To add to the situation, her youngest daughter was also ill. My brother first told me it was allergies, but later said she had a cold (and my kids stayed in her room that night).
Is what they did considered rude/reckless? I would have gladly rented a hotel room if I had known, but I didn’t have that opportunity and my husband thought it would be rude if we left. This really put me in a sticky situation. It’s only been a few days since we left, and so far we’re all healthy, thank God.
Although entirely rational, it seems impolite to run away screaming from your loved ones’ house lest they infect you. But this rule can only be maintained as long as the contagious take responsibility for protecting everyone.
Your brother or sister-in-law should definitely have warned you and tried to mitigate the situation, whether it was renting a hotel room for your family or agreeing to postpone the visit.
As Miss Manners fears that ostensibly washing everything you touch would be unattractive, she would have recommended that you run off to the hotel – not, you would explain, out of fear for yourselves, but so that your poor sister-in-law can have it. quiet to recover.
Dear Miss Manners: As you probably know, foreigners usually share tables in Japanese hibachi restaurants.
Once my wife and I were sitting at a hibachi table with a very strange and rude man, his date, and his two uncomfortable daughters. It was immediately obvious to both of us that this group would be unpleasant company, but we knew of no gracious way to refuse to sit with them.
We ate quickly and without pleasure, and left as soon as we could. Short of suddenly inventing an emergency and leaving the restaurant, is there a good way to avoid bad hibachi table companions?
How to choose the restaurant itself, the time to make your decision is before you start eating.
This requires a quick – and therefore possibly incomplete or incorrect – assessment of your guests. (You might not, for example, immediately realize that the four were not a family.)
Fortunately, mistakes will be mitigated by the fact that Miss Manners wouldn’t want you to do anything insulting. After deciding this group isn’t for you, ask the waiter if you can sit closer to the window – or the door, or really anything. Even if the waiter, or one of the tweens, understands your true motivation, they won’t have any tangible reason to be offended.
New Miss Manners columns are published Monday to Saturday at washingtonpost.com/board. You can send questions to Miss Manners on her website, missmanners.com. You can also follow her @RealMissManners.
