Are table manners important anymore?

Doodledog

Don’t be terrified on my account . If you don’t pinch all the crackling and eat with your mouth open you’re welcome at my table. Life’s too short to worry about how others hold their cutlery.

I’ll be OK then. I don’t like crackling and I eat with my mouth closed.
Life’s too short to worry about how others hold their cutlery. 🤣🤣🤣
Obviously not for many GNs

Don’t be terrified on my account . If you don’t pinch all the crackling and eat with your mouth open you’re welcome at my table. Life’s too short to worry about how others hold their cutlery.

Doodledog

I don't hold my knife like a pencil, but I don't understand why it is so upsetting for people to see others doing so. Someone somewhere decreed that there is a 'correct' way to hold a knife - I doubt anyone now knows who, where or why - and all these years later it is used to suggest that people holding it differently is offensive. Maybe they're just doing what the 'non-pencil' people do, which is hold it as we were taught as children, or maybe they just prefer to 'pencil' their knife? Why is it offensive?

Oh dear, now I’m terrified to eat in company ever again!
I’ve only recently discovered the proper way to hold a pencil when reading a granddaughter’s “primer”. I’ve been doing it wrongly. ( That’s dyslexia for you).
My husband mentioned the knife thing when I went to my first Mess dinner. He had been taught “correct table etiquette” during officers’ training. It’s a good job we’re nonjudgmental as I wonder how many people are “offensively” mishandling the salt!

Oh dear, typos!

for
Fast food?

Mollygo

Doodledog

I don't hold my knife like a pencil, but I don't understand why it is so upsetting for people to see others doing so. Someone somewhere decreed that there is a 'correct' way to hold a knife - I doubt anyone now knows who, where or why - and all these years later it is used to suggest that people holding it differently is offensive. Maybe they're just doing what the 'non-pencil' people do, which is hold it as we were taught as children, or maybe they just prefer to 'pencil' their knife? Why is it offensive?
Well put, Doodledog

Offensive is a strange term to use for something which evidently makes non-pencil holders feel superior.
Talking with your mouth full, eating with your mouth open is offensive because it’s unpleasant to see, or feel the effects but criticising someone for holding a knife?

Is it because our betters were seen to hold their cutlery in a certain way and aping our betters makes people feel good about themselves?

I don't think it's offensive although I do find it irritating! Less so now because people's table manners have deteriorated rapidly over the last few years fir some reason. Fast good? No 'proper' school dinners, more finger food?

I do think more pressure can be applied holding the knife the 'correct' way rather than like a pencil but I haven't conducted any experiments to find out if that's true!

If you were hiring a lawyer you would want to be sure that they would behave at lunch in a manner acceptable to clients. Someone’s cv might be good but their table manners less so.

Germanshepherdsmum

It’s as well to know how to handle your cutlery in the conventional manner if you may want a job which subjects you to the sort of ‘lunch interview’ I mentioned above.

I think this is mainly something which will die out whilst spraying people with their food or showing what they are churning in their mouth, won't.
Quite frankly, if my employer couldn't see my worth without being so judgmental, they are not someone I would want to work for in this day and age.

I have no idea who these betters were but obviously some still think they are better because they hold their knife in a way that they perceive as better.
I watched people whilst we were out for lunch and the pressure, however they hold the knife, is applied by the index finger. No one seemed to have a problem cutting their steak or gammon with either knife grip.

The last interview I took part in as part of an interview panel included lunch. We appointed the best person for the post regardless of how they held their knife in the dining room.😱 😱😱
Turns out we made a good appointment.

It’s as well to know how to handle your cutlery in the conventional manner if you may want a job which subjects you to the sort of ‘lunch interview’ I mentioned above.

Mollygo Is it because our betters were seen to hold their cutlery in a certain way and aping our betters makes people feel good about themselves?

Who are these "betters" and who proclaimed them so?

Whilst holding a knife properly helps put the pressure at the right point to cut the meat cleanly, I fail to see why anybody should be offended just because they do it "properly"!

Doodledog

I don't hold my knife like a pencil, but I don't understand why it is so upsetting for people to see others doing so. Someone somewhere decreed that there is a 'correct' way to hold a knife - I doubt anyone now knows who, where or why - and all these years later it is used to suggest that people holding it differently is offensive. Maybe they're just doing what the 'non-pencil' people do, which is hold it as we were taught as children, or maybe they just prefer to 'pencil' their knife? Why is it offensive?
Well put, Doodledog

Offensive is a strange term to use for something which evidently makes non-pencil holders feel superior.
Talking with your mouth full, eating with your mouth open is offensive because it’s unpleasant to see, or feel the effects but criticising someone for holding a knife?

Is it because our betters were seen to hold their cutlery in a certain way and aping our betters makes people feel good about themselves?

I read that Queen Victoria was notorious for eating at breakneck speed - so much for finesse.

