Miss Manners^®

DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend with whom I am not particularly close held a holiday party at his home. I was unaware of the party until last week, when he posted many photos of it online. It looked like a great party, and everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time.

In his post accompanying the photos, he apologized for not inviting more people due to a lack of space, and asked anyone he had not seen in a while to please reach out to him.

I am not offended that I was not invited to the party, because we are not close. But I wonder how other not-invited friends reacted to this post. Had I been a closer friend, I would have been hurt to be excluded.

I had a large birthday party last year, and it would never have occurred to me to post photos on social media because of my sensitivity to the feelings of those who were not invited.

Was it bad manners to post photos that people who were not invited to the party would see?

GENTLE READER: It was. But as Miss Manners realizes that a strict ban on such posts would bring social media to a halt -- and that someone might consider this a terrible thing -- she will offer some guardrails to soften the impact.

Your friend's apology was a good start. Another would be to omit details. Better to let everyone think the event was spontaneous -- no invitations were sent or required. This will never be entirely believable, but it helps if there are no photos of cakes -- birthday, wedding or other.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When I dine out, I often order drinks that come with a wedge of citrus -- e.g., iced tea with a slice of lemon. Although I enjoy the flavor of the citrus juice in my drink, I do not enjoy the taste of the rind and prefer to discard the spent citrus rather than drop it into my glass.

When paper napkins are available, I will just fold the rind into a napkin and then request another. But what is the most appropriate way to handle this in less casual settings? When the table features only cloth napkins, is there any polite place to put the citrus rind other than in my glass?

GENTLE READER: Hosts (or restaurateurs) who provide items requiring disposal, without also supplying a means of doing so, have only themselves to blame when they discover tea bags, shrimp carapaces or fruit seeds and rind wrapped in their linen napkins, staining the tablecloth, or hidden in the flower arrangements.

Miss Manners does not, however, recommend such extreme measures to diners. Some items can be discarded on a dinner plate, but, failing that, a guest should request a better receptacle.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it rude to straighten the kitchen and other areas of my home while my friends slowly prepare to take their leave at a very late hour?

GENTLE READER: Isn't that your intention? Having decided that it would be too blatant to say, "That's enough, I'm tired, please go home," you suggest a more subtle way of conveying the message.

Miss Manners sympathizes. Even the most welcome of visits have an expiration time. But a gracious hostess does not act as if guests have already left. Instead, you should try standing up, saying how much you enjoyed their visit, and companionably walking them to the door.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend with whom I socialize frequently when we're in the same state invited me to her birthday party at a resort. I accepted and planned to attend.

A few months before the event, we spoke on the phone, and I said how excited I was to attend her party. At that, the friend said, "Oh, no! We've decided on a home renovation project instead." I agreed that was a better use of money than paying for a party.

Then, months later, I was told that the party had indeed taken place as planned. I also saw a group picture from the event.

I'm unsure of how to address this with my friend. We hadn't had an argument before, and I don't want to start one. However, I also don't want to pretend I don't know that I was uninvited from her party, or that my feelings aren't hurt. What would Miss Manners do?

GENTLE READER: Assume that the original party was canceled, and that the subsequent one was reinvented in a different form for a smaller group.

But that takes a mighty lot of assuming. It is hard to assume the best of one's friends when they flaunt evidence of their transgressions.

There was always a rule against talking about one's social events with people who were not invited. Now, everyone wants to tell the world about them, and of course this includes the excluded.

In ordinary cases, you should merely accept the fact that you will not be invited to everything. But Miss Manners would not blame you for casually revisiting the matter of that home renovation project, which understandably took precedence over the party, and to ask whether it was completed.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I fell on the ice, broke my shoulder and am mostly bedridden. My good friends have really stepped up, bringing me food, flowers and trashy magazines to enjoy.

Each of them has said, "Now, don't send me a thank-you note." Do I honor their request, even if it feels ill-mannered?

GENTLE READER: No. You send thanks because you feel gratitude, which is not a chore from which your friends can relieve you.

Generosity and gratitude are indissolubly linked. The former will not continue indefinitely without the latter, as Miss Manners keeps hearing from fed-up grandparents whose checks go unacknowledged.

All your friends have done, with their good intentions, is to make your task harder. Now you have to write that you are so gratified by their kindness that you can't help defying them and telling them.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

GENTLE READERS: The clash between people who don't want to return to the office (employees) and those who want them to do so (employers) is no surprise to Miss Manners. The pandemic might have brought this out, but the work/private life problem has existed throughout history.

Society needs to provide both. Obviously, it needs workers. But it also needs people to attend to family life, community welfare and functions of leisure, recreation and entertainment, as these promote general satisfaction.

Therefore, society has, in different eras, come up with different solutions to staff both realms. And all of them have been terrible.

For centuries, the division was the one that seemed most reasonable to those with the power to enforce it: The poor would work, with only enough of a private life necessary to produce another generation of workers. This freed the rich to pursue such leisure activities as socializing, sports and, when things got really dull, warfare.

But in the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution produced a class of people who were neither rich enough not to work, nor poor enough to put up with forgoing pleasure. So the division changed: All the poor would still work and the rich play, but among the reasonably solvent, males would earn money working, and females would perform the functions that did not pay.

This was adjusted in the mid-20th century to admit females to certain paid jobs (notably, those lacking in prestige), even if for less pay and fewer opportunities to advance. Ever since then, efforts have been made to give females the work advantages that males enjoyed -- including the same work schedule.

But just as the school schedule remains as designed under the presumption that children needed to be free in the summer to help with the crops, the work schedule remains as it was under the presumption that the worker had a partner taking care of the private realm.

The underlying problem was hardly addressed: Who would staff that private realm? For the essential parts, household and child care, it has been either the better-paid female worker or one in a poor-paying job. And the merely enjoyable parts, chiefly family and social life, suffered from neglect.

So that solution didn't work, either -- and people are finally noticing.

Whatever compromise might be worked out eventually will take a great deal of negotiating. Employers, as well as employees, have legitimate concerns about work time and place that must be addressed.

Miss Manners' contribution is to point out that the easiest part to cut is the pseudo-social life that has become a feature of business models: what is now referred to as "mandatory fun." Surely workers no longer believe that after-hours drinks, office birthday celebrations and team-building exercises are adequate substitutes for time spent with people of their own choosing.

And bosses will find that encouraging a cordial, cooperative, cheerful level of professional behavior will be easier and more productive than trying to make employees love one another.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Can I touch up my lipstick at the dinner table?

GENTLE READER: You'll only get it all over your fork and glass.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)