Over at the DM, Tom Utley talks about table manners, and the apparent disdain with which the foul Gen Z twerps regard them.
If we’re to believe a poll out this week, however, old-fashioned table manners will soon be consigned to history. A survey of 2,000 teenagers and adults found that 60 per cent of those aged 12 to 27 — known as Generation Z — think table manners in general are no longer important.
More than three-quarters of them, finds Censuswide, say they don’t care about elbows on the table, while more than half think it doesn’t matter which way round a knife and fork are held.
I have a rather jaundiced view of the whole thing, because I’ve found that all manners — never mind just those at the table — seem to have taken flight and disappeared from modern life. And while the article is Brit-specific, it’s certainly true in the U.S. as well, and both New Wife and I continue to throw up our hands in horror when we encounter such societal contretemps.
But as for table manners: our kids (her two and my three) have all been indoctrinated in the matter, and I’m pleased to note that they’ve passed on that training to their other halves and kids.
I remember well the first time I noticed how well-mannered my kids were, several years ago. The occasion was afternoon tea in the St. James Room at Fortnum & Mason, where impeccably-dressed waiters and waitresses brought us plate upon plate of foods (sandwiches, and then scones with jams and clotted cream) and of course, pots and pots of F&M’s delicious Royal Blend tea. (It’s still the Son&Heir’s favorite, and it’s a staple birthday present choice.) Anyway, the kids showed impeccable table manners, and of course we the parents were hugely gratified that all our efforts had not been in vain, and that we were not embarrassed by any loutish and gross behavior. (The same was evident when New Wife and I were treated to afternoon tea at the Ritz by her two sons, a few years back: exquisite table manners all round.)
I have a visceral reaction to someone with terrible table manners: I finish the meal as quickly as possible, and make a point of never eating with that person ever again. When someone gobbles down their food like a baboon, and speaks with a mouth full of food, I actually feel nauseated and try not to look at them at all.
I’m somewhat indifferent to the American style of eating, whereby one cuts the food into small pieces and then transfers the fork to the right hand to spear it. (It’s the way children eat their food, back where I come from, but it’s a method that is firmly discouraged once they reach the age of seven or eight and have developed the dexterity to eat properly, i.e. with the fork in the left hand and the knife in the right.)
Living here in Murka, I’ve always been keenly aware that I’m the “guest”, so to speak, and that if that’s the cultural norm, then manners preclude me trying to change it in others. That doesn’t mean that I’ve changed my eating style, of course, and when American table companions point out my “British” style of knife-and-fork usage, I just shrug and say, “South Africa was still a British colony when I was born, and that’s one of the little legacies thereof.” To change the way I eat is unthinkable.
The whole point of good table manners is respect for the feelings of others — hell, that’s the point of good manners in toto, and not just at the table; and I find it amusing that in these times, when everyone has to tiptoe around the feelings of others so circumspectly, that the most important of these is no longer de rigueur.
Anyway, I’m just glad that I’m unlikely to be exposed to the boorish table manners of the child-like Gen Z people, because to be honest, I have no interest in any kind of intercourse with them at all, let alone at the table. And if exposed to them in public (e.g. in a restaurant), I’ll just put on metaphorical blinkers and try to ignore them — unless it all gets too much, and I’ll flay them with scorn and contempt, loudly if in the mood.
As Gen Z seems to be, as a whole, a bunch of tender snowflakes, I don’t think I’ll be in any danger.
‘Murkin here. I have never bothered with that swapping knife and fork foolishness. I keep the fork in my right hand and the knife in my left.
Are you left-handed? If so, fine.
Doesn’t always work that way – I’m a leftie (handed only I hasten to add!) and himself is right handed. I eat right handed, he left handed. Very odd as everything else I do – aside from shooting a long gun – I do left handed.
But then, at school they tried to make me write, right handed…..
Right handed. Swapping knife and fork always struck me as pointless.
OK, I get the whole knife-and-fork thing, with the Brit style being more efficient for piling mashed and peas on the back of the fork. But what about chopsticks? Left hand or right?
Chopsticks are for people of that cultural heritage (e.g. our own Slant-Eyed Polack).
I am not of that ilk.
Chopsticks are held in your dominant hand, as you are supposed to be able to use them to pick up individual grains of rice with them.
Of course, no one would dare to be left handed in their culture, so… right hand 😉
Ah yes, the Brit way:
1. Cut off a piece of your roast beef.
2. Spear it with fork, tines pointed down.
3. Butter the meat with a thick layer of mashed spud to create a sticky layer. Use knife.
4. Use knife to corral peas onto the layer of spud, so they adhere. Still tines down with the fork.
5. Try to negotiate this conglomeration to mouth without loss of any peas.
6. At the end, any remaining peas and gravy are troweled onto the knife, which you then suck off.
But it’s oh so civil!