I don't hold my knife like a pencil, but I don't understand why it is so upsetting for people to see others doing so. Someone somewhere decreed that there is a 'correct' way to hold a knife - I doubt anyone now knows who, where or why - and all these years later it is used to suggest that people holding it differently is offensive. Maybe they're just doing what the 'non-pencil' people do, which is hold it as we were taught as children, or maybe they just prefer to 'pencil' their knife? Why is it offensive?

I agree that shovelling in food, that showing what is in their mouth, that dangling food over your mouth (!!) is off-putting to others, but I'd rather someone held their knife differently from me than sit there scrutinising how far others conform to perceived 'standards' and judging them.

Something I do judge is people taking the best bits of a dish for themselves - the crispiest bit of a cheese topping, the best looking roast potatoes or whatever. If I've cooked and there were an obvious discrepancy between one bit of a dish and the rest I would always ask guests to take the best bit (and want them to do so), but when people swoop in and do it without being told I can't help noticing, whether I am a guest or the cook. To me, that says far more about someone than they way they hold a knife.

Holding your knife like a pencil and "shovelling" food down as if it's race!

grannypiper

After having to suffer someone with no table manners i really think they are important. At a family meal between Christmas and New Year my Great Nephew was accompanied by his 23 year old Girlfriend who was seated opposite me. Much to my surprise and disgust she kept her phone in her hand for the entire meal, she used her fork to cut her fish in half width ways, picked up her fish up tipped her head back and dangled the fish above her mouth and proceeded to bite chunks out of it. When it came to eating chips she shoved one end in her mouth and sucked the rest in. For the mushy peas, she hunched over the plate and scooped them in to her mouth at a rate of noughts. It was like watching a starved animal eating. So yes, i do think table manners are important.

Seems to be the norm now. We had lunch out today and on the next table was a couple with two little boys probably 4 and 6.

They sat down and both parents got their phones out and Mother gave the boys mini I pads or some sort of gaming consoles. None of them spoke to each other and even when their food came the kids had one hand on their games and the other trying to eat.

After having to suffer someone with no table manners i really think they are important. At a family meal between Christmas and New Year my Great Nephew was accompanied by his 23 year old Girlfriend who was seated opposite me. Much to my surprise and disgust she kept her phone in her hand for the entire meal, she used her fork to cut her fish in half width ways, picked up her fish up tipped her head back and dangled the fish above her mouth and proceeded to bite chunks out of it. When it came to eating chips she shoved one end in her mouth and sucked the rest in. For the mushy peas, she hunched over the plate and scooped them in to her mouth at a rate of noughts. It was like watching a starved animal eating. So yes, i do think table manners are important.

My daughter's children often do not eat at the dining table but at a small table in front of the TV. In general their table manners are not too bad, but I think they tend to just shovel the food in when they're watching TV.

I’ve never understood the ‘elbows on the table rule’ as long as mine keep their mouths closed when eating and use knife and fork ….im ok with that . They always ask to ‘be excused’ so the basics are there.

My late in-laws, of Welsh/English heritage, were especially proud of the big families they came from - especially F-i-L (one of eight brothers!) always announced to all assembled at the dinner table “anything goes, as long as you keep one foot on the floor.”

That was always a good ice-breaker for conversation. While everyone’s table manners may not have been impeccable, they were certainly passable, never rude, embarrassing or inoffensive.

The object here always was fellowship and a good time.
Cheers!
USA Gundy

That’s a lack of consideration for others, and a lack of basic manners, rather than a lack of knowledge of etiquette though. Those people would be rude whether or not they knew which knife to use or how to hold it.

The ‘finer points’ of what are called table manners are really just to separate the’U’ and ‘non U’, and are nothing to do with manners at all. Manners are about making people feel comfortable, not about knowing how to eat a lobster.

Primrose I commented to the restaurant manager in Selfridges about the dreadful mess left by two women and their children at the table and on the floor next to us. He told me they are an all inclusive restaurant (in the people sense!) and gave me a glass of champagne (to shut me up!).

We recently visited a cafe where a family were just leaving the table. I have never seen anything like the mess they left. Two parents and 3 children aged about 4,6 and 8.

Aside from all the food they left, the floor was covered in chunks of bread, squashed chips, paper napkins. The waitress was just going to start clearing up the mess and said “we get this all the time. I blame the parents.”

Knife held as pencil still a no-no for me. Elbows on table when casually dining OK.

icanhandthemback

Although I showed my children how to use a knife and fork properly, I do wonder who deemed it as the "proper" way to hold it. Whilst I understand that tearing meat can cause things to fly off the plate so can invade someone else's space, I can't help thinking that holding your knife and fork in a different hand or holding your knife as a pen really doesn't affect anybody else and to insist on someone doing so is rather controlling. The hand we use to hold our knife is based on superstition and a belief that using the left hand was sinful. Surely as a more civilised and enlightened society we should be beyond that.

I agree with this. I don’t want to see food moving round people’s mouths as they eat or talk with their mouths full, but how they hold their fork is none of my business. Like you, I taught my children the correct way so they needn’t be embarrassed, but to me, life’s too short to care about how other people hold cutlery.

Nothing irks me more than people with their mobile phones at the dinner table.