ArcaMax

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a college student who lives in the dormitories on campus. The hallways are average-sized -- about 5 feet wide -- and are never crowded, though residents often have conversations in the hall.

Often, two or more people will be leaning on opposite walls, making it impossible to go around the conversation. I always walk through the opening, which is wide enough to go through without coming in contact with either party, and I say "excuse me" to both for interrupting them.

Is this proper etiquette, or is there a more polite way to go down the hall?

GENTLE READER: Your solution is proper. But it does leave Miss Manners racking her brains for any other possible solution that would not involve climbing gear or coming into closer contact with the floor than might be desirable.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was always taught that one's bread plate is placed to the left. Whenever I am with a large group at a table at a wedding (or another function), at least one person always takes the bread plate to their right. Their neighbors then follow suit, eventually meeting the side of the table using the left plate, leaving someone without one.

I usually just quietly go without bread if I'm the stranded guest, and I don't really get upset by it. But this seems like such a basic element of table manners that I can't believe so many people don't know it.

Can you please weigh in, just for public education, assuming I'm right?

GENTLE READER: You are right. The good news is that most dinner tables are not flush to the wall. If diners are evenly spaced around the edges, then once everyone has, incorrectly, grabbed the plate to the right, the unused plate will be found to your right. All that will then remain will be to clear space to the left for your plate -- and seeing if there is any butter left.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a neighbor who texts me on a fairly regular basis, asking me for all kinds of different things -- usually food items.

She is not poor; she seems to go out multiple times a day and has delivery trucks at her house daily. I am not sure why she can't make her own grocery runs, as we live very close to multiple stores.

If I respond that I don't have whatever she is looking for, she usually replies, "That's OK, I found something else to use," as if it is my fault she doesn't have something in her house.

It is very irritating, to say the least! This is a neighbor who, when she is out of the house, is more interested in her phone than in talking to my husband or me. I have blocked her in the past, but am not sure this is the right thing to do.

GENTLE READER: What she is doing only works if you are responding "in real time" -- as one apparently says these days -- which is not yet a requirement of being a good neighbor.

If you take a long time to respond to these texts, she will stop sending them.

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(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, gentlereader@missmanners.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

Copyright 2025 Judith Martin

COPYRIGHT 2025 JUDITH MARTIN