DEAR MISS MANNERS: Are you able to please publish a couple of quick phrases on presenting a correct toast?
Amongst millennials and Gen Z, the phrase “cheers” has turn out to be each a noun and a verb. I’ve heard “Let’s cheers to this” and “Can we do a cheers?” Watching younger individuals do that, e.g., on actuality TV, is cringeworthy.
In celebration, “cheers” needs to be an exclamation: “I’d like to propose a toast: Here’s to teaching young people manners and etiquette.” Then everybody raises a glass and exclaims, “Cheers!”
GENTLE READER: Whereas she is all the time up for grammatical struggle, Miss Manners nonetheless considers this a reasonably minor infraction. In the event you take off the “s,” “cheers” turns into “cheer,” which is each a noun and a verb. She suggests that you just faux to not hear the “s” to spare your self the cringe.
That younger persons are partaking in any formalities and celebrating each other in any respect is praiseworthy. To that, she is going to suggest her personal most popular toast: the Italian “cin cin.”
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I used to be in my workplace after I received an urge to go to the toilet.
I hate to do that at work, as a result of I work in a transformed townhouse the place the bogs are only one bathroom and one sink, like in a home. However I had no alternative.
I used to be sitting in there after I heard my boss exterior the door: “Kaitlin, are you in there?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“Mr. Warren is on the phone.” (Effectively, clearly I couldn’t speak to a consumer from that place. Think about if I’d needed to rise up to examine my desk calendar!)
“Please ask the gentleman to call back.”
“How long are you going to be in there?”
“Hard to say.”
Then a colleague walked by and began speaking to our boss, nonetheless standing exterior the door. It was like a workers assembly, besides that I had different enterprise to do. I simply prayed they didn’t hear something.
What ought to I do about this?
GENTLE READER: Discover a extra observant and discreet boss.
Barring that, Miss Manners means that weeks from now, when everybody has forgotten about this specific incident, you deliver it up in a gathering:
“Just a quick reminder. Since we are in fairly close quarters around here, I would suggest that if we are indisposed and in the bathroom, we not engage in business.”
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I carry all of my weight in my stomach. Since I’ve been 18, I’ve needed to take care of individuals asking after I’m due or whether or not it’s a boy or a lady. It all the time makes me really feel fats and unattractive.
I all the time inform them I’m not pregnant, simply fats. Then they’re terribly embarrassed, and I discover myself managing their feelings and making an attempt to make them really feel higher.
What can I say as a substitute?
GENTLE READER: Only a tight-lipped, “Is who a boy or a girl?”
Self-deprecation will not be obligatory. Nor, Miss Manners uncharacteristically assures you, is making inconsiderate strangers really feel higher.
Please ship your inquiries to Miss Manners at her web site, www.missmanners.com; to her e-mail, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or by way of postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas Metropolis, MO 64106.
