Manners - are there any you didn't know about until you were older?

[CheeseToastieLove]

Is there anything you didn't realise was bad manners until you were an adult. Things you weren't told when you were young? I didn't realise it was good manners to leave your alcohol at a party when you were leaving until I was in my late 20s. Always took my half full bottle home with me! Cringe. My friend was never taught it was bad manners to start eating before everyone's meals had arrived until she was in her 30s. She was always half finished before everyone had been served.

I worked with a lady from Romania and she used to tell me off for saying please. Eg "could you print x doc please? She said it was her job to do it so please was unnecessary. We're really good friends but I find it so jarring when she doesn't say please to me!

@Iminaglasscaseofemotion

didn't realise it was good manners to leave your alcohol at a party when you were leaving until I was in my late 20s. Always took my half full bottle home with me! Cringe.

I have never left my half full bottle of alcohol at a party, and I am not about to start. I don't care if its bad manners 🤣 my dp went to a Christmas work night and left nearly a whole bottle of vodka. I was horrified! I don't even drink vodka!

Please don't take your half empty bottle home. It is such bad manners. Whoever is hosting has made an effort to entertain you, and taking a bottle home is so, so rude and shows that you don't have any respect for their kindness and generosity.

Yeah, taking your drink home is terribly bad manners past student parties.
I mean, obviously you can if you want but its really not the done thing and rightly or wrongly, people will notice and talk about it.

@mermaidsariel
When you say your husband is terrible for starting to eat before the host, why?
Obviously at first he didn't know but to continue to do it is really rude.

Some things like the soup/rolls really are daft, but this is just good manners to the host, to enjoy the food with them.
I'd have thought not taking seconds before everyone has had a chance to eat is just logical good manners too, and not stuffy old etiquette, but there you go.
Every day is a school day on MN!

I know this is a bit "niche" but we used to go to lots of balls at university where some of the older ladies wore white gloves and I never remembered to look and see whether they took them off when they sat down to eat dinner, and then breakfast. I'm never likely to need to know this information ever again but it's a small detail that's been bugging me for 30-odd years or so! I've even looked it up in etiquette books and they never say. And no one in my family or circle of friends has a clue!

I think the correct response to "how do you do?" is to repeat it back isn't it?

I wasn't taught that at formal dinners you shouldn't fold up linen napkins once you have used them but you leave them unfolded to the left of your plate. And I now know after years of copying others that you leave your knife and fork with tines upwards at the six thirty position on your empty lunch or dinner plate but no one ever taught me that.

Assuming we're talking about spirits, I don't think it's rude to take it back with you, but you can probably avoid the issue by not taking full bottles of spirits with you.

I wouldn't mind people taking wine or beer home with them either and sometimes I'd rather they did that than leaving me as the host with loads of half used stuff we might not use.

I have utter confidence in my knowledge of table manners and ability to speak 'correctly' etc after being drilled relentlessly by my aspirational mother. But I do wish she'd taught me more about social interactions than how to eat soup or which knife to use. I still can't work out 'the rules'. I don't know when to send cards, when it is overkill, what is considered an appropriate present, who sends anniversary cards...let alone how to make friends, small talk...I try and act with generosity and kindness but I often feel like there's a whole set of stuff that I just don't know and that I may be judged for. At nearly 50 it is probably too late to learn.

Manners oil the wheels of society and protect others from your diseases (e.g. wait your turn, please/thank-you, cough into a hanky, don't spit).

Etiquette is about creating divisions in society with artificial rules aimed to belittle those who don't follow them (e.g. how you use cutlery, 'correct' language, kowtowing to your 'betters')

@mylaptopismylapdog

I was taught to say very well thank you in response to how do you you do.

“Lovely/delighted/to meet you”

Or similar

No, because I'm over 60 and manners (and etiquette) were drummed into me from birth. It's tragic that it doesn't happen any more. 'Manners cost nothing' is very true.

To stand up when visitors enter the room. Told sternly by an older relative which stood me in good stead

I always understood that the correct response to 'how do you do' was 'how do you do' (which sounds ridiculous).

I thought 'pleased to meet you' was supposed to be very lower class ('non-U', according to Nancy Mitford).

However, I am not posh enough for anyone ever to have said 'how do you do' to me, and I tell people that I am pleased to meet them.

My lower middle class roots must be showing.

@spaceghetto

I worked with a lady from Romania and she used to tell me off for saying please. Eg "could you print x doc please? She said it was her job to do it so please was unnecessary. We're really good friends but I find it so jarring when she doesn't say please to me!

I've had similar responses from various Europeans at work, saying 'Don't be so British, don't ask me to do something, just tell me' when I say 'could you do this?' I just tell them that when I say 'could you do this please?' they need to interpret it as 'this needs to be done now'.

On the other hand I currently have someone (English, middle middle to upper middle class) who works for me who is constantly apologising for everything and it definitely creates an image of incompetence that isn't really deserved.

