard of “influencers” and don’t know the names of any of them. Who are they influencing and why should I care?
GENTLE READER: Indeed.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was raised by parents who said that there is a right way to hold a fork, and never to speak with your mouth full. I am married to a man who holds his fork in his fist and who talks at the dinner table with food in his mouth.
He also will pause midsentence, put food in his mouth, and then complete what he was saying. I can live with the fork in the fist, but how do I deal with the mouthful of food?
A lecture on table manners seems pedantic, and asking him to stop each time it happens is awkward (and doesn’t seem to have a lasting impact). And just watching him silently has an adverse influence on both my enjoyment of our meal and of his company. Should I just look away?
GENTLE READER: It puzzles Miss Manners that she receives more questions like yours from wives than from girlfriends (or from husbands rather than boyfriends -- the issue is not gender-specific).
As even elopements take time to plan, why is this just coming up now? It is so much easier to ask a new partner to make this small modification to their behavior for you -- you realize it is probably silly, but it bothers you, and you would be ever so grateful, etc.
Miss Manners does not say you cannot try it after the honeymoon is a distant memory, but she doubts it will be as charming -- or as likely to succeed.