Dear Queenie,
When my car broke down recently some friends offered to pick me up and take me with them to church. After the service they went to a nice restaurant for lunch, which I hadn’t expected and hadn’t taken enough money with me to pay for, so I just ordered coffee. It was very embarrassing.
They kept asking me why I wasn’t eating anything, but I didn’t want to say I didn’t have enough money to pay because I’m sure they would have offered to treat me and that would have been even more embarrassing.
Queenie, shouldn’t they have told me their plans for after church?—Humiliated passenger
Dear Passenger,
It would have been helpful if they had told you their plans so you could have been properly prepared for what happened. However, you could simply have told them you had expected to be taken home right after the church service and had not brought any money with you, and would repay them for the cost of your lunch.
And if they then offered to treat you to lunch you could have accepted without embarrassment, or insisted on repaying them when they took you home.
