The Vine: April 18, 2001
Sarah,
This is more of a hindsight-type advice asking, but here goes. I’ve known “Cindy” for a number of years, and she was always a fun friend to hang around with. Quite a few years ago, however, I began to spend less and less time around her because of the way she treated people;
mostly people like waiters, cab drivers, fast food workers, et cetera. She would get downright nasty about the littlest of things, and I decided I had to distance myself from her, as did other friends of hers. Well, she got married and had kids and generally seemed to be a changed person. She made contact, and we’ve re-established our friendship.
Recently, I was invited to travel to celebrate someone’s ninetieth birthday (totally on Cindy’s dime —
she’s also quite wealthy now) and I accepted. Everything was going great until brunch one day. The waitress brought the carafe of coffee and everyone’s cup, except for — you guessed it — Cindy’s. She jumped up and snatched a cup from another table and, as a different waitress was passing by, loudly announced that the other waitress was an imbecile. I’m trying to become one with my chair and the staff is obviously telling each other what a…um…mean person Cindy is. They are all staring at her with little daggers and I’m sitting there with my mouth shut, because I know how pointless it will be to even mention anything to Cindy. Plus, if I mentioned anything to her, there could be the very real potential of the rest of the trip becoming quite tense. The waitress, who was rather soft-spoken, did come by and tell her “sorry I forgot your coffee cup” and then kept moving right along. I actually considered trying to find a moment where I could slip away and make apologies for her behavior to the staff, but I never did. If I had and she had found out, well, it wouldn’t have been pretty.
Should I have made an attempt to talk to the staff? It just kills me to see people treated this way and I really hate myself for not standing up to this kind of behavior. This was the only incident during the whole time that caused me distress. Should I send a letter to the hotel or just get over it?
Walkin’ on Eggshells
Dear Eggshells,
Don’t bother sending a letter to the hotel. The damage is done, and it’s not yours to fix.
But it’s pretty pathetic that you’d apologize to a waitress for something that you didn’t even do rather than confront Cindy about her nasty treatment of those in the service industry. She needs to hear, from you, that you don’t like it when she flares up at “the help” — she can do as she pleases on her own time, but around you, she has to make nice, or you’ll cut her out of your life…again. Make that “again” clear. She needs to get that.
Let me tell you a little story. I went shopping with my grandmother this one time in my early teens, and when Grandma and I got to the front of the line, the cashier mispunched a price and had to void the return, and I rolled my eyes a lot and sighed really pointedly and generally acted huffy and impatient. My grandmother waited patiently, told the cashier to take her time, smiled sweetly at the cashier, smiled sweetly at me, and wished the cashier a good day, but as soon as we got out of the store, Grandma chewed me out so thoroughly that I looked like gristle ten minutes later, finishing with, “Bad manners don’t make you better than anyone, young lady.” I remember that primarily because that’s the most pissed off I ever saw my grandmother, but still…she made her point.
There’s no need for that shit. Tell Cindy so, in those words. If she blows you off, well, her loss.
Tags: etiquette friendships
