Miss Manners: Cigarette smoker shocks fellow guest

Washington Post

6 hours ago

Dear Miss Manners: At a dinner party, my companion quietly excused herself after the meal to smoke a cigarette. She went outside, over our nonsmoking hostess's protestations that inside was fine.
As I escorted my friend outside, I heard a fellow guest, the wife of a mutual acquaintance, shriek, 'What? She SMOKES?' in a tone that would have been appropriate only if my companion had excused herself to murder people or purchase heroin. I ignored it, but I felt like I should have said something.
Is this kind of behavior going to become conventionally accepted as smoking is increasingly stigmatized?
One may have health concerns for those close to you who smoke — or for yourself, if people smoke around you — but there are legitimate ways to express those concerns. The case you describe fits neither.
This does not, however, entitle you to borrow your companion's cigarette so that you can return to the dinner table and put it out in the rude guest's entrée. Miss Manners suggests you tell your smoking companion that you are sorry for the rudeness shown her — and be grateful that at least the perpetrator was insecure enough to frame it as a loud stage whisper rather than a full-throated lecture to your companion's face.
Dear Miss Manners: I've been given a budget to take some out-of-town folks to dinner the day before a conference. I emailed an invitation to everyone, and received back a lot of replies indicating that they were accepting — and bringing a spouse.
I was a little surprised. Now I'm over budget, and I think I'm in trouble. Is this really my fault? Did I not word the invitation properly?
I'm at a loss for how to word an invite without sounding like I'm assuming they could bring someone unless I told them not to. What should I do next year — demand the budget be expanded to cover extra people, just in case?
Where is your boss in all this?
Miss Manners asks because, while she is happy to get you out of this mess, she wants you to understand that this is a business operations issue, like the other hundreds you face every year.
You are not entertaining these people because you don't have enough work during the day, nor because these people are your friends, nor because it is your idea of a good time. You are doing it because someone believes that it is in the business's interests that these customers/clients/employees be made to feel welcome while attending the conference.
In formulating the budget, no one thought to include spouses. With the benefit of experience, this was a mistake in judgment, as it leaves behind spouses who have made the trip and thought to participate in after-hours events.
Rather than demanding anything, you should be asking what your boss feels is of most value. Is it better to incur the added expense of inviting spouses, to incur the cost of displeasing these people, or to drop the preconference meal?
You are hoping there is a fourth option — to convince these people to attend happily without their spouses — but you already know there is not.
New Miss Manners columns are posted Monday through Saturday on washingtonpost.com/advice. You can send questions to Miss Manners at her website, missmanners.com. You can also follow her @RealMissManners.
© 2025 Judith Martin