Do I Have to Reciprocate a Lavish Birthday Gift?

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If you are Victoria's friend this is probably what you are getting for your birthday.

If you are Victoria’s friend this is probably what you are getting for your birthday.

Dear Uncommon Courtesy,

So for my birthday, I received a gift card for Petco from my coworker for $50.00, which I think is a lot for someone I don’t know too well and have never hung out with socially. His 30th birthday is next week- do I need to spend that much on him? 

Sincerely,
Overwhelmed with Generosity

Official Etiquette:
Miss Manners says that present giving should be roughly even, but that thoughtfulness can be equivalent to monetary value. If you do not wish to exchange gifts, you can tell your friend that you would prefer to just acknowledge birthdays with good wishes.

Our Take:

Jaya: I have no idea what to do about this question, but I would not feel like it’s an obligation to get him $50 worth of anything. I will also use this as an opportunity to apologize to all my friends. after like age 20 I am such an “I’ll buy you a drink at the bar” gift friend, even to my closest.

Victoria: Hahah yeah, I hate buying birthday gifts for friends. Like, it’s such a crazy thing. Who can keep track of whether you gave them something, did they give you something, and if you do it once, is there an expectation to keep doing it?

Jaya: Exactly! Like, we all know a gift is a gift and not an obligation, but an awful lot of people treat it like one.

Victoria: Yeah. I think there is the option, in this situation, where you can say “oh this is too much, I couldn’t possibly accept it”and then they say “no, no it’s fine.” And then I think you definitely don’t have to reciprocate. I mean, since she already took it, I might give him a $10 or maaaaaaybe $20 certificate to somewhere. But seriously, only because his bday is so soon after hers. Otherwise I would say forget it.

Jaya: Yeah, and next year do not repeat.

Victoria: Definitely.

Jaya: I think some people are just gift givers. Like your family, you give gifts a lot right?

Victoria: Yes, but ONLY to immediate family. And actually, its more my mom that sends stuff to us.

Jaya: Ahhh. But yeah, I think some people are just gift givers. And really do not expect things in return.

Victoria: That’s true! And like, I make people cakes all the time, but certainly do not expect 5 different cakes for my bday.Though if you want to…

Jaya: Oh shit, you’ve thought I was an asshole this whole time!

Victoria: No! I’ve never made you a cake because we celebrate our birthdays at the same time and I have been PROHIBITED from making a cake for my own bday party.

Jaya: Ok, as long as we never stop celebrating our birthdays together, because my cakes will never be as pretty as yours.

Thank Goodness We Don’t Have to Do That Anymore: Know How to Treat Servants

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By the way, it is unlikely that your servants will become your BFFs.

Back in the day, having servants, even in a modest household, was very common as labor was very affordable and the day to day work of running a household was very, very difficult. Today, if you are in the position of having live in help, most of this is still likely to apply. I’ve sourced this information from Emily Post in 1920 and Amy Vanderbilt in the 1960s and the basics are very similar, so they are likely to hold up today as well.

Hiring Servants:

  • Interview candidates in your own home, making sure to state all the bad parts of the job as well as the good parts. Be upfront and clear about the wages.
  • Be sure to have your children present when interviewing nannies and nursemaids, as you shouldn’t hire someone who your child instantly dislikes.
  • Always be in charge during the interview- if a servant starts bossing you around from the beginning, they will always be in charge in the relationship
  • When introducing a new servant to the household, make sure to introduce them to everyone, even the men! (ed: yay, sexism!)
  • References are the standard currency of servants and withholding one is a very serious matter indeed. Always make sure you check references when hiring and offer them to departing servants.

Servants in the Home:

  • Children are called by their first names by servants. In very formal household, teens are called Master John and Miss Jane. Adults, of course, are called Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith.
  • If you can, call servants Mrs. Jones instead of Lucy, unless she prefers to be just Lucy. This is especially important for more senior servants like a housekeeper.
  • Introduce servants to guests, but don’t introduce the guest to the servant.
  • Always be polite to servants, say please and thank you.
  • For adequate service you need at least three servants: a cook, a butler (or waitress), and a housemaid. But if you can only afford one, both Post and Vanderbilt helpfully provide menus for entertaining that can be handled by one servant. (ed: no servants is unimaginable!)
  • Live in servants must be given as much independence as possible and their room should be comfortable and be a place where they can visit with a friend. The furniture should be comfortable- spend a night in your servant’s quarters to test it out!
  • In the US it is customary that the servants eat the same food as the family, except for perhaps, special delicacies. If the special foods do disappear, you can buy a locked food safe!
  • In households with minimum servants, the employers have to be more aware of fitting into the cleaning schedule and making sure they are out of the way so things can get done.

Post stresses that if you have “servant trouble” the cause is probably your poor management and poor treatment of your servants.

