Miss Manners^®

Heard from your favorite charity lately?

Miss Manners bets you have. And from some that aren't such favorites.

What about the people from whom you have requested donations to your favorite charity? Haven't heard from them? Or perhaps you have heard an earful instead of a pledge.

The combination of laudatory generosity and a lousy economy have produced a society in which people who have enough on which to live are always asking one another for money. And that's not even counting the ones who are directing their wedding guests to pay their mortgages or the fund-drive executives who are discovered to believe that charity should end up at home. Miss Manners means the people who want to help others.

The entire enterprise has come to be characterized by good intentions and bad manners. Schooled in professional fund-raising techniques, kindly people learn to embarrass and harass friends and strangers alike. Inundated with these ploys from friends and strangers, other kindly people turn resentful and sometimes rude.

Miss Manners believes that everyone involved would benefit by kicking in with a sizable amount of politeness.

She suspects that this might even produce greater benefits for the people on whose behalf charity is conducted.

Perhaps not; Miss Manners does not pretend to be yet another expert in extracting donations, and is personally incapable of asking anyone for money. If effectiveness were the only standard that fund-raising need consider, then the charitably inclined should employ the traditional way of making potential donors reach for their wallets, which is to corner them in a dark alley and intone the traditional pitch: "Stick 'em up."

Nevertheless, she cannot help thinking that strategies that are giving good works a bad name are ultimately self-defeating. Even if they fork over at the time, in the long run people turn callous under continual attack from those who embarrass them by insinuating that they look cheap if they don't give or give more; will be socially handicapped if they don't buy tickets to charity events; and are obviously callous if they don't succumb to this particular appeal.

Even the most carefully polite fund-raisers are reporting being snapped at by those who don't hang up on them first. "We get responses such as 'Don't you have anything better to do?' or 'Some of us have to work for our money,' as well as a few things a Gentle Reader should not mention," reports a G.R. "We understand when someone is not able or willing to give money. However, what we don't understand is the unkind remarks thrown back at us."

Miss Manners wishes to make contributions to both the fund-raisers and potential fund-givers.

For those who ask:

Difficult as this is, try to remember that it is not your money. You have no claim on it; you have no authority to say how it should be spent. You should not even know how much money people have (people who have done research on this naturally want to show off, but it is a mistake) and you cannot guess the extent of their obligations. Even when there is a past history of giving, income and expenses could fluctuate widely from one time to the next.

All you can hope to do is to interest them in your charity and tell them how the money translates into results. Everything short of disaster is being called a "good cause"; what is meaningful is what a specific contribution will help accomplish.

Say thank you. Reminding people how much they gave last year and saying that you expect more this year does not qualify as thanks.

For those who are asked: You can say "No, thank you."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Over a long period of time I have received scattered invitations to family and friend's weddings and bar mitzvahs that state BLACK TIE! I happen not to own a tuxedo and renting one is not inexpensive. I would like to attend most of these affairs but, since I do not have a tuxedo, I have opted not to attend.

Is there an appropriate way to decline an invitation to a black-tie affair? Or, better still, is there a way to attend a black-tie affair without wearing a tuxedo and without insulting the family or friend? I never know what to do and I am losing the opportunity to share the day.

GENTLE READER: Then rent or buy the proper clothes.

If this is truly a financial hardship, Miss Manners is sure that your friends would rather see you wearing a plain dark suit than not see you at all. Just don't let her and them find out that you had no trouble investing in tennis or ski clothes that you only wear a few times a year.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Please help me to clear up my confusion about tipping. Some of the people on the lists I read each December include hairdresser, paper carrier, doorman and day-care provider. One name that I do not notice on these lists is teacher.

Classroom teachers provide regular service to their customers, go above and beyond the call of duty to make sure their customers have everything they need, spend their own money for necessary items for their customers and work on their own time to make sure all of their needs are met. Please explain why a day-care provider, who also does many of the same things as a classroom teacher, should receive a monetary holiday bonus from the parents of her students, but the classroom teacher should not be given one.

