DEAR MISS MANNERS: When cutting meat at the dinner table, my wife of nearly 50 years holds her fork as though she’s stabbing someone.

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It apparently doesn’t embarrass her, but it makes me cringe inside.

I suppose I should have mentioned this a long, long time ago, but how would I even have gone about doing that? Or should I just let it ride?

GENTLE READER: After 50 years, you might let things be. Miss Manners can understand your having waited to be certain your new bride was not going to act on that violent impulse, but by now, she has had ample opportunity.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I needed to have the washer and dryer replaced in my apartment, and two maintenance workers showed up to do the work around breakfast time.

I usually make breakfast for my husband before he heads to school, but I felt uncomfortable cooking for the two of us without offering anything to the maintenance men who were there. So I declined to make breakfast because I did not want to cook for two extra people.

My husband thinks I was being silly and should have just made breakfast for us without worrying about them.

What would Miss Manners have done in this situation?

GENTLE READER: Not deprived her husband of breakfast on the grounds that others did not have the sense to have their own meals before they left for work.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I’m retired, and I volunteer four days a week at a senior center.

I assist low-income seniors with simple tasks, playing games and general socialization, and I also help serve the daily communal meal.

The employees of the organization are likely considered my supervisors, but we’re also quite friendly and I thought we’d established friendships.

I suffered a stroke recently and was hospitalized for a couple of weeks. A few of the seniors who have my phone number called and kindly expressed their healing thoughts and wishes, but no one I “work for” (the nonprofit and its employees) has expressed a thought, called or shown even a hint of caring.

I feel like I don’t want to return to my duties after healing, solely because none of them seem to miss me enough to say so. Admittedly, my feelings are hurt.

Any idea how I can pointedly, yet politely, inform them of my decision and how their behavior, or lack thereof, led me to this decision?

GENTLE READER: The problem with the all-too-common rhetoric about the company (any company) being a “family” and your co-workers being friends is that it is, as you have sadly discovered, insincere.

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Miss Manners does not mean to say that no one makes lasting friendships at work. But your expectation that friendship came with the job was unrealistic.

You are of course free not to return, but a letter explaining your reasons will be shrugged off as naive — and perhaps as evidence that you are right not to come back.

The genuine infraction is that all the people who know it is a lie continue to repeat it.

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.