Examples of poor servant management are:

  • Allowing poor work to slip by, too much leniency is just as bad as too much strictness.
  • Reprimanding a servant in front of another person.
  • Reprimands for work left undone when there are more tasks than time.
  • Being distrustful: locking up all valuables, watching the servants at all times.
  • Not allowing them to have some space for themselves in the house where they can entertain friends.
  • You should know how to do all of a servant’s tasks so you can teach and direct instead of complain.
  • Be careful when servants do the household ordering- some merchants give kickbacks to servants for bringing in business and pad their bills, or they charge for things they don’t send. Always ask to see receipts!

Etiquette for Servants:

  • Always be neat and speak in a low voice.
  • Always say “Yes, ma’am/madame” or “No, sir”
  • Everything is always presented to employers on a tray.

How To Be A Respectful Traveler

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Don’t steal important monuments

We’ve already covered some points of hotel and hostel etiquette, but where you sleep is just one aspect of how you travel. If you’re one of those people who books a package tour, gets carted around in a bus and never interacts with anyone actually from the country you’re visiting, fine, keep doing what you do because you probably aren’t self-conscious about how you come off anyway. But for the rest of us, travel is an opportunity to meet new people, see new things, and understand new cultures.

The basic idea is that you need to adapt yourself to the local culture, not the other way around. Do this by researching the area. What are the tipping customs? Do you have dietary restrictions or other medical needs you need to be on top of? Can you learn some basic words in the local language? You don’t have to know everything, but you really have no excuse to not even attempt “hello” and “thank you.” Most people just appreciate the effort, and will do their best to help you out if they know you’re trying.

Also, do you need to dress differently? That last one definitely (unfortunately) applies to women. I’m going on my honeymoon to Sri Lanka and have been stocking up on light but covering clothing, since tank tops and shorts don’t really fly there. I could be all pissed about the pervasive idea that women’s bodies are inherently sexual and thus crude, and the double standard when compared to men, but I’d rather just buy some linen pants and hang out in Buddhist ruins. I’m not ready to start any revolutions yet.

Aside from knowing the rules and languages of where you’re traveling, and in general just being polite and considerate, there are also some larger political things to consider. For instance, there’s the issue of “voluntourism” and how helpful a group of well-meaning but poorly-trained westerners attempting to build houses in a remote Costa Rican village actually is. Much has been said of this, but this essay sums up the core issue well:

Our mission while at the orphanage [in Tanzania] was to build a library. Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure. It is likely that this was a daily ritual. Us mixing cement and laying bricks for 6+ hours, them undoing our work after the sun set, re-laying the bricks, and then acting as if nothing had happened so that the cycle could continue.

This really does have to do with etiquette, because when you travel, you are a guest in another country. You are welcome to explore and learn and do what you want, but like any good guest, you should be leaving the place as you found it, perhaps even better than you found it. And being rude or ignoring local customs or making people rebuild your well-intentioned charity project is not leaving it as you found it.

 

Please send us your etiquette questions! info@uncommon-courtesy.com

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How Do I Get People To Stop Nagging Me About Being Pregnant?

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1.1259286944.pregnant-barbieDear Uncommon Courtesy,
I got married almost a year ago. After being married for nearly six months, I began to get inquiries about starting a family. Now at nearly 10 months since the wedding, these inquiries have been getting frightfully frequent. They usually come from seemingly well-minded co-workers, friends and family members and have ran the gamut of “Are you pregnant?” to “Are you starting to think about having a family anytime soon?” to “Is there something you need to tell us?” to “Clock’s a tickin’!” I love kids, but my husband and I want to spend some comfortable years together  before we try to have a family. These questions have upset me to the point of tears, and I my answers of “We don’t have the money for kids” to “We’d just like to have some years to ourselves” are just not working. The point of tears usually happens after people tell me about BC failures…like it’s impossible to have a planned, wanted child.

What could I say that is not overtly assertive and argumentative to people who ask?

Sincerely,

A wanted child, who wants a wanted child.

OFFICIAL ETIQUETTE:

Miss Manners suggests treating all inquiries about family planning to a frozen smile and silence.

OUR TAKE:
Victoria: Want to ask people about being pregnant? Don’t.

Jaya: This is straight-up horrifying to me. The letter writer has every right to be assertive and argumentative, so she’s a saint for still trying to be nice.

Victoria: Asking if someone is pregnant is suuuuuuuuper rude. You should not assume someone is pregnant unless you see a baby coming out of them. (Except on the subway? I don’t know how that works). But for the first instance from someone asking are you starting a family soon….is kind of a normal chit chat sort of thing, so I don’t think it’s THAT rude. It’s only annoying because everyone asks. I got tired of being asked my major in college too.

Jaya: I’m going to have to disagree. Being asked about your major can be annoying, but it’s nowhere near as personal. Unless someone brings up their own family planning ideas, or you are really really close friends, I don’t think multiple inquiries about pregnancy is normal conversation.

Victoria: If someone asks repeatedly, you can shut it down by saying, “as I’ve said before, we aren’t there yet and probably won’t be for a while.” And keep getting more curt the more someone asks.

Jaya: Yeah. Or even if you don’t want to explain your plans/non-plans for kids (which you don’t have to), say something like “I know you’re just curious, but I feel that’s something very personal and I’d rather not discuss it.” And you can ramp up to “It’s none of your business so please stop asking” if they continue. Because saying things like “we can’t afford it” or “we want to travel” just leaves it open ended.

