Bloody etiquette coaches! AIBU?

Maremia

Well, I hope none of you use fish knives. while dining.
As Barbara Cartland once remarked,
'The best people have Georgian silver'.

My fish knives haven’t been used for years, perhaps it’s time to clean them and use them 🤷‍♀️

She was such a snob. Attempting to put down people who thought they were the 'thing', by putting Victorian silver on the table, with of course fish knives.
Pretentious, or not?

Maremia

Well, I hope none of you use fish knives. while dining.
As Barbara Cartland once remarked,
'The best people have Georgian silver'.

Fish knives!? Now what are they LOL?

Ordinary knife and fork in company - and fork in right hand (American fashion) when on my own.

Well, I hope none of you use fish knives. while dining.
As Barbara Cartland once remarked,
'The best people have Georgian silver'.

Isn’t etiquette just good manners?

Most people want to fit in anyone with an ounce of etiquette (manners) would never point out someone else’s slip up

Sitting down to dinner with family is different, it’s where manners/etiquette are learned from an early age, so that they become natural (good habits)

What I don't like is that etiquette is used as a class indicator as in "He eats his evening meal at six o'clock and calls it tea" or "She puts the milk in first" definitely NOCD.

Then there are the numerous words and customs defined in Nancy Mitford's book "Noblesse Oblige" as either U or non U. I was amused to learn recently that Nancy had invented some of the rules as a tease.

Even the late Jilly Cooper had a go in her book "Class."

Satire seems lost for many.

Queen Elizabeth II was known for her ability to put people at their ease and to ignore mistakes in etiquette made through nervousness. She would pretend to not notice and simply carry on. If that was good enough for QEII then it should be enough for others.

Even the tiniest of incidents - literally just sent a query to someone's business that turned up on a local FB page and she replied with "I'm in x (ie miles away)" and went on to ask me to share the post with her. I didn't - because she asked and then didn't say "please" after her request. Was just about to put myself out to do so and then thought "Hang on a minute - the please word was missing" and deleted.

I would say etiquette/manners serve the purpose of "If you know that etiquette = you can keep company with anyone" (ie because they won't be offended by your bad manners).

It varies from country to country somewhat and there will be "modern variations" on some things - cue for one "how life works in England" lesson to an Iraqi friend years back and her telling me "You can't - you are a guest" when I picked up the teatowel after the meal she fed me and me explaining that this is what we do in Britain if we're cooked a meal in a friends house - ie we offer to help with clearing up afterwards and it's showing consideration to our host and not expecting them to do too much housework on our behalf. Cue for her handing me the teatowel after all. She was doing her best to learn our ways.

Historically, etiquette is to do with protocol, court ceremony, a code of manners.

In everyday settings it’s a customary code of polite behaviour in society, good manners.

It’s also the customary behaviour of members of a particular social or professional group e.g. how barristers address one another in court - My learned friend - or how Parliamentary Members address one another - the Honourable Member.

Fair enough, but this is nothing to do with the kind of advice these self-appointed hacks trot out about what what tipple one choses to drink or what to plant in a garden.

Anyway, I see that twerp Haslam reckons that Nobel Prizes are common. As the orange man baby was desperate for one, can Haslam expect a law suit sometime soon? Surely suggesting POTUS is common is libellous?

I’m off to bake a jacket potato in the airfryer while listening to my Roberts Radio. Common as muck me.

I am a favour of etiquette, especially when it comes to eating, drinking and table manners.

Even our youngest GC know all joints on the table will be carved and have been saying it since they were 4ye old. (Referring to elbows on the table)

Never start eating until all diners are at the table.

Using cutlery correctly isn’t rocket science, as for pasta, I was taught to use a spoon and fork as Italians do.

Chop Stocks with Chinese, Thai, Malaysian.

A fork and flat bread when eating anything from the Indian continent.

I cannot abide eating with an open mouth, or talking with a mouth full.

It is polite to hold doors open for others.

Etiquette is good in my book.

Does anybody bother about “etiquette coaches”?
It suggests serious social insecurity.

What’s wrong with eating pasta, a curry or any other rice-based meal with just a fork? We have some ‘ sporks’ or ‘ splades’ which are just right for rice or pasta. “Foreign food”, as my mother would have called them, requires a change in what was formerly the norm in cutlery.
Etiquette is mostly a load of nonsense, as in the OP’s examples, whereas good manners involves consideration for others in the way one behaves.

I'm not sure that etiquette has reached rural Devon.
I'm particularly puzzled about the roses. I've grown them in all colours and none of them has upped and left. And they all get black spot etc..

I think we need more etiquette coaches. It should be taught at home and in schools.

I've watched a couple of t.v. programs lately and saw people bending down to their food like a pig to a trough and using their fork like a shovel. Not to mention eating with their mouth open.

