Perpetual Change

Tact

While reading in Harper's the other day, it mentioned that politeness (and I will have to go back and check sources on this anecdote), is when a man opens the door to the bathroom to find a fully naked woman and quickly closing the door, says "excuse me, madam." Tact is when he closes the door and says, "excuse me, sir." In this white lie, he lets the woman think that he has seen so little not to have identified her as a woman.

The other night at dinner, at a very nice restaurant, I removed my napkin from the bread plate to find a dying fly underneath. Not wanting to cause the scene, nor use the dirty plate, I replaced it with the one across the table, but left the fly visible. When the waiter came, instead of removing the whole place setting (as would be normal when a diner is alone), or noticing the fly, he only removed the other place setting's glasses. After he neglected to notice after bringing bread, taking a wine order, or bringing the first course, I got tired of pretending not to watch the flies death throes, and asked politely for him to remove the plate along with my empty soup bowl. What would have been the tactful thing to do?

Then another day, I overheard someone respond to the request for a piece of gum with "sorry, I only have two left." I was a bit flabbergasted. Obviously, the polite thing would have been to share. Would the tactful thing been to lie and say you were all out?

posted by jjs @ 3:05 PM