jefmcg
Guru
This reminds me of something that used to drive me crazy as a child. Back then you could only contact your friends in the evening via their parents (the landline, or as we called it, the phone). There was one friend's grandfather who would lecture angrily "Is that a way for one young lady to ask to speak to another young lady?", attempting harangue me into good manners, but just making me terrified to call. The irony was that good manners are all about making someone feel welcome and comfortable - just the opposite of what he was doing.Or even "May I have".
I knew I couldn't have told him "it's very rude to correct the speech of a stranger" (and that too, would have been rude and to his mind, impertinent), but other parents' relaxed and easy phone manners taught me more about good manners than that man ever did.