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 don't see what's so wrong with that.
if you saw yourself as part of a couple, it was natural to want your partner to escort you.
maybe they did not know you had a partner ? i'm not sure what you did wrong really.
was it your friend or their parents who invited you, would that make a difference ?
i guess if you see it as tantamount to inviting yourself, you might feel a bit embarrassed, but not much.

Yes, friend’s parents, and it was a bit of a grand affair. It did feel a bit like inviting myself. I’m not sure if it’s reasonable on not but I still cringe myself inside out about it.

Whoops, quote fail!

Table manners are important still to me and I find myself teaching my dgds (no idea what my dd is or isn't teaching them, she was taught the same) because I couldn't take a child out for dinner (after this shit is all over) without table manners that are age appropriate!
Im not a snob but cannot abide other peoples little darlings running around restaurants or having tablets with volumes so loud it disturbs other diners.
I obviously understand children who have additional needs may need a distraction.
I have a friend who doesn't put her knife and fork together at the end of a meal. It really grates on me but it is not my place to correct a grown woman on etiquette.

I am old enough to remember when the whole street would close their curtains as a mark of respect when the hearse of a neighbour went by. I didn't think people did that any more.
I don't open the curtains on the sunny side of my house until the sun moves round and in summer we close the back ones as the sun is too bright. Is this not allowed then? I have never even thought about it.

I hate it when people reach across me to grab something (even salt) when sitting at the table. I feel they have invaded. Maybe it comes from when people could drop something in your food but even today I find it very bad manners

Can anyone enlighten me as to why it is rude to butter an entire bread roll please?

This is a guess, but I wonder if it is about the appearance of a bitten-into buttered roll - i.e. crescent shaped teeth-marks in the roll and butter - which some might find off-putting.

I think not cutting it with a knife stems from common sense - if you pick it up and slice through it, there's a (tiny) risk of cutting yourself - unlike if you are cutting bread or rolls with the benefit of a bread board.

God yes, curtains shut means death. The curtains would be shut and the mirrors covered.
I'm in my 40s and can remember all the neighbours closing their curtains on the day of my nan's funeral.

I don’t have children - what age is acceptable for them to no longer ask for permission to leave the table?

Seems obvious to me that children should ask permission to leave until such time as they are old enough to sit quietly throughout a meal. An adult wouldn’t usually leave the table without excusing themself, would they?

Blasting out loud music on speakers in the park when you could easily have brought headphones.

I think breaking up a bread roll into multiple pieces with your hands looks messy and unhygienic.

I also think this elbow bashing fear is a red herring probably a remnant of quashed refectory tables at boarding school - homes and restaurants have more space.

Similarly the nose of the cheese thing - maybe the host hasn’t left it out long enough at room temp for it all to be the “best bit” - seems impossible to sliver off a slice and still leave best bits for others.

@CheeseToastieLove

Double Dipping with crisps and dips. Never really thought about it until I read about it somewhere years ago! I bet people were looking at me in disgust.

A lot of these rules sound like something my granny would have said: No eating in the street as an example. But "double dipping" is a relatively new rule; for one thing dips didn't really exist in the UK until the 1980s. So the etiquette wasn't invented until sometime after that and took a while to disseminate to the population.

This is an interesting thread. I didn’t know Americans cut all their food up and ate using just the fork.
My own DM was of poor working class and STILL talks with a mouth full of food which I find utterly vulvar so that about sums up how much I was taught growing up. She also used to smoke at the table in between courses (in restaurants) when it was still publicly allowed. Thankfully this has stopped. We were however taught the correct way to use a knife and fork and where to place them at the end of a meal to show we were finished. I would always leave what I brought to a party unless the host told me to take it home (usually if they had many half empty bottles littering the place).
The drinks rounds thing is true except in the case where one person is not drinking alcohol and everyone else is. The person not drinking would not be expected to buy expensive alcoholic drinks for everyone else. It would be seen as rude/ I’ll mannered to expect them to buy a round. The same applies to someone on a tight budget in a restaurant setting. The polite thing to do would be to advise them to pay for themselves whilst splitting the cost with everyone else who have had expensive meals/drinks. In high society these rules don’t apply as everyone is well off). Lastly the Thankyou note...your grandmother/mother/ elderly friend or relative may expect these after giving gifts but a younger generation won’t expect this. A message of thanks via WhatsApp is sufficient and more economical

I didn’t know Americans cut all their food up and ate using just the fork.

In the kindest way possible, that is not the truth. Some foods are cut up using a fork while other are cut up using a knife. If you go to someone's home or a restaurant you will find knives on the table and people using them.

Also, it is not a question of manners but of cultural differences.

The person not drinking would not be expected to buy expensive alcoholic drinks for everyone else

In plenty of pubs round here, a pint of coke is more expensive than a pint of beer.

I was always taught you don’t touch the food on your plate unless you’re going to eat it. So you break off a bit of bread and butter it but don’t touch the rest of the bread. You eat from the side of your pile of rice or potato one forkful at a time but you don’t stir the whole lot around or mix foods together on your plate. If you want a bit of rice and curry together on your fork then you pick up a bit of each, you do NOT mix it on the plate.

