When a Holiday Shopping Line Turns into a Manners Lesson

Holiday shopping season has a special talent for turning ordinary errands into social experiments, and The Washington Post’s long-running Miss Manners column just found its latest case study in a cosmetics-store line gone awkward. A reader refused to “hold” a stranger’s place in a slow-moving queue and was promptly branded a “Grinch” for enforcing their own boundary. The column, “Miss Manners: Fellow shopper accused me of being a ‘Grinch,’” isn’t just about one cranky interaction—it’s a neat snapshot of modern etiquette, emotional labor, and the unspoken rules of public space.


Crowded cosmetics store with customers waiting in line near a display
Crowded beauty and cosmetics stores are a reliable setting for holiday-season etiquette dilemmas.

Below, we’ll break down the scenario, how Miss Manners handled it, and what it says about our evolving expectations for kindness, boundaries, and basic line etiquette in 2020s retail culture.


The Setup: A Busy Cosmetics Store, a Slow Line, and a Big Ask

The letter writer describes standing in a long, slow-moving line at a cosmetics store—almost certainly the kind of chain where holiday shoppers are juggling last-minute gifts, reward points, and a basket full of “it was by the register, so I grabbed it” minis. The woman behind them asks for a favor: could the letter writer save her place in line while she goes back to retrieve an item an employee forgot to give her?

The key tension is simple but loaded:

  • The request is framed as a small kindness: just “hold my spot.”
  • The favor comes with risk: if the line speeds up, the letter writer may be dragged into conflict with people behind them.
  • The stakes feel low—but the emotional pressure is high.

When the letter writer declines, the other customer responds by accusing them of being a “Grinch,” weaponizing the season’s language of cheer against someone who simply doesn’t want to manage a stranger’s logistics.


What Miss Manners Actually Says: Kindness vs. Obligation

Judith Martin—writing as Miss Manners—has always positioned etiquette as a shield, not a weapon. The goal is to make social life smoother, not to guilt strangers into service. In this case, she sides firmly with the letter writer: you are not obligated to take responsibility for a stranger’s place in line.

You are allowed to be polite without becoming a project manager for the entire line.

That paraphrases the core spirit of Miss Manners’s advice: etiquette is about how you decline, not about being forced to say yes. You may choose to help—but that doesn’t mean someone else gets to shame you when you don’t.

In classic Miss Manners fashion, the column leans into a few key principles:

  1. No conscription into unpaid social labor. A stranger can ask for a favor, but they cannot draft you into emotional or social work just because you happen to be standing nearby.
  2. Polite refusal is still polite. Saying “I’m sorry, I’d rather not be responsible for that” is within the bounds of good manners—no matter how the other person reacts.
  3. “Grinch” isn’t an argument. Holiday language doesn’t turn a favor into a duty. It just dresses up pressure as morality.
People waiting in line at a store checkout counter
Lines are a simple system—first come, first served—until social expectations and favors start layering on top.

The “Grinch” Label and the Pressure to Perform Holiday Cheer

Calling someone a “Grinch” isn’t just an insult—it’s a cultural shorthand. Thanks to How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (in book, animation, and Jim Carrey live-action form), “Grinch” signals:

  • Someone who ruins other people’s holiday joy.
  • Someone who is cold, withholding, or selfish.
  • Someone who needs to “learn the meaning of Christmas.”

That framing is rhetorically powerful. The other shopper isn’t just saying, “I wish you had helped”; she’s implying a moral failure. But Miss Manners pushes back on that logic by quietly reframing the situation: refusing to take charge of a stranger’s place in line is not an act of hostility. It’s a normal boundary.

This is where the column feels very 2020s. We’re in a moment where two cultural currents collide:

  • Legacy etiquette expects cheerful accommodation and “go along to get along.”
  • Modern boundary culture encourages people to say no when a favor feels stressful or unfair.

Miss Manners has long been more nuanced than her stereotype; she often lands on the side of boundaries. The column essentially affirms: your emotional bandwidth in a checkout line is not public property, even at Christmas.


Are You Ever Obligated to Hold a Stranger’s Place in Line?

