Posted by Medusa on February 7, 2004, at 7:49:50
Warning: big words used in attempt to follow my little brother's direction that "we know enough other words, we don't have to use dirty ones."
I often find myself at a loss re: appropriate table manners. Has anyone here taken a refresher or crash course? Sometimes I feel like a barbarian. The other day I was in a restaurant and realized that I'd cut a piece of lettuce, and I'm pretty sure the proper thing is just to fold it (okay to use the knife - right?). I have so many unanswered questions of my own, I'm surprised to find myself irked by someone else's table manners.
This week I have a houseguest, someone I've known for a while. I'd known that his manner of eating (raucous mastication, accelerated ingestion) fell outside of the standard range observed in most social settings, whether public or private. But I'd 1) never experienced this on my territory before, and 2) only seen him eat in very informal settings (barbecue etc).
Perhaps I should have become a quality-assurance professional for a pharmaceutical company. Do these following quirks of mine sound over the edge?
- Serving utensils are for serving ONLY - and they are the SOLE method of removing food from serving vessel. One's private flatware is employed for spreading, transporting food to mouth, and other necessary manipulations.
- Guests might consider waiting for hosts to complete meal preparations AND come to table AND start eating before guest commences consumption. Host(s) setting items on table does not indicate that said items are intended for immediate consumption. Consumption of the entire contents of a serving vessel +before+ hosts have completed preparations presents difficulties to hosts who might possibly be attempting to provide a rounded meal for multiple persons and who might potentially have harbored personal anticipation of enjoyment of all elements of said meal. In these cases, hosts generally lack the humor to appreciate comments from guest that hosts have provided too much food.
- If food is cleared at a point when guest's hunger has yet to be sated, it's preferable for guest to drop a hint requesting further comestibles rather than to devour his fingernails, gnaw at his cuticles and so on.
- A dish or plate with large amounts of freshly-arranged food on it, set in the middle of the table, is probably intended to be a communal serving dish, not the guest's personal pre-served annex plate. Part B: the cook might not appreciate "help" guest might provide by salting, mixing (etc) contents of a serving dish.
- Blowing one's nose on a cloth napkin is okay if it's your house, your napkin and you're alone.
- Helping oneself to items on or in someone else's personal consumption vessels is ideally confined to situations with which I'm not yet familiar.
- Guests might consider letting hosts set the tone for conversation, certainly at the beginning of a meal. When hosts have just managed to get meal on table, they might prefer a few moments to take a breath and begin eating leisurely. Willing immediate focus on guest's tourist itinerary is likely achieved by only the saintliest of hosts.
- If hosts fail to provide a receptacle for discards, inedible items (such as shells from hard-boiled eggs) can be left on one's plate. It's neither necessary to transfer them back to the serving dish, nor desirable to place them on the table, even if the tablecloth is pink and guest just knows that pink is not the host's favorite color so it must be trash.
- Spilling water on a tablecloth might indeed be a big deal - depending on the table underneath. So unless guest has seen for sure that the table top is laminate, guest would be advised not to declare "it's no big deal".
Okay, so I know that the rudest thing of all is to correct anyone's manners, to make a guest feel uncomfortable in any way. BUT it's my bloody house, and the first point completely grosses me out (AND contaminates food *I* paid for) so I laid down the law on that one. And I *KNOW* that etiquette declares that the host must say that spills are 'no big deal' and should refrain from peeling back tablecloth and removing water from fine hardwood, but I screwed up here, too, by suggesting that co-host care for his table, and I'm not one bit sorry about it.
And all that was just breakfast.
Well, maybe I'm just snarky today. But I'd love to hear what table manners are important to others, what your pet peeves are, and any resources that might help me to improve my own grasp of dining etiquette.
poster:Medusa
thread:310432
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040131/msgs/310432.html