YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
Dear Mary.. .
Your correspondent asks how to avoid sec- onding an unsavoury candidate for mem- bership of his club (10 September). The standard procedure is to say that you already have a candidate on the waiting-list and are barred by the rules from putting up another. No one will check this.
`Thespian, London WC2 A. Thank you for contributing this tradi- tional solution.
Q. Regarding telephone etiquette (10 September), I have another problem. What should you do when someone who is not a friend gets his secretary to ring and then leaves you hanging on until he is ready to talk? You cannot just hang up if business Is involved. Consequently, you are slightly humiliated at the start of your eventual conversation. What do you suggest, Mary?
A. C., Ladbroke Road, London W11 A. As soon as one of these nuisance calls comes through, click the phone on your desk onto the vulgar 'speaker box' facility and carry on with your normal activities. When you hear the secretary say, 'I'm putting Lord X through now', wait until you hear his voice, then swivel your face away from the speaker box and shout, 'Oh, hello! Just hang on a minute, I'm just putting a book back in my shelves.' Seven or so sec- onds should elapse before you have the courtesy to switch off the speaker box and pretend to have returned to your desk.
Q. I often work at the window of my flat in Beaufort Street, Chelsea, and like occasion- ally to stare out of it in a dreamy way. However, almost every time I look out of the window I seem to see a man who lives opposite me just opening the gate to his basement flat and going down the stairs to it. For some reason I find this terribly annoying. The sight of him distracts me, and I become angry wondering why he is going in and out of his flat so often each day. What can I do to stop him? I have no idea who he is or what he does.
M. W, Beaufort Street, London SW3 A. I sympathise with you over this appalling annoyance. Why not ask a friend to stand outside the man's flat and say, 'Can I help you?' as he approaches. He will reply, 'No, thank you. I live here.' Your friend can inform him pleasantly that she is a member of the local Neighbourhood Watch commit- tee and that someone has rung reporting `suspicious' behaviour, in that a man has been seen going in and out of your base- ment flat far too often for it not to be suspi- cious, but actually you rather fit the description of that man'. If her approach is agreeable enough, he may warm to her overtures and explain himself. Once you have learned the reason for his jack-in-the- boxing, you may cease to project onto him your self-consciousness about staring vapid- ly out of the window so often.
Mary Killen
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