Dear Miss Manners-Please comment on automatic teller machine etiquette. I am tired of people breathing down my neck while I punch in my code.
Gentle reader-ATM etiquette requires people to behave as if they have absolutely no interest in the financial transactions of those in line ahead of them. Miss Manners realizes that no honorable person would have such an interest, but she warns that paying undue attention to making the person in front hurry along or even to protecting oneself from the elements also is ruled out because it gives the same appearance. And in matters of etiquette, appearances count.
Dear Miss Manners-My spouse and I are dedicated ballroom dancers, and are greatly disturbed by a recent trend for parents to allow their small children to play on the dance floor when the adults are dancing. Don’t they realize how dangerous this is?
Imagine, if you will, the consequences, to the child and to my state of mind, if I were to inadvertently plant my large adult foot on the foot of a 3-year-old, or back into one and cause the two of us to fall atop the child.
While we make every effort to avoid children, there also are folks who have had one too many to drink and are out on the floor swinging around. They are none too steady, and a child darting about is an open invitation to disaster.
Just as children have playgrounds and special activities, adults have their “play areas.” The dance floor should be considered a No Go Zone for small children.
Gentle reader-You are quite right that small children should not be on the dance floor when drunken folks are lurching dangerously about-but then neither should drunken folks.
Miss Manners certainly will ask people to get those children off the dance floor, where they do not belong regardless of the disastrous possibilities you mention, if you will be so kind as to encourage those dancers to get off the floor when they are likely to pose a danger to life, limb and lamps.
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Address your etiquette questions to Miss Manners, in care of the Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.
