In article >,
"Nancy Young" > wrote:

> Lenona wrote:
> > Pretty amusing.
>
> People are funny.
>
> > http://www.buffalonews.com/life/colu...ticle325123.ec
> > e
> >
> > A proper postponement?
> >
> > Dear Miss Manners: A few weeks ago, my husband and I invited a couple
> > who are neighbors to a small cocktail party, just the four of us. They
> > were supposed to arrive at our house at 6 p.m.
> >
> > At 5 p.m. that same evening they called to ask us to postpone this
> > party until the following night. I replied no
>
> Excuse me, no?? What are you going to do, force them to come
> over? Okay, then, you can't postpone, how does cancel fit into your
> plans?

I agree. The reality in life is that shit happens. Maybe the who had an
emergency husband got a ride to work or perhaps he was working from home
and telecommuting. I work in IT and I am always on call. At any given
moment in time, I could be called into work for an emergency. Unless I
have an unavoidable personal situation that conflicts with the request,
I am expected to be there. In fact, just yesterday, I had an issue occur
at work, but I also had to make an emergency visit to the dentist at the
same time, so the work matter had to wait while I got a root canal.

One day last summer, I was out with friends celebrating a birthday. We
were dining at a nice steak house. Just as we finished our meal, I
received a call from work. I stepped out into the lobby to take the call
and it was a panicked co-worker who desperately needed my help
recovering a server with a failed hard drive. Never mind that I was the
guest of honor who's birthday was being celebrated. I had to go to work
immediately because that server fed payroll jobs that had to be
processed. That was around 7:00pm. I did not finish with the emergency
until around 5:30 the next morning. I was up all night. Believe me, the
last thing I wanted to do was interrupt my own birthday celebration to
sit with a co-worker in my office all night restoring data to his failed
disk, but that's what I had to do. Fortunately, I succeeded and all the
batch jobs that had to run that morning, ran. I would have much rather
lingered over dinner longer and went out shopping with my friends.

Fortunately, my friends know that when I make plans, its always
tentative and most of my friends work in IT, so they know the drill. As
it happens, I rarely have to cancel my plans due to work, but it does
happen maybe two or three times a year.