I eat with a spoon almost exclusively but I’m not openly sloven about it.
And I have my limits.
About 10 years ago our grand daughter had a birthday and she wanted to eat at the mexican joint. We sat in a U shaped booth and my son’s 35 yo wife was back in the U part. Halfway into the meal she wanted to go to the restroom so she stood up on the seat, stepped over the back into the empty booth behind and exited. Then she reversed the process when she came back. My wife and I stared at each other in horror.
I’ll never eat around that retard ever again.
wow
manners matter. It doesn’t bother me if you use the utensils American or European style. no hats at the table unless you’re outside.
Point to the hat and ask them if they launder it as frequently as they do their underpants.
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The important thing is always to keep a knife in your hand so they don’t snatch things off your mess tray.
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When my folks would tell their friends (who hadn’t met us yet) that they’d be bringing my sister and me to whatever gathering to which they’d been invited, the reaction would always be “oh, that’s fine”, almost always through clenched teeth. When the festivities were over, they’d usually be pulled aside and told by the hosts that we were welcome at any future events, and that we were the best-behaved kids they’d ever seen. This sure was news to Joanne and me, as we were always running around and having fun and raising our own hell. I suspect that when the boundaries were set, known, and unbendable, we figured out how to amuse ourselves within them. Other yutes (and parents) could take notes.
As for table manners, I’m guessing that mom taught me well enough that I’d be accepted at Chateau du Toit any time, even if I eat American-style; cutting-and-switching. My sister is left-handed (in a house of righties), and the only thing mom ever insisted she do with her right hand was eat. It may. It sound like a trivial matter but if you’ve ever tried to cut a steak sitting next to a lefty while they’re cutting theirs, you’d appreciate her training.
The peasants have always eaten like peasants, so I am not sure how this is a change. It is only a problem when someone acts like a peasants and is surprised that people treat them like a peasant.
As for the knife/fork thing, I was taught both ways: but I have always heard the keeping the fork in the left hand style called Europe/continental style. Why would it be British? I am certain that it is not their innovation.
When asked if chicken can be eaten with fingers, Emily Post said the fingers should be eaten separately.
You can add to that, spending the entire meal reading the iPhone/iPad. There are coworkers I no longer go to lunch with, because of that.
My two stepsons eat like feral wolf-children. They rarely eat with utensils, preferring instead to their fingers and torn strips of roti (they were born in the US, but are ethnically from the Punjab). This is astonishing in that their mother does not eat like that, but has allowed them to. They are 28 and 23, still live at home despite having well-paying jobs, contribute nothing, take everything except good advice, and behave even worse when eating out. They order the most expensive thing on the menu, plus three appetizers and two desserts (one to go for later). They have never even so much as offered to pay for a meal for themselves, let alone for me and their mother.
I got to them too late. Their mother has ruined them for corrective improvement because “that’s our culture.” That’s not culture, that’s parental neglect and bad form.
I grew up in a family of nine. We had to be seated at the table before my father and mother, had to ask to be excused, and took no food nor began eating until Mother and Father had been served. I went to Catholic school run by Jesuits from 1-12 grades. It was assumed that you were taught manners at home, and if you weren’t you got instruction in manners the Jesuit way–you got to contemplate your poor behavior while scrubbing pots in the kitchen or stripping the floor wax off the hallways in school.
From 1st-4th grade, we had a class called Manners and Deportment, which covered all the basics; greetings, salutations, addressing your elders, body language, etc. From 5th-12th grade, we had a class called Social Engagement and Public Conduct that taught how to conduct ourselves responsibly and with dignity in different situations. In the Navy, as an enlisted man, we had our Code of Conduct and all that went along with the enlisted/officer dynamic. When I was commissioned, first as a Warrant then as a Direct Commissioned Officer, we had Service Etiquette as our guide. Along the way, foreign postings gave us the opportunity to learn the State Department’s Guide to Etiquette Abroad as wells as dozens of classes in Protocol and U.S. Representation.
Now, if I tell my stepsons to not eat with their hands, hunched behind their plates to shorten the distance between the food and their cake-holes, they just shoot me a dumb look and say “whatever, Boomer.”
For the record, I’m not a Boomer, I’m Generations Jones.
Weirdly, I seem to eat European style – fork in my left, knife in my right, and they never swap. Given that I was born in Florida to parents from Oklahoma and Connecticut, I have no idea how this came about.
I remember seeing a story online on some news like program where some colleges like MIT are offering etiquette classes because students didn’t know how to handle themselves in a professional setting for cocktail hour or at a meal.
Once, a high school diploma and a college degree meant something. All of these other life skills were taught at home.