Miss Manners: I give unsolicited advice to companies I serve

Sometimes I hear, “Nobody else mentioned that,” which I find condescending. Or when asked about safety measures I am told: “There has never been an incident”, which I find very illogical. I’ve never had a fire in my house or been in a car accident, but I use smoke alarms and seat belts.

I believe if there’s a problem it should be investigated – like checking the temperature, or checking the decibels if I mention it’s extremely cold or extremely loud – rather than telling me I’m the only one with the complaint . There is never a simple acknowledgment or acknowledgment of my concerns.

And this is unhappy. Miss Manners may sympathize with an establishment receiving conflicting feedback on subjective criteria, but these responses suggest that your responses are not consistent.

Your response to such remarks should be, “Thank you. I’ll discuss it with management.” Whether you actually do this or not depends entirely on your own equally subjective criteria.

Dear Ms. Manners: About 15 years ago I gave my niece a ring. It was a ring that my grandfather (her great-grandfather), an immigrant farm worker, found. He gave it to my mother and she gave it to me when I was 15. It’s a 1918 class ring from my alma mater and I wore it for many years.

I gave it to my niece for her wedding; it was “something old” to her. My niece has since divorced this husband and is remarried to a family.

I never saw the ring again. She’s not wearing it and I really regret giving it away. Assuming she still has the ring, is there a way to reclaim it? I don’t want to hurt her, but the ring has tremendous sentimental value to me.

Did your niece divorce the ring together with the ex-husband? Because other than that, there’s no reason to believe those two events were related – and the ring is still rightfully hers.

Miss Manners instead suggests that you remember it fondly in front of her and her children. Tell them about their great-great-grandfather’s legacy, adding, “Perhaps one day your mother will pass the ring on to you, as I did to her. It’s such an important symbol of our family history.” And then you watch as your niece quickly struggles to produce it.

New Miss Manners columns are published Monday through Saturday washingtonpost.com/advice. You can send questions to Miss Manners on her website, missmanners.com. You can also follow her @RealMissManners.