Each day I go to my job just as my hairdresser and paper carrier go to their jobs. However, I am expected to pay as well as tip my hairdresser at each visit and then reward her further with a Christmas bonus just because she did her job well. Even though my paper carrier drives a car to deliver his papers and leaves my paper at the street instead of on my front porch, I am also expected to give him a Christmas bonus just for doing his job. If he went out of his way to place my paper on my front porch, then I would gladly give him a bonus.

The parents of my students do not tip me for doing my job, so why should I be expected to tip the hairdresser and paper carrier for doing their jobs? I pay them for their services just as the state pays me for mine. If they received a small hourly wage and worked mainly for tips that would be different. However, both are well paid, and my hairdresser actually makes more money than I do.

It is my opinion that tipping has gotten out of hand. We are expected to tip certain service providers, but not to tip others. Either we should tip everyone who serves us, such as the bank teller, the grocery clerk, the gas station attendant and the attentive store clerk, or we shouldn't tip anyone except the restaurant servers who depend on tips to bring their earnings up to minimum wage. Please help me to clear up my confusion.

GENTLE READER: You get no argument from Miss Manners when you say that tipping is confusing and has gotten out of hand. She has been railing against it for years as a vile system that brings out the worst in both giver and receiver.

But when you try to make sense of it at this point, based on an evaluation of various jobs, you make things worse. The system, such as it is, has grown from habit, not logic. What rationale there originally was for tipping -- that certain professionals are far too dignified to accept these individual handouts -- is baffling to the very people (such as teachers, like yourself) whose dignity is acknowledged even when their worth is not recognized with sufficient pay.

Unless we are able to abolish the entire system, tips are part of the expected compensation for certain jobs and not for others. So Miss Manners is afraid that you simply have to learn the list instead of analyze it.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband greets everyone with a smiling, hearty "Good morning," "Good afternoon" or "Good evening." If the recipient does not repeat the same message in return, he says it again, a bit louder and more emphatically.

This usually gets him the reply he wants, but if not he'll say: "You're not sure?"

The person will say: "What?"

He'll say: "Whether or not it's a good morning!"

At this time of the year, he does the same thing with "Merry Christmas."

If the clerk, for example doesn't say it back, he'll get a little closer to them and say it again. If they come back with: "Happy holidays," he'll say: "No, I said Merry Christmas, not Happy holidays."

One clerk said: "We are not permitted to say 'Merry Christmas.'" My husband then demanded to see the STORE manager. The FLOOR manager appeared and my husband lectured him on the fact that this worldwide Christian celebration is what was making his cash register ring. The least he could do was to acknowledge the cause.

I make sure I'm busy at another counter, but, believe it or not, in this example a few people started applauding him, which only gave him more confidence for the next encounter. What can I do to make him stop doing this?

GENTLE READER: You can't lock him in the bathroom, Miss Manners supposes, as much of a benefit as that would be to society.

People who go around inflicting their tricky little tests on innocent people are a public menace, but as the danger they create is that they will be throttled, it is hard to make them understand the harm while others remain under control. Those egging him on to harass honest working people are little better than he.

About all you can do is to busy yourself elsewhere. This is not so much to relieve you from embarrassment -- each adult is responsible only for her own behavior, even if she is married -- but to lessen the likelihood that the person who will throttle your husband will be you.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I would never dream of sending someone a Christmas card that was dirty or so old that it had turned yellow, or so cheap that it wasn't much thicker than a regular piece of paper, but that's what I got. Last year my mother received a Christmas card that was in worse shape than a card that I had saved from the early 1960s!

My mother thinks I should give them the benefit of the doubt because they might have cataracts. A friend thinks I am terrible because it's supposed to be the thought that counts.

I really don't want to offend these people by not sending them a card next year, but I don't appreciate how little they apparently think of me! They have soured me on the tradition of sending cards altogether. How would you recommend that I handle things?

GENTLE READER: With a modicum of jolly good will toward all. If Miss Manners is not mistaken, this is what Christmas cards -- the ones you send, as well as the ones you receive -- purport to convey.

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