You made a commitment to drive, but the weather turned bad. Is it impolite to cancel?

Q. Isn’t common sense and caring about what might happen to others a part of good manners?

I was supposed to drive a couple of my fellow girlfriends to a birthday party on a night recently when we had some really bad weather. I decided I didn’t feel safe driving myself, much less with other people in my car, so I texted them and canceled.

You would have thought I committed a crime! Each one texted me back telling me how unhappy they were with me -- and not in such nice words. I decided not to respond so now they haven’t spoken (texted) me since. Am I supposed to apologize?

A. You are correct in that being concerned about others and making common-sense decisions are definitely parts of good manners and being a good friend, as well, I might add.

You made the correct decision and regardless of how inappropriately they responded and are now treating you, you do not owe them an apology.

Hopefully, they will apologize to you soon, and if they do not, it is time for you to spend time with a different group of girlfriends.

Q. My daughter is dating a very nice young man; however, he never seems to be on time to pick her up for a date.

We invited him for dinner over the holidays and he was almost 30 minutes late for that. It’s not that he has a demanding job of some kind with irregular hours or overtime hours, so I told my daughter she needs to put her foot down now or she should stay up in her room for 20 minutes or more when he comes late, so he wakes up.

My husband is ready to meet him at the door soon and explain to him what it means to be on time and how inconsiderate he is by continually being late. I don’t think that is a good idea, do you?

A. No, regardless of the fact that this young man is totally inconsiderate, it is not a good idea for your husband to get involved.

If your daughter is old enough to date, she is old enough to politely tell this young man that being late is being disrespectful to her and, if he wants to continue seeing her, he needs to make the extra effort and be on time.

Q. My husband and I were out to dinner recently and we were seated in a booth, across from each other. We had removed our coats and put them on the seat with us.

As we were looking at the menus, a group of customers, including a couple of little children were seated in a booth behind us. Somehow, as one of the females removed her coat, it landed on my head.

She did immediately apologize and removed it, but she then put it on the back of my seat just a few inches from my shoulder. Then she added the coats of the two little children. I guess I could have put up with that, but then one of the small children decides to stand up and lean over the back of my seat.

Of course, the coats then fell on top of my coat which I had placed next to me. The female didn’t seem to notice what happened, so I turned my head around, excused myself and politely told her her coats were now in our booth and began handing them to her to help her.

She grabbed them and began telling me what a crab I was, that the coats weren’t hurting anything at all in my seat since her booth was full and she didn’t have anywhere to put them.

I couldn’t believe what was happening and I sat there kind of dumbfounded as my husband got up, found the manager and asked him to ask these people to keep their coats in their own booth.

He did so very politely and that did not go over very well either because they refused to move the coats and said we were being insensitive. I guess we could have continued to sit there, but the manager turned to us and apologized and immediately asked us if we would like to move to another booth on the other side of the restaurant.

We did so but were embarrassed as everyone was watching because this lady was really loud. I would say she was very ill-mannered or were we being insensitive?

A. I am sorry you had to encounter this very uncomfortable situation.

You were not being insensitive. This lady was not only ill-mannered, she was obnoxious.

There is a saying that you can’t fix “stupid.” I would add to that: You can’t fix loud and obnoxious either.

Thank goodness for the manager who offered to move you to another booth, because it does not sound like this situation was going to get any better.