Bear with me on this, please. Ann Althouse, who either has 72 hour days or is a witch, found the following comment in the latest Washington Post “Miss Manners” advice column and passed it on to her blog’s readers. I would have never seen it otherwise: I didn’t read Miss Manners (aka Judith Martin, who must be 90) even when I subscribed to the Post, and this column has over 1300 comments. I couldn’t find the comment Ann posted even using key word searches. (Side issue: I complain about traffic on EA, but the law of diminishing returns applies to blog commentary. The comments here vastly enhance the posts, but when comments get into triple figures, who has the time of inclination to read them? Well, I guess the answer is “Ann Althouse.” However Ann manages it, I’m glad she does.
The comment was in response to a sad letter to MM complaining about how single diners are treated by restaurants. The woman wrote,
“After my young husband died… I was bereft. I thought I’d never go out again, much less all alone. By the end of the first year, I forced myself to travel alone to a foreign country [Note:she identified the city as Rome, Italy in a post script].
I was planning to eat in my room to avoid the discomfort of sitting alone at a restaurant. Once again, I forced myself out to a lovely restaurant near my hotel. I dressed up nicely, did my hair and makeup, and put on a killer pair of shoes.When I walked into the place the host said “One?” I nodded. Seated at my table (they put me at a good table, not an out of the way one near the kitchen or bathroom, thankfully, which can happen to single diners).
The server looked at my face and asked me if I was okay. I told her it was my first time dining out since my husband’s death and I was finding it harder than I thought I would. I asked if I could take my meal to go. She said, “No. You deserve this night.”
She said something to the rest of the staff. I was treated like a queen for the evening. First, they brought me a glass of champagne. Then they said that, with my consent, the chef would choose my meal. Everything and everyone were wonderful. People can be kind and thoughtful. After dinner, the staff came over and thanked me for trusting them to help with this first milestone. I cried, with joy and appreciation. Because of that incredible experience, I can proudly enter a restaurant and say, “Table for one, please,” and enjoy my meal with pleasure.
Ethics Alarms 
Jack asked, “It would have been nice if the woman who was treated so well gave some publicity to the restaurant by naming it, don’t you think?”
Yes.
We actually don’t know that she didn’t do just that in places other than this particular comment.
No. It would have been utterly thoughtless and inconsiderate, like the story of the four boy scouts who helped a little old lady to cross the road. You may have missed the part where the restaurant staff asked “Then they said that, with my consent [emphasis added], the chef would choose my meal”. The same holds of your suggestion.
Oh, the four boy scouts? It took that many because she didn’t want to go*. Likewise, laying that on the restaurant without confirming that it would be OK would be thoroughly thoughtless and inconsiderate; it might open them up to all sorts of unpleasant follow up that they know to fear but we do not. I myself have suffered a lot from “helpful” people like that, e.g. one moron who tried to help me put on a jacket that I was doing my best to put on slowly so as not to tear the inner lining of the sleeve even further (yes, she didn’t know – that’s the point).
Never, ever, help without asking if it is at all possible to ask! (I admit, it might sometimes be prudent to risk helping someone who cannot ask, like someone drowning, but even then you might be making things worse, say by crowding out a trained life saver.)
* Many years ago, the British magazine Private Eye reported a story of a garbage collector who tried to help a little old lady by grabbing her rubbish and throwing it into the truck. She went berserk at having that done to her weekly shopping.
P.M.Lawrence,
So if I’m understanding you correctly, it’s your opinion to basically never help others because of possible unintended consequences if you don’t ask first.
That sounds like a 6 foot 6 inch 300 pound New Yorker nicknamed “Tiny” that I once knew that did nothing while a neighbor was beating his wife to death.
You’re free to make your own choices but that’s not the kind of world I choose to live in.
Well, either you are not understanding me correctly, maybe from not reading as far as the caveat that also came with warnings, or you are wilfully misrepresenting my position. I only raise the latter possibility, which would otherwise be uncharitable, as it seems worth warning other readers about a very dangerous slippery slope that you are advocating – knowingly or not.
Readers, that’s the start of the slippery slope. It leads to this kind of world, that he wants whether he appreciates it or not, and that C. S. Lewis warned us about:-
Remember, you favour making no exception to helping, even if you don’t have consent.
P.M.Lawrence wrote, “Well, either you are not understanding me correctly, maybe from not reading as far as the caveat that also came with warnings, or you are willfully misrepresenting my position.”
No P.M.Lawrence I’m not willfully misrepresenting your position and I read the whole thing a couple of times. I honestly got that overall impression from your comment despite your token caveat. So I got the wrong impression, it’s really not as big of a deal as you’re making it.
P.M.Lawrence wrote, “Readers, that’s the start of the slippery slope. It leads to this kind of world, that he wants whether he appreciates it or not, and that C. S. Lewis warned us about:”
I think you’re extrapolating what I wrote to complete absurdity. I think the correct Ethics Alarms inspired reply to this kind of absurd extrapolation is a simple “bite me”.
P.M.Lawrence wrote, “Remember, you favour making no exception to helping, even if you don’t have consent.”
Even though you might think that that is a reasonable interpretation of what I wrote, I certainly didn’t write and I don’t think I implied that there should be no exceptions and that most definitely wasn’t my overall intent. We should always try to think critically about our actions. I think you read something between the lines that wasn’t there.
You could have written a reply to me that was something like this, “You aren’t understanding me correctly. It wasn’t my intent to give the impression that we should basically never help others because of possible unintended consequences if you don’t ask first”, but nope you chose to extrapolate what I wrote to absurdity and read between the lines.
A brief review of our conversation shows me that I went to one extreme with replying to your comment with my overall impression of “never” and you went to the other extreme with your reading between the lines impression of “no exception” and an absurd extrapolation. It’s really clear that you and I are not doing a very good job of understanding the overall intent from each other so let’s just end this here.
By the way; that incident with “Tiny” I mentioned above actually happened, he said and I quote “don’t get involved” but I chose to put an abrupt stop to what was happening before the he killed to woman.
Oops, I didn’t reread after I reworded it.
“…before he killed the woman.”
brava alla ristorante romana!
I have a mixed opinion. I agree it would be nice, but it is understandable that she didn’t as a matter of internet safety.
Sharing personal details risks attracting unwanted attention or harassment. It sucks that this is the case, but it is unethical to ignore reality.
It is a positive act to post about a kind guesture anyways, but avoiding such attention is a conflicting responsibility.
It might have been nice, but the restaurant is a third of the way across the globe.
It would have been nice to give credit where credits is due, but it would not likely have much effect at promoting the business (if that is the purpose of giving credit).
“If you happen to be in Rome, the staff at Luigi’s is the best!”
-Jut