Q. My wife and I have just given a summer party to which we invited around 200 people. Correction — we posted invitations to 200, 20 of whom rang up on the day to say they had not received their invitation, but could they come anyway? Now that the party is over we wonder about 30 other people who neither RSVPd nor manifested on the night. How can we find out if we have been the victims of a mass snubbing or if, more likely, the inadequacies of the west London postal system has led to these friends mistakenly thinking that we have snubbed them?
W.S., London W14
A. The postal service may well be to blame but the epidemic of discourtesy now raging means that serious hosts are having to employ chasers to solicit responses from ineffectual or inconsiderate invitees. Next time you too can employ a chaser but it is now important to personally query the non-RSVPs. Even if you establish that you were more snubbed against than snubbing, it is worth cheering up those whose invitations may not have arrived and will have otherwise been thinking of themselves as snubbees.
B. I sympathise with your recent correspondent whose nerves are tried by the ‘rolling’ news his telephone-addicted wife receives throughout the day from her friends. My own caller-display facility lets me identify callers and choose not to answer calls which I know are not urgent. The problem is that people ringing from abroad come up just as ‘International’ or ‘Unavailable’ on the display so there is no way of identifying them. Therefore I answer and the callers invariably feel disgruntled if, having established who they are, I ask if I can ring them back. I end up taking lengthy calls at times which do not suit me.
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