Nitpicky Eaters
Hosting a work lunch, plus advice on guest laundry and baby showers.
I recently arranged a going-away lunch for a co-worker, paid for by our employer. The co-worker selected her favorite restaurant. Several of the attendees expressed dissatisfaction with the menu. When the food arrived, one diner sent back his meal because it was not prepared to his instructions. The rest of us started eating, yet it was awkward, with the honored guest apologizing for her restaurant selection and the rest of the attendees trying to offer the lunchless person food from their plates. As the quasi-host, how should I have handled this? Should we have achieved consensus on the restaurant beforehand?
A.S. in Jamaica Plain
It would have been nice for everyone to have agreed on a restaurant, but you didn't commit any error by consulting only the guest of honor on her preference. The purpose of the lunch was to celebrate her, after all. As long as your departing co-worker was pleased with the food, the other lunchgoers should have kept their complaints to themselves. Adulthood brings with it many privileges, such as being able to drive and stay up late at night. It also brings its attendant burdens, such as not being allowed to whine "This is gross!" at the table.
If some misfortune had befallen the restaurant and the food was dreadful in some way that even the guest of honor recognized, it could have been handled as an amusing incident. Mildly awful shared experiences inspire camaraderie and nostalgia. My husband and I have gone to Greece a couple of times with friends, and despite all the excellent meals we've had there, the one we remember and laugh about to this day was that inedible roast lamb - which I'm sure was goat, and old goat, at that - in a Kardamyli taverna.
In either case, the important thing about the luncheon was not the food, it was the chance to celebrate and wish a colleague well. The group could have ignored the inadequacies of the food or made it a subject for convivial amusement. The best thing you could have done as de facto host would have been to encourage your co-workers to adopt a more laissez-faire attitude and concentrate their attentions where they belonged, on the guest of honor.
When staying overnight at a friend's or relative's home when the owners aren't there, do we bring the used bedsheets home to wash and then return them? Should we wash them there with their laundry? Or should we leave the sheets in the owners' clothes basket for them to wash with their next load? They usually insist we follow the last option, but that seems rude.
L.S. in Winthrop
It isn't rude to leave the sheets in your absent friends' laundry basket, especially if that was their request. People often prefer to take care of their own household chores in their own way. Washing the sheets in their washing machine and leaving them folded on the bed is a nice thing to do - but do leave a note telling the absent hosts that the sheets have been washed, or they may launder them again. There's no need to take the sheets back to your own washing machine, and doing so risks their return being delayed by some circumstance or other.
Recently I went to a baby shower for my sister's daughter-in-law and was chatting very quietly with a family member. My sister gave me a dirty look and said rather loudly, "Let's all be quiet and watch [the mom-to-be] open her presents." Of course, I shut up, and there was pin-drop silence for the rest of the present-opening, except for the requisite "oohs" and "ahs." Is this churchlike quiet while a guest opens gifts something new?
K.N. in Beverly
Oh, stop acting as if you're making a dispassionate anthropological inquiry about manners and morals when it's obvious you're really irritated with your sister for calling you out in front of other people. If you're angry with her, have a nice heart-to-heart, or wait until she commits some faux pas in public and get your own back, or whatever it is you and your sister do to resolve your disputes. Most siblings have developed time-honored methods to soothe - or escalate - conflict, and I wouldn't dream of interfering.
At a shower, guests are expected to maintain a reasonable silence as the gifts are opened. Having a baby is scary, you see. Parents-to-be are worried about birthing complications and autism and saving for college and peanut allergies and the terrible twos. The shower, in addition to providing practical goods, also provides a time and space in which the soon-to-be parents can turn off all those worries and think only about how incredibly cute their baby will look in the knit cap with bunny ears and the hours of delight he or she will have teething on Elmo.
Hence, guests are supposed to be mostly quiet, expressing only such sentiments as admiration for the gifts, the delightful appropriateness of said gifts for this particular baby, the ingenuity and diversity of the baby-paraphernalia market, and so on. Of course, definitions of "mostly quiet" and "reasonable silence" are something on which people may differ. You and your sister did, and sisters know how to handle their differences better than I could advise, so go do it.
My Word!
As we approach moving season, I urge readers to revive the custom of dropping in on new neighbors with some lemonade or a plate of cookies. It may be old-fashioned, but it's neighborly, and good payback for the fine entertainment of getting to ogle all their stuff spread out on the pavement.
Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a Cambridge-based writer with a PhD in psychology.
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