Miss Manners: I’m irritated by drivers who leave their car at the pump

Plus: Our houseguest's persistent requests make me disinclined to accede.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I frequent a gas station that has four sets of pumps (with nozzles on both sides), a convenience store/coffee shop, plenty of parking away from the pumps, and designated handicapped spaces right near the door.

I regularly observe drivers pull their cars up to the pumps, get out, go into the store, come back out, get into their cars and leave — without pumping any gas. Meanwhile, there are cars lined up waiting for a pump.

For reasons I cannot explain, this behavior really irritates me. Are we so lazy that we can’t walk the extra 30 feet from a parking space on the side of the station, instead of blocking a pump because it’s closer to the door?

GENTLE READER: Probably. Even though surely everyone knows that inconveniencing others — by tying up a resource you are not using — is obviously discourteous.

Irritating as it is, you cannot redirect it. Bad things happen when one walks into oncoming traffic.

Miss Manners can already imagine what is heading her way: people intent on justifying the behavior. “There wasn’t anyone waiting for the pumps when I went in,” they may say, or, “It’s also a parking space, and that’s what I was using it for.” “I was there first.” “I have a weak bladder and I had to get to the bathroom urgently.”

She hopes that she will not see you approaching in the other direction, this answer in hand, bent on rudely accosting the next transgressor.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My fiance and I will be hosting two friends in our new home. We have one guest bedroom, and plan to set up the other person on an air mattress in our living room.

Both soon-to-be-guests know the situation. One of them has been repeatedly texting us, adamantly requesting, and even trying to guilt us into saving the guest bedroom for her.

We were initially planning on giving her the room, but quite frankly, I’m so annoyed now that I’d rather give it to our other friend.

What is the proper etiquette when you’re going to be a guest at another’s home? Is it acceptable to demand a particular room?

GENTLE READER: Although she sympathizes with your plight, Miss Manners cannot help noticing that you did this to yourself.

Telling your guests that one of them will be sleeping on the floor mattress — without specifying which one — was bound to leave both feeing like contestants on a desert-island survival program.

Ideally, you would have made a defensibly objective determination from the start: “Jasper is going to have the baby with him, so we think he will need the guest room.”

Now, you will simply have to choose and ask the other to be understanding. And, as you already suspect, unfair as it may be, you will likely get less resistance to sleeping in the living room from the silent friend.

Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.