Miss Manners: If it ain’t broke …

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a number of friends I regularly meet for meals out, as well as for friends’ birthdays. We’ve been friends for going on 40 years and first began socializing after college, when all of us were starting our careers, paying off loans and living on shoestring budgets.

Decades later, we still keep up the tradition of paying for our own meals, even on occasions such as birthdays. The group always covers the check of someone celebrating a birthday, but we don’t consider these gatherings to be occasions where a “host” pays. Someone will just send the group a text saying, “It’s Bob’s birthday on Tuesday, so where should we meet?”

If, for example, we celebrate with a cookout in someone’s yard, we all happily chip in for the groceries.

Are we violating any principles of etiquette by continuing to gather on these terms? We’re all still happy with the arrangements, and for us, it’s the company that matters rather than protocol around picking up the tab.

GENTLE READER: You have all been friends for 40 years, your system works, you’re having fun, everything is going fine – so are you seriously asking Miss Manners to barge in and spoil it all?

Why would you want to do that?

Perhaps because you have been hearing of the prevalence of bait-and-switch entertaining, where people issue what seem to be hospitable invitations – and then, after these are accepted, they spring the requirement that the guests must cater or pay. Yes, Miss Manners has been trying to squelch it.

But it is the deceit involved that makes it wrong. There is nothing bad about people deciding to go out together and pay their own way, or getting together for a cooperative meal, where each contributes food.

But there would be something mean about an outsider’s condemning their enjoyment.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it considered necessary to write notes of sympathy about a death on cards specially designed for the purpose? I have given up on finding cards that are acceptable and instead use cards with flowers printed on the front, writing my message inside.

I will be interested in your thoughts. I can even imagine that you may have a suggestion on how I could comfortably change my practice.

GENTLE READER: Not only comfortably, but while also saving money and effort.

Letters of condolence are serious letters that do not require printed embellishments of any kind. It is peculiar to think that a mass stamped expression – “Sympathy,” or in the case of letters of thanks, “Thank you” – is better than the personal, handwritten word. Rather, it looks a bit cheesy, as if one merely reached for the standard response instead of writing from the heart.

So Miss Manners suggests you save yourself a search for pre-printed matter, get out a plain piece of paper (or one with just your name and/or address), and express some personal sympathy to the bereaved.

Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com.