Nudging Treadmill Hogs
When gymgoers overstay their time, plus bad waiters, hair goodbyes, and dryer hellos.
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'Tis the season to hit the gym and burn off those extra pounds. My club sets a 30-minute limit on cardio equipment during busy hours but often fails to enforce this rule. Can I tell someone he or she has gone over the allotted time, and how?
R.M. in Boston
You can address it yourself - "Hi, are you done? I was hoping to get my 30 minutes in now" - or ask someone who works at the club to intervene. Either one is fine, but I'd vote for the latter. In these kinds of situations - people infringing on the rules or customs at a club, restaurant, or other private business - it's the job of the staff to step in. It's less awkward to speak to a staff member than to a fellow exerciser, and if enough people nag the staff about it, they'll start enforcing the limits better.
I'm assuming that your health club, like mine, has sign-in sheets for equipment. If they don't, I certainly would speak to a staffer rather than accost an offending member. "You said you'd be done at 11:30, and it's 11:40" is one message; "I've been watching you and timing your workout" is another.
My friends and I recently had supper at an upscale chain restaurant. Our waiter made so many mistakes and interrupted our conversations and laughed loudly at his own jokes. We'd like to go back to this restaurant, but we don't want this waiter again. Is it permissible to say, "We don't want the vertically challenged, generously proportioned, middle-aged waiter today" when we arrive, to avoid asking to change waiter assignments after we are seated?
G.B. in Shrewsbury
It's fine to ask not to have a particular waiter, but it would be better not to refer to him as the short, fat one (no matter how whimsically you try to phrase it). If you're not happy with someone's service, you need to get his or her name. Otherwise, it makes it difficult to protect yourself. Ideally, you would also have let the manager know about Mr. Happypants's sub-optimal service style after the meal.
But the fact that you didn't doesn't mean you're stuck with him forever. The next time you go, see if you can identify the waiter you don't like in some other fashion - by the table you were sitting at that evening, for example. And let the hostess or manager know what you found unacceptable in the waiter's behavior, which will help them address the problem so that other diners don't have an unpleasant experience, either.
I've been going to the same hairstylist nearly 25 years. In the last two years, I've been increasingly unhappy with her cuts - what was once a neat, short style was looking more like extremely short, random hacking. After repeated attempts to get a more satisfactory style, I recently "cheated on her" with a stylist recommended by a friend. Everyone loves my new cut. Now I don't know what to do, if anything, about communicating to the old stylist my decision to switch. Just not going back seems rude, as does stopping by her shop and telling her in front of other customers. Should I write her a "thank you/goodbye" note?
C.J. in Boston
That would be a kind way of handling the situation. Everyone has the occasional off day, but you gave your stylist multiple chances to get things right, so she ought not feel that you've been unfair. There's no need to reiterate your complaints in your note, which would seem like self-justifying whining; just tell her you've found a different salon and that you hope that she's doing well. This may seem like a bigger deal to you, emotionally, than it does to her. We can get very attached to our service providers, especially those who are as intimate as hairdressers. The providers themselves, however, are usually quite aware that what seems like a relationship is, in fact, only a commercial transaction, and that sometimes clients leave.
In my apartment building, the washer and dryer are shared by more than a dozen residents. My mom always told me I should clean out the lint filter for the next person, but no one else seems to do this. Should I just clean it out before doing my own load? And if someone has left laundry in the dryer, can I place the dry clothes on top so I can finish my load?
S.J. in Cambridge
Here's the deal: Good manners aren't about following abstract rules for their own sake; they're about fitting in as a helpful and cooperative member of your community. Which means that if the norm in your community is that people clean out lint filters before doing a load, then that's what you do. You're not sharing laundry facilities with Mom anymore. And yes, it's fine to pull abandoned laundry and leave it on top of the dryer. Allow a decent interval before you do this, though (say, 15 minutes), so you don't look like a passive-aggressive Dryer Cop.
My Word!
Reader Michelle from Norwood writes that if you're sending a runny-nosed child to school, it's a courtesy to send along some tissues as well. Many teachers supply tissues for their classroom, she writes, and "one student with a doozy of a runny nose can wipe out an entire box in a day or two, requiring the teacher to constantly replenish the classroom tissue supply out of her own pocket (figuratively speaking)."
Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a Cambridge-based writer with a PhD in psychology.
