Miss Manners: If I offer to pay for wine, and my guest orders something else, do I still need to pay?
DEAR MISS MANNERS: While traveling abroad on a group tour, I invited three travel companions to share a bottle of wine with me, and they agreed. None of us were teetotalers.
As the waiter poured for us, one lady refused the wine and ordered a soda. Was I obligated to pay for the soda? I did, but if she had decided on a cocktail instead of the wine, what would my obligation have been?
GENTLE READER: Obligation is a strong word, but it was a reasonable presumption that you were treating your companions to a round of drinks, not just that one particular bottle of wine. That your friend deviated from the plan is less of an assault on protocol than you make it out to be.
Paying the nominal cost for her soda — which she might have ordered for any number of reasons: a pending work call, say, or a propensity to headaches from that type of wine — was the gracious thing to do. Getting her a cocktail, if she preferred, would have likewise been kind, although the added expense might have prompted her to offer to pay.
In either case, real or imagined, Miss Manners thinks the cost of accommodating your friend’s changed mind could hardly be greater than that of hurting the friendship and maintaining a grudge.
And she trusts that they will treat you for the next round.
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(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)
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