Victoria: And I mean, I hope everyone else would have something more interesting to talk about…but…people don’t realize that everyone is asking you the same question.

Jaya: Even if people have decided this is normal chitchat, how do you have the right to know?

Victoria: You don’t. But you don’t have the right to know what I’m making for dinner tonight or what I did over the weekend either.

Jaya: True, but asking that has nothing to do with your reproductive health.

Victoria: But I don’t think people really see it as your reproductive health, you know? Having kids is so normal.

Jaya: That’s a big problem! We treat it that way, but I think that’s so unfortunate. It’s really personal! Some people don’t want to have kids. Some people CAN’T get pregnant! How are they going to feel if you’re asking them day in and day out? Do they have to divulge that they have these issues to get you to shut up?

Victoria: That’s so true! I just don’t think a lot of people see it that way unless they are in the middle of it.

Jaya: This is why we exist. They should see it that way.

Victoria: You can definitely deflect, though, and maybe with time people will start to realize it. The ones we mentioned above are good for friends and coworkers, though if it’s your family, you can say something more like “We aren’t having kids for X years/don’t want kids/aren’t sure, but trust me, you will be the first to know.” And then you can say “please stop asking” if they continue.

Jaya: I also totally support just pretending you have a non-functioning uterus and going into really intense detail about your medical history and making everyone who asks feel like shit.

Victoria: Hahaha oh my god. Yeah, I almost think that people have to have a serious talking to by someone who is having difficulties with kids, or who is a raging-kid-free person before they realize they are being too nosy. You probably only need to get screamed at once before you stop asking people.

Jaya: I hope so.

Victoria: It probably doesn’t help that so many people WANT to talk about their kid plans and engagement and wedding hopes/plans/fantasies.

Jaya: Ugh yeah. As much as I don’t want to be asked about it, I also don’t want to hear it!

And now, we present some cut-and-paste “overly assertive and aggressive” wording that you can use to deflect these questions, should you need! Some of these may have been used by one or more authors in real-life situations.

  • “If I am pregnant, you’ll have to drive me to the nearest abortion clinic.”
  • “If you want a baby so bad, use your own uterus.”
  • *glares*
  • “Why, do I look pregnant?”

Thank Goodness We Don’t Have To Be Constantly Worried About Walking

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These pigs seem to have it figured out

These pigs seem to have it figured out

There are few places in life where you really need to worry about how you come off, and one of those instances is plain ol’ walking around. As long as you don’t bump into people or disrupt sidewalk traffic, who could possibly judge you? People who wrote etiquette books in 1893, that’s who.

In Etiquette of Good Society, Lady Gertrude Elizabeth Campbell has a whole section dedicated to walking, writing that “servants can be distinguished by the short abrupt steps they take, so doubtless a true lady can be discovered by her manner of walking.” This does not bode well for me. She goes on to quote a Frenchman who wrote about walking in the 13th century:

“Do not trot or run, and as you walk look straight before you with eyelid slow and fixed, looking forward to the ground at five toises (thirty feet) before you not looking at or turning your eyes to man or woman who may be to your right or left, nor looking upwards, nor changing your look from one place to another, nor laughing, nor stopping to speak to anybody.”

Lady Campbell expands on that notion, saying for women “let her step be firm and her gait steady, let her not walk in too great a hurry, nor yet drag slowly along. Let her arms move with the natural motion of the body, they must neither swing to and fro nor dangle by the side.” You know, just act natural. You know how easy that is once you start thinking about it? Right. Moving on.

“A man’s walk should differ from a woman’s,” explains Lady Campbell, “in that he should take a longer step, but steadiness of carriage and firmness of tread are as necessary in the one as in the other. Horace Walpole is described as always entering a room with knees bent and feet on tiptoe as if afraid of a wet floor, but we are told that this affected style was quite a la mode in his day.” Men: bring back the Horace Walpole.

If worrying about the way your body looked while you walked wasn’t enough, you also had to worry about what to do when you encountered other walking people. Here are a few tips from American Etiquette and Rules of Politeness by Walter Raleigh Houghton:

  • “Do not try to ‘show yourself off’ upon the streets. The true secret of street deportment is to do so as nearly as other people do.” [STREET DEPORTMENT???]
  • “No one, while walking in the streets, should fail, either through carelessness or willful neglect, to recognize acquaintances.”
  • “Persons walking together on the street should keep step.” [Still accurate]
  • “A gentleman walking with a lady may take either side of the walk, but he will always give her the preferred side or that on which she will be least exposed to crowding, usually the side toward the wall.”
  • “Look in the way you are going both to avoid collisions and because it is bad manners to stare in any other direction. If you chance to see an acquaintance at a window you should bow but by all means do not stare into houses. Avoid looking full into the faces of strangers whom you meet especially of ladies.” [Did this really need to be said?]
  • “No gentleman is ever guilty of standing in public places and offensively gazing at ladies as they pass.”

So go walk freely and un-self-consciously!