Miss Manners: Some of my co-workers refuse to pay the potluck queen

DEAR MISS MANNERS: One co-worker likes to host office parties with themed potlucks.

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She will suggest a dish that she will cook and bring to share, such as trays of chicken wings or seafood pasta. Generally a lunch would have eight to 20 people.

As she likes to make these meat- or seafood-based dishes, she will then ask for financial contributions to pay for the ingredients and keep her own costs down. Everyone else is welcome to additionally make or bring something to share.

Co-workers aren’t happy with her asking for money and a food contribution to these lunches. They feel if they do either, that it fulfills their participation for the occasion, and that she should not be asking for money to make her dishes.

I don’t have a problem with paying her money and contributing food of my own. I’ve often even added more to have a better party, because people do love a hearty plate.

But some co-workers have refused to participate in any way because they resent her asking to cover costs for her food; they feel that she’s unjustly enriching herself on their financial contributions.

We’re talking $5 to $12 per person for contributions to office parties in general; she’s asked for $7 to $10 on a few occasions for her food. What’s the proper thing that should be happening?

GENTLE READER: Why does Miss Manners feel a nagging curiosity about your place in all this — as if you have a position of more authority in the group than you have mentioned?

She agrees with the co-workers who are refusing to participate — but not for the reasons they give.

Her belief is that if the boss wants to reward workers for a job well done, then they should either pay them more, send them home early (where they can socialize with their actual friends and family), or, if there must occasionally be an office party, pay for the refreshments out of office funds.

Not being a fan of forced socialization at work, she is even less a fan of making the workers pay for it. That one co-worker is now demanding that her co-workers increase their contributions is … grotesque.

If you ask because you are the boss — or HR — and were looking to solve the problem, you are in luck: You can pay for the party out of office funds.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When sitting at a table that can accommodate one person on each side, what is the best way for two friends to sit? Is it different for a couple?

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Miss Manners: I want to tell these parents that their children are at risk

Sitting across from each other makes conversation easier, but I have been told it is more “confrontational.”

It seems many romantic couples prefer to sit to the side of each other. Or does any of this even matter?

GENTLE READER: Assuming both people stay more or less in their own seats, Miss Manners is indifferent to whether they wish to gaze fondly into their beloved’s eyes or ear during the soup course.

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.