I imagine this partly stems from the grossness of visibly mixing food on your plate; mixing should happen in your mouth and nobody wants to see you stirring your food into baby mush. But it’s also because we were very poor and there wasn’t enough food, so if there was untouched food left on your plate someone else could eat it, whereas if you’d touched it and buttered it and stirred it then it had to go in the bin. So in the days when a lot more families were poor I can see why it was rude to touch food you weren’t going to eat. Interestingly the same applied to very rich people whose leftovers historically would have been eaten by servants. The middle classes who have plenty of food and just throw away leftovers have no qualms about mixing and touching all of the food on their plate.

I think breaking up a bread roll into multiple pieces with your hands looks messy and unhygienic.

But you don’t break it into multiple pieces all at once. You break off the piece you are going to eat, spread a little butter on, and eat it.

There is never more than the remaining bread roll on your plate - the same as if you’d bitten it off.

Similarly the nose of the cheese thing - maybe the host hasn’t left it out long enough at room temp for it all to be the “best bit” - seems impossible to sliver off a slice and still leave best bits for others.

It's perfectly possible. Cut a soft cheese like Brie that's sold in wedges along the 'long' side of the wedge, not starting at the tip of the triangle and working outward to its base (which means that the last person risks ending up with just the outer rind).

Sure, it's also true that a good cheese will taste different right in the centre to the way it will at the edge -- that's why something like Brie (which is too big for someone to buy a whole one unless it's for some giant occasion like a wedding) is sold in wedges, so that you get both centre and rim. The 'rules' of cutting Brie or equivalent are to allow that 'taste of centre and rim' to be passed on to each person eating it.

It's rational politeness, rather than an empty piece of etiquette.

@Sssloou

I think breaking up a bread roll into multiple pieces with your hands looks messy and unhygienic.

I also think this elbow bashing fear is a red herring probably a remnant of quashed refectory tables at boarding school - homes and restaurants have more space.

Similarly the nose of the cheese thing - maybe the host hasn’t left it out long enough at room temp for it all to be the “best bit” - seems impossible to sliver off a slice and still leave best bits for others.

You don’t break it into multiple pieces though. You break off a piece at a time.

It seems obvious you would consider others and slice circular cheeses along the radius, otherwise someone is going to be left with rind. Clearly, rectangular blocks of cheese are cut at one end only for obvious reasons.

Yes to not mushing your food all up on the plate. It looks awful - unless you are sitting in your pants en famille on the sofa watching countdown.

What's the American thing then? Do they cut it up first? What is their etiquette?

It's really interesting to me how people see as "obvious" or just "common sense" their own background without realising that it really isn't that way to those outside that tradition.

“Confusedandshaken

On the subject of taking your drink home my DH's boss is super posh (titled, lives in the ancestral manor house) and is one of the rudest people I know. This is particularly noticeable around parties and alcohol. At a very formal dinner hosted by company clients he called the waiter over and ordered different wines to the ones provided by our hosts as he didn't think the ones the hosts had provided were very good. He then told the waiter to charge them to our hosts account. Funnily enough the client has requested he no longer works on their account.

On another occasion he held a garden party for colleagues and clients in a marquee in his (beautiful) grounds. There were two tiers of wine served, some for the general guests and different more expensive wines for a chosen few. To ensure the waiting staff knew which wine to serve to who there were two different types of wine glass. My, what fun we had switching them around.

And his most recent act of alcohol related rudeness - we went to Sunday lunch at their house and one guest brought a bottle of wine as a gift. When that guest left he gave them the wine they had bought to take home saying 'you might as well take this back, no one here will drink it'. My gift of home made sourdough bread was given back to me in the same way although he kept the champagne we had bought.**

Goodness,@Confusedandshaken
That person sounds horrifically rude, almost as though there is something wrong with him. It is unforgivable that he is so inconsiderate of his guests’ feelings. I am surprised anyone works with him at all.

@SavingsQuestions

What's the American thing then? Do they cut it up first? What is their etiquette?

It's really interesting to me how people see as "obvious" or just "common sense" their own background without realising that it really isn't that way to those outside that tradition.

Sometimes people cut all of their food up first. Others cut their food up as they go along. There is no standard expectation.

@ScrollingLeaves

You are so right that there is something wrong with him. I am have a Masters in psychotherapy and he meets most of the criteria for sociopathic narcissism. Those traits that make him hard to live with also make him a very clearheaded and ruthless business man who makes shedloads of money for his employers so he gets away with a lot! However his PAs only ever last about 18 months in the job and several clients refuse to deal with him. He really is a nightmare.

To be fair, I don't think it's his fault. His mum (who I knew) was similar and he had the classic upper class upbringing of being raised by a succession of nannies, only seeing his parents for a few minutes every day when they were in the U.K. and was then packed off to boarding school aged 7. That level of emotional isolation in childhood plus being super rich so always having anything he wanted as soon as he wanted it would probably make most people self centred and arrogant. However knowing that he is damaged doesn't make it any easier to spend time with him.

Sometimes people cut all of their food up first. Others cut their food up as they go along. There is no standard expectation.
No, it is always rude to cut all of your food up. Europeans cut one piece then eat it with the fork in the left hand. Americans cut one piece then put the knife down, switch the fork to the right hand then eat it. It is always rude to cut more than one piece at a time.

Why is it “rude” to cut all your food up first? It might not be in keeping old fashioned etiquette, but rude implies that something is objectively offensive and likely to upset/inconvenience others. How you cut your own food falls into neither of those categories. As other people have said, there’s a distinction between manners and etiquette; and eschewing the latter doesn’t mean you don’t have any of the former.