The Washington Post column sits in a long tradition of advice writing where lines become proxies for fairness. From amusement parks to Black Friday doorbusters, Western etiquette still treats “first come, first served” as sacred. Within that framework, Miss Manners’s position is straightforward: you are allowed to keep the system simple.

That doesn’t mean kindness is off the table. Most etiquette experts would distinguish between:

  • Small, low-risk favors — e.g., “Can you watch my basket while I tie my shoe?” These are usually safe and easy to decline without fallout.
  • High-friction favors — e.g., “Convince everyone behind us that I was here first if I disappear.” This sets you up to be the villain if anything goes wrong.
Customer holding shopping basket while waiting near a store display
Quick errands and forgotten items are common, but that doesn’t automatically make other customers responsible for smoothing things over.

The Post column implicitly argues that the burden belongs in one of two places:

  1. The customer who forgot to pick up an item or confirm their purchase.
  2. The store staff who are empowered to resolve mistakes, hold items, or adjust transactions.

The random stranger in the middle of the line? They didn’t sign up to be the referee.


Retail Reality: Why These Moments Keep Happening

It’s not an accident that so many Miss Manners letters are set in grocery stores, airports, and cosmetics chains. These are places where:

  • People are stressed and time-poor.
  • Service models rely heavily on self-navigation and personal responsibility.
  • Social norms are messy because nobody technically “owns” the space except the store.

Beauty retail in particular often markets itself as aspirational and friendly, but the logistics—limited staff, long lines, complicated promos—push some of the friction onto customers. When a shopper asks you to save their place, they’re really asking you to be a temporary extension of the store’s system.

Interior of a cosmetics store with displays of makeup and skincare products
Cosmetics stores promise indulgence and play, but checkout lines often reveal the underlying stress of modern retail.

The Miss Manners column doesn’t dive into retail operations, but it indirectly highlights a key industry reality: when stores under-resource customer service, the “soft skills” burden spills over onto other customers, who are then shamed for not absorbing it.


Practical Takeaways: Scripts for Real-Life Line Etiquette

One of the reasons Miss Manners endures is that her columns double as script libraries for awkward moments. Building on the spirit of this piece, here are a few boundary-respecting lines that match her tone:

  • If you don’t want to hold the place:
    “I’m sorry, I’d rather not be responsible for the line. It might move while you’re gone.”
  • If you’re willing, but only to a point:
    “I can tell the person behind us you stepped out for a minute, but if the line moves a lot, you might have to rejoin at the back.”
  • If you get called a ‘Grinch’:
    “I’m not trying to be unkind—just careful. The line is complicated enough as it is.”
Person holding a shopping bag and smartphone in a mall during the holidays
Clear, calm language can keep small frictions from becoming full-blown holiday meltdowns.

These responses echo the column’s central idea: you can be courteous without volunteering for conflict on someone else’s behalf.


Strengths, Weaknesses, and Why This Column Resonates

As a piece of entertainment-adjacent journalism—part advice, part social commentary—this Miss Manners column is quietly sharp. Its strengths are clear:

  • Clarity: It offers a straightforward ruling without moral panic or sentimentalism.
  • Cultural fluency: It understands how “Grinch” operates as social pressure, and defuses it without a lecture.
  • Practical value: Readers get both reassurance and a model for how to push back politely.

The downside is that, like many short advice columns, it can only skim the surface of larger themes: how much emotional labor we expect from strangers, how retail design creates conflict, and how quickly “kindness” talk gets turned into a tool for compliance. Yet even in brief form, it lands a key point: etiquette is not there to make you more exploitable. It’s there to protect everyone’s dignity—including yours.


Final Word: Boundaries Aren’t Bad Manners—Even at Christmas

The Miss Manners “Grinch” column taps into a familiar discomfort: the sense that saying no, especially in public and especially during the holidays, makes you a villain. By calmly rejecting that premise, the piece offers something more useful than scolding: permission.

You are allowed to be kind without being endlessly available. You are allowed to stand in line without managing strangers. And if someone tries to shame you into service with a seasonal insult, you can follow Miss Manners’s lead—stay polite, stand firm, and let their holiday screenplay play out without you as the reluctant co-star.

City street decorated with holiday lights and people walking with shopping bags
Holiday civility doesn’t require saying yes to every request; it starts with respecting each other’s time and boundaries.