DEAR MISS MANNERS: Too often, waiters interrupt conversations between restaurant customers.
While I understand that restaurants are not the place to have private or intimate discussions, it is still extremely annoying to be cut off midsentence by questions from waiters that are hardly ever important.
I have tried ignoring them by continuing speaking or listening to my dinner companion to no avail; the waiters just come closer and repeat their intrusive questions.
What response or behavior do you suggest in such instances?
GENTLE READER: With all due acknowledgment of the burdens placed on harried waitstaff, this should not be done.
Miss Manners suggests the universal signal of wait-a-minute, which is to hold up a finger, flash a quick smile and go on talking.
(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, [email protected]; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)