@IHaveBrilloHair The soup rule is actually very practical. Assuming you’re at a formal dinner you’re probably wearing quite nice clothes and soup is usually served in quite shallow bowls; so by spooning away you avoid splashing your clothing.

Re the ‘she’s the cat’s mother’, in my experience, the expression is used as a rebuke by the person being referred to when someone is talking about them in the third person when they are still present ( ie, as if they were not there), instead of including them in the conversation or addressing them directly.
Correct response to ‘how do you do’ is ‘how do you do’.
Eating in the street was forbidden in our school rules. I know quite a few elderly people who will never eat except at a table. Certainly, in my youth ( 60’s) , eating between meals was seen as a very bad thing. The slogan for Milky Way was ‘the sweet you can eat without ruining your appetite’. I don’t know whether this was a hangover from rationing (not eating between meals, clearing your plate, eating what you were given, etc). I suppose there might be a hygiene aspect as well, as we were taught to wash our hands before eating, which you would not do if eating on the go.

I always understood that the correct response to 'how do you do' was 'how do you do' (which sounds faintly ridiculous).

I also found out from Nancy Mitford that saying 'pleased to meet you' was very lower class ('non-U').

However, clearly I run in non-U circles, since nobody ever greets me with 'how do you do' and I often tell people that I am pleased to meet them.

I also know that in the upper echelons of society it is very frowned upon to say 'pardon' if you mishear somebody and the upper classes say 'what?' I cannot bring myself to say 'what' (it's unbelievably rude in my mind) so tend to resort to 'sorry?'

My lower middle-class roots are showing

A late learner with double dipping here, too.

Sandi Toksvig wrote a great book called ‘Peas and Queues’ about manners, for those who are interested.

Eating soup from the edge of the bowl - because it's cooler.

How do you do - How do you do

(Pleased to meet you would be consider non-U by Nancy Mitford, but obviously is a perfectly polite response)

@IHaveBrilloHair

I was taught all of these things, Im glad I know should I ever need to but lots are fairly ridiculous. Eating soup by spooning it from the far side of the bowl, and towards the edge? Why exactly?

@IHaveBrilloHair My granny taught me the following:

"As the ship sails out to sea
I sail my spoon away from me"

I remember it distantly and I assume it was because as a small child I was in breach of etiquette probably because of my ill bred mother

Omg the 6.30 position for the cutlery once finished.
I inwardly cringe when people don't do this which is utterly ridiculous in the settings I'm in, it really doesn't matter.
We also had to say, "thank you for the lovely meal, may we please leave the table", which was utter a nonsense and just a phrase we parroted.
I never made Dd say any such thing I encouraged her to chat about the food and if she didn't like it, that was fine, though sometimes it transpired it was a particular veg on the plate, or the curry was a wee bit hot for her or whatever, so the meal could be repeated at a later date with a few tweaks.
Parroting a stupid phrase was exactly that, stupid.

@Smashingorbs

I know this is a bit "niche" but we used to go to lots of balls at university where some of the older ladies wore white gloves and I never remembered to look and see whether they took them off when they sat down to eat dinner, and then breakfast. I'm never likely to need to know this information ever again but it's a small detail that's been bugging me for 30-odd years or so! I've even looked it up in etiquette books and they never say. And no one in my family or circle of friends has a clue!

I think the correct response to "how do you do?" is to repeat it back isn't it?

I wasn't taught that at formal dinners you shouldn't fold up linen napkins once you have used them but you leave them unfolded to the left of your plate. And I now know after years of copying others that you leave your knife and fork with tines upwards at the six thirty position on your empty lunch or dinner plate but no one ever taught me that.

I consider myself to have pretty good manners and was at dinner with a group of friends. When I finished my meal I put the knife and fork down together neatly, tines upwards, at the 5.25 position and was publicly reprimanded that it should be the 6.30 position. I was in my 50s .

On another occasion out to dinner with other friends and was surprised when this otherwise well mannered person held her cutlery the opposite way round in fists, holding the food down with the knife and tearing it towards herself with the fork. Who knew cutlery could be such a minefield !

We were published by detention if caught eating in the street near school.

One of my bugbears now is men wearing hats indoors or at the table. And hats that are too small for them. But that's just me

None of it really matters, as long as people are aware of others and hopefully kind to others.

I cringe whenever I see someone with bad table manners. It was drilled into us as kids. Holding the knife and fork correctly, putting the knife and fork together at 6:30 position to signal you’re done eating etc. I can’t abide eating, especially in restaurants, with anyone with bad table manners. Does that make me a snob? I don’t care!!!

I'd say "Fine thanks, how are you?" and not worry about it. I spent my tweens being pulled up on my working class/LMC manners by snobby middle class mothers of my friends when we moved into a posher area.

All it confirmed to me was that I wasn't going to have such a pole up my arse about such things when I became a grown up.

@callingon

I think my Granny might have considered eating in the street a bit déclassé but that ship has sailed in 2021, surely?!

Yes. Absolutely to this. Very old fashioned. So many of these are just rules that change over time. Real manners are to do with how you speak and behave towards people. The rest is nit really important.