The best etiquette is to never make a person feel uncomfortable but surely it would help if just basic manners were taught.

WilliamHanson has a youtube channel,he is a scream,
withhis’luxury tote’ ‘third button’and matchingpink socks

NickyHaslam however, isn’t

Good manners...makes everyone feel comfortable.
Etiquette...lets you know your 'place'.

It's interesting to see change in etiquette too. When I was young, cutlery remained on the plate when it was not being actively used to cut or fork food into the mouth. More recently however, I seem to see people who drape their cutlery off the plate with the handles on the table. It looks dreadful. Is it an American import?

It can help to see what's what if one knows a bit of etiquette. I recall actions (or inactions) told me what to think about some previous boyfriends.

1. First boyfriend chucked by me partly because at one point he got sent quite some distance away in the country early and he let me cover the cost of travel to go and see him (it would have been obvious I had very little money - and, though I didnt know it then, he was absolutely FILTHY rich).

2. Another got chucked partly for his bad manners abroad on holiday. He hadnt told me it was THE week of the year for major football event on tv and the hotel had a big tv - why hadn't he told me? as we could easily have picked another week instead. Plus during one of these matches he was watching (!!!!) the darn football and then stood up and literally poured a pint of beer straight over his head! I'd never even heard of anyone doing that. Add in the disrespect when the holiday rep walked across to the other side of the pool to the couple we'd got friendly with and then walked back with them trailing miserably behind her - and I looked at all their faces and told him "Their son has just commited su*cide, their daughter has rung to tell the rep, she's about to put them on a plane back to England. Poor people...how awful" and he turned round to me and yelled at me as to where on earth I'd got that idea from. The rep came up to us the next day to say that's exactly what had happened.

3. Another boyfriend took me off for a long weekend visiting various relatives of his elsewhere in the country and we stayed with his gran. Gran was very tolerant and pleasant to us and I suggested to him we should buy her an appropriate present to thank her - and he refused.

On the other hand - the one I did stay with for quite some time astonished me by doing things like leaping around me on the pavement to place himself on the outside near the vehicles. I'd never even heard of men doing that - checked it out and decided I really liked his manners and it was his mother that had brought him up to act like that. He was long-term partly for that.

I once travelled on an overnight coach and I had to sit next to someone who talked non stop all night. Definitely a breach in etiquette coach.

tanith

I thought this thread was about someone nicking your seat on a coach trip🤣

Same here! People can get quite upset if you sit in 'their' seat!

I read them for the entertainment- especially Charles Hanson.

It's also interesting to see things from other people's point of view.

Why does anyone bother to read these articles, still less get all het up about them.

I class any articles like these in the same category as sport. The subjects do not interest me so I do not read them.

Reading and getting het up about them rather suggests latent social insecurities in those readingthem.

Oreo

CariadAgain

Maybe it would be useful to quote THE worst example we've seen of bad manners?

I hadnt even clicked that in my home city the conversational norm is you are NOT in a conversation that's going on even just 3' away from you - unless you really are in it. If you are in it you will have been "invited in" - and I guess that boils down to a direct invite, a smile in your direction and moving slightly to make room for you to come nearer, etc.

I didn't realise that - as I'm so used to that being how things are and operating accordingly - until I moved. Different rules apply and one adapts - but there have been one or two incidents of someone feeling free to "leap into" a conversation that is nothing to do with them/they're a complete stranger to you and you're some distance away from them (eg 8' or more away). So I follow the "local" rules on this when I'm here (ie that other people leap into my conversations and I leap into theirs and so it goes on and we all have a chat) - but there have been a couple of incidents of downright rudeness - eg where I was chatting to someone I am on friendly "pass the time of day" level with and a total stranger to both of us pounced on me and yelled at me about the totally factual observation I'd just made (no personal opinion given) and stormed/ranted/yelled a lot of obviously bad stuff at me (though I could only make out literally one word - as he was at "full rant mode") and then went off and complained about me!!!!!!!!! The local woman I'm friendly with that I was chatting to looked absolutely gobsmacked at him - so even she thought he'd gone a long way into Bad Manners Territory.

So there are regional differences too and a lot is "national behaviour" - but there are some variations...

Maybe he was speaking in Welsh.

Most people who want to speak in Welsh start by saying "Siarad Cymraeg?" - meaning "Do you speak Welsh (as I'd like to speak that if you do?)". So I understand that much - so as to indicate that I don't do.

The one word I could make out of his tirade was "Welsh" and I couldn't even tell you which of the two languages he was ranting in (as he was speaking at rant volume and rant speed) - though the conversation he had been bad-mannered enough to eavesdrop on and then "comment" on was in English and so he would have known I wouldnt understand Welsh if he'd used it. My friendly acquaintance probably does speak Welsh and she was just looking at me gobsmacked in astonishment at him and looking embarrassed because he did that.