The Rising Cost of Friendship
Asking your summer visitors for food money, plus unwanted baby pics and uncouth bosses.
For years I've invited friends to my summer beach cottage and provided all the food. Now with prices on the rise, I need help with the grocery bills. Is there a delicate way to ask for a donation or supermarket gift card? If not, what do you advise?
J.B. in Millis
There isn't a delicate way, so be upfront about the matter. Acknowledge the awkwardness of the situation and let people know that you can't afford to provide food this year. Figure out in advance what's easiest: Do you want people to contribute a flat rate? Split the bills 50/50 (or proportionally, if there's more or fewer of them than there are of you)? Do their own shopping? But don't just ask for "help" with the food bills in some vague way, leaving your well-intentioned friends guessing about what they ought to do; good hosts and hostesses always let their guests know exactly what is expected of them. Depending on your friends' knowledge of one another, general level of formality, et cetera, decide if it's best to do a mass e-mail (which shows fairness and gets all the information out to everyone at the same time) or individual phone calls (more personal). We're all going to hell in the same expensive marketbasket this summer, so your friends should be sympathetic and willing to chip in. If some of them aren't, consider the possibility that they are not really friends after all.
Twice now, friends have announced their impending parenthood with mass e-mails with the ultrasound images attached. In my opinion, these ultrasound images are private and something that I would only want to share with my spouse and our closest friends and family. However, since sending these images out to a large group seems to be more commonplace, I'm wondering if I am being too sensitive.
L.M. in Boston
Ugh, sounds dreadful to me. I don't even think ultrasounds ought to be shared with "closest friends and family" unless they ask to see them, as otherwise they leave people wondering what to say: "My, he certainly has your bumpy occipital bone, doesn't he?" But you don't have to look, of course, nor even make reference to the ultrasounds in your return "congrats" e-mail, so it's hardly something to get worked up about. Would that all indiscretions were so easily ignored.
You and I may be behind the curve, however. Doctors and psychologists and ordinary people are simply mad for imaging these days, whether ultrasound or magnetic resonance or what have you. I wonder how far this mania will go? Perhaps college students will start sending along fMRI brain scans to accompany their graduation announcements. "Look how my neocortex lights up when I'm thinking about Kant!" It's possible to take MRI scans of a couple in the act of intercourse - a team of Dutch researchers won an Ig Nobel prize for doing so in the year 2000, and Mary Roach and her husband recently repeated the experiment for her new book, Bonk. Let's hope it doesn't become a trend to send these pictures along with wedding invitations.
What do you do when your boss has terrible business manners? Mine shows up late to meetings or not at all, interrupts (and is always after me for the same), takes half the team out to lunch and doesn't invite the other half, looks at his watch when he talks to you, forgets to introduce new people, and constantly cracks inappropriate jokes. He's still my boss, though, and I'm not comfortable calling him on any of this openly. Any suggestions?
A.B. in Baltimore
This is a difficult question to answer when I can't observe the situation for myself, so weigh my advice against your own intuition (which ought to weigh about twice as much). You don't seem to indicate that your boss is in any way malevolent or unkind, just uncouth and maladroit. One option would be for you to start repairing the holes he rips in the fabric of your team, if you can manage to do so without seeming to undermine him. When the boss interrupts people and shuts them down, seek them out afterward and find out what they were going to say, and if you think they had a good point, do what you can to bring it to your boss's attention. Promise the chair of the neglected meeting that you'll get her concerns back to the boss. Tell the team members excluded from the lunch how much you admired their work on the project you were all celebrating.
If you can do this skillfully, you can enhance your boss's ability to manage and become the de facto second in command. The team will function better, and unless your boss is hopelessly clueless, he'll recognize and reward your efforts. If he is a complete tosser, sooner or later the higher-ups will get as annoyed with him as you are, and then you'll be in an excellent position to take his job when he's finally kicked out.
Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a Cambridge-based writer with a PhD in psychology.
QUESTIONS? Write to missconduct@globe.com or The Boston Globe Magazine/Miss Conduct, PO Box 55819, Boston, MA 02205-5819.
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My Word!
Summer's here, and that means travel for lots of folks. Be sure to do your research when planning a trip to another country - learn the customs of tipping, major cross-cultural dos and don'ts, a few words in the native language, and what hand gestures are innocuous here and offensive elsewhere. Be a beautiful American! 