On a flight home from Vegas a few years ago I browsed the household tips Q&A section of a Reader’s Digest. I couldn’t believe it when I spotted a question submitted by a good friend of mine. When I got back in town, I called her excitedly to say I’d seen her name in the Digest.

Her reply surprised me: "Well, that wasn’t actually me who submitted it. My cousin works there and she needed a name to put with a question that they wrote themselves." Evidently, this happens sometimes when editors have just the right question in mind, but nobody actually asks it. I’m of the opinion that Judith Martin (aka Miss Manners) is doing the same thing.

How else do you explain this ridiculous question that appeared in her column yesterday in the Morning Call?

Dear Miss Manners: My boss says that it is inconsiderate to the workplace to leave the top off of my 12-ounce bottle of water/tea when I am not drinking it. He has a terrible tendency to knock it over. He also claims that when customers come in to the office and I have left it on the counter that, they too, knock it over. I now have to unscrew every time I want to drink and hope that I don’t lose the lid to screw it back on. Could you please clarify what is the proper way to handle your water bottle in the office? I do not wish to be uncourteous, but I think he is just clumsy. Please advise.

You cannot tell me there’s a real person out there who’s having so much of a water bottle cap-screwing-on problem that they need to ask Miss Manners for etiquette advice about it. I mean, if they’re that stupid, how was it they figured out how to submit a question in the first place?

What I prefer to think is that someone on her editorial staff wrote the question just so it would elicit this response:

Gentle Reader: Miss Manners advises anyone with a clumsy boss to cap his water bottle. Or clumsy customers, and you never know when they might come along. She sympathizes with you about the physical strain involved, however. Perhaps it would help if you thought of that as your daily exercise program.

Seriously, does anyone know if the Miss Manners column is based on 100% authentic reader-submitted questions?

Stumble it!