To close out my otherwise slow day, I decided to do a little web surfing, and I came across a Miss Manners column from last October.

In it, a 60-year-old gentleman wrote:

[Men] don’t like [wedding and baby showers], and we don’t want to go to them. We all complain about it among ourselves, but none of us has the testosterone-makers to tell the women at the office to leave us off the guest list.

How do we get the message out?

Here’s a segment of Miss Manners’ response with which I wholeheartedly agree (emphasis mine):

Make it a workplace issue. The case you should make is that personal celebrations (which includes birthdays as well as marriages and births) should not be celebrated in the office. Unlike retirement or promotion parties, they do not relate to work matters and should be celebrated with friends on their own time. Colleagues who have become friends will presumably want to be involved, but those with merely a working relationship should not be conscripted.

I’m in the midst of a similar situation.