Minding Miss Manners by Judith Martin

Author:Judith Martin [Martin, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Published: 2020-06-01T21:42:58+00:00

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Dear Miss Manners—I received an email message from a business colleague whose parents lost all of their belongings in a flood. She sent to all of her business acquaintances a list of suggested items that we should consider buying for her parents to help them recover.

While I have all the sympathy on the earth for her parents, I’ve never seen anyone come right out and ask colleagues to buy things like this for people we’ve never met. The list contains ordinary household items, but she also has listed pretty expensive stuff like computer printers, power tools, and high-end toaster ovens. How can I respond to her without being rude?

Gentle Reader—If you want to decline, you needn’t respond, any more than you would to any other solicitation to send money. A letter of sympathy would be gracious, but Miss Manners worries that such might not be well received without the requested donation.

By no means should this be taken as an excuse to discourage charity. There are an extraordinary number of flood victims, and if you can help them or others in need, you certainly should. Miss Manners is only questioning the best way to do this.

You may want to assist people you care about. And there are reputable organizations to which you can direct your more general compassion for strangers, rather than responding randomly to whoever asks. Even the most generous people need some way of evaluating and prioritizing the torrent of pleas pouring through the Internet. This is best done when you know the individual circumstances or trust a filtering organization. Social pressure—the awkwardness of not complying with requests—should not figure into it.

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