Grocery's Express Lane Is No Place For The Faint Of Heart

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a mom of four teenagers, and so am at the grocery store quite frequently. The hardworking employees who try to balance the number of people in line often ask me to go to the express line even if I have a few too many items.

I have had to start telling them no, I will not, because so many people have been openly nasty to me about having too many items to qualify for the express line. It is even worse when people glare without saying anything. No one should assume the worst about their fellow shoppers.

GENTLE READER: As you and Miss Manners both understand, the employee's intent is to speed shoppers on their way by increasing efficiency. They are likely to be following instructions.

But Miss Manners agrees with you that the benefit is not worth the personal abuse. It is yet another example of how everyone loses when often-incorrect snap judgments take the place of good manners.

She would only add that there is no reason to be short with the employee: Be explicit that you are going to stay where you are because you have, in the past, been yelled at by fellow customers when you get in express lines with the wrong number of items.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was at an employee awards ceremony with the company president. It seemed to me the president extended his hand holding the envelope, and I reached to accept it, but he instead retracted that hand and instead offered his right hand to shake.

Which should be offered first? The award or the handshake?

GENTLE READER: Presumably the president gave you both eventually, did he not? The handshake comes first, which Miss Manners assumes the president recognized too late -- not that he was having second thoughts about the award.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Over the years, my husband and I have collected a nice variety of books, which we keep in several large bookcases in our small living room.

I refer to some of them regularly, as they are reference books. Others are old classics, some are books from my childhood, and one shelf is full of handwritten personal journals spanning the past 30 years.

When guests visit, sometimes they browse the shelves and help themselves to our books to leaf through them. Is this appropriate behavior?

I would not presume to help myself uninvited to the books in someone else's home, especially personal journals, except perhaps to look through coffee table books displayed or opened on a table.

GENTLE READER: The subject of what are reasonable boundaries for guests could fill several books, if not a whole house, but Miss Manners takes as a general precept that both host and guest are seeking to avoid embarrassment all around.

For the guest, this would mean limiting oneself to perusing one or two books at most. For the host, this would mean keeping something as private as a journal out of the living room.

========

(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.)