To think it doesn’t really matter how I hold my cutlery.

[Frosty2894]

With all the things going on in the world right now, I’m writing a post about how we hold cutlery.

I remember being told I’m cack handed by my grandmother when I was a child 🤨 she didn’t say it in a nasty way but said she was similar.

I’m right handed. I hold my fork in my right hand and knife in left. This is the way I’ve always done it and felt comfortable, was never told or taught the correct way.

For years my partner has joked about how I can’t hold a knife and fork properly and even mentioned trying it the other way. I’ve tried - it doesn’t feel right to me. He told me that his mother would probably tell me to switch hands as it’s her ‘pet gate’. We’ve been together for 9 years. He’s not mentioned it for a while (until tonight) and I’ve avoided eating in front of his mother as much as possible else I feel paranoid. Feel like I’m being watched!

Generally my table manners are okay I think. I’m not a complete slob when It comes to eating or anything!

Aibu to think it really doesn’t matter? Partner has mentioned it tonight and does it really bleddy matter?!

I'm right handed, and eat with my cutlery in the "wrong" hands, my mother was left handed, so presumably it's because she taught me to eat. Both my DC do too, and the first thing they do when we sit down to eat anywhere is reverse the cutlery setting...

It's a horrible character trait to deliberately decide that anybody a little different from you is exhibiting 'poor manners' simply by their not being you.

As has been said upthread, if you sit there sneering at an able-bodied person using cutlery normally in their hands, what must you be like when you encounter a disabled person having to make much bigger adjustments from the norm in order to live their lives in the most practical way for them? I used to know a woman who was born with her arms not fully/normally-formed, who had her car adapted to steer with her feet. Goodness, all that time I thought she was a lovely, gentle, kind-hearted, helpful, much-valued person when, it would seem, I should have been viewing her as a rude, ill-mannered, etiquette-denying social pariah all along.

I know people will say "Ah, but it's different if you're disabled!" Firstly, you are othering disabled people and finding 'excuses' for how they live their lives to justify to you in your own mind when they need none whatsoever. Secondly, you have no idea what hidden disability or other difficulty a person may have. Thirdly, it's none of your business: they are not answerable to you.

Elbows off the table! Don't speak with your mouth full! Ask for things to be passed, don't reach across the table! Keep your mouth closed! Wait until you are offered! Wait until everyone has their meal before eating! Don't scrape your teeth on your fork!

I think these are all basic table manners 🤷‍♀️ Perhaps 'wait until you are offered' isn't always necessary, especially if the item is accessible on the table.

I'm in the "hold your knife and fork properly" camp, but if someone has their fork in the right and knife in the left and it doesn't look clumsy, then whatever. I'll notice, but won't be fixated (as long as they're not my kids 😂)

I eat this way too, always have done. It actually makes far more sense if you're right handed to eat with your right hand 🤷‍♀️ And use the knife in your left. I've tried to do it the "proper" way and just can't, it's far too uncomfortable.

Interesting that it's more common when children aren't introduced to using a knife early enough, as someone mentioned earlier. I had a pretty dysfunctional home life and dinner for me often involved sitting on my own in front of the TV. Or a quickly gulped down meal at 10pm with my mum when she came home from her second job and was dog tired, so teaching me to use a knife just wasn't priority. I ate with a fork only until I was a teenager.

To those that judge...you do realise not everyone has the privilege of a childhood where you eat leisurely family meals at the table?

It actually makes far more sense if you're right handed to eat with your right hand 🤷‍♀️ And use the knife in your left.

Not to me. If I am eating steak I would need my dominant hand to be able to cut the meat.

@acatcalledjohn

"Dress comfortably" doesn't mean finery. So yes, misled.

Depends on what you find comfortable.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Mumsnet managed 19 pages on the right way to hold a knife and fork, this website really is full of upper class snobs isn't it.

If you've read this thread, you'll see that it isn't full of them - there is a good number of us discussing from the pov that:
A. It's rude to stare at people's hands when you're in company instead of meeting their eye;
B. It makes no difference whatsoever to you which hands people hold their cutlery in - if it does, stop staring at their hands. Perhaps you'd also like to ask them what colour pants they're wearing, to see if you approve of that as well;
C. People are eating politely in a way that is comfortable for them as an individual - they are not a performing monkey who is only there to act as an extension of your preferences;
D. Many people who find it more comfortable to hold their cutlery this way are left-handed. Now, it isn't a 'fashionable' thing any more, but in living memory, the 10% of people with this normal, standard variation of how humans are 'wired' have been considered evil, mentally ill dangerous etc. purely because of this. They have been forced by those who should have been helping and caring for them - often with threats and violence - to act in denial of this normal variation. Imagine somebody telling you that you have to start using your feet to write with - that would go against all of your natural instincts and common sense, wouldn't it? Even to this day, people with natural African hair are told that it is messy, unprofessional, socially unacceptable, and that they must try to change it to look more like the European hair they were never naturally supposed to have at all. Most young children can understand and accept that not everybody is the same as them, so what does it say of an adult who could but actively chooses not to do the same?
E. To summarise: just because somebody is not the same as you and doesn't have the exact same preferences for how they do very minor things, it does not mean that they are wrong. By sitting there arrogantly judging them, you are merely wasting your own life by filling yourself with pointless frustration and proving what a rude, unsocialised person you yourself are.

Gosh. What a lengthy post to proffer at that time of day! Your barely suppressed fury is showing but why I have no idea. What people you don’t know think really shouldn’t concern you so much.

@sbhydrogen

Elbows off the table! Don't speak with your mouth full! Ask for things to be passed, don't reach across the table! Keep your mouth closed! Wait until you are offered! Wait until everyone has their meal before eating! Don't scrape your teeth on your fork!

I think these are all basic table manners 🤷‍♀️ Perhaps 'wait until you are offered' isn't always necessary, especially if the item is accessible on the table.

I'm in the "hold your knife and fork properly" camp, but if someone has their fork in the right and knife in the left and it doesn't look clumsy, then whatever. I'll notice, but won't be fixated (as long as they're not my kids 😂)

A sensible post. 🤓

[quote FunkBus]@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

If it's not ok to complain about how people hold their cutlery, why is it ok to say it's rude not to meet someone's eye? That's a massive struggle for many of us (autistic/ADHD/shyness/social anxiety).

One rule for one thing and another for another.

I am betting you wouldn't go to Japan and start stabbing into your food with chopsticks and then telling any Japanese person who questioned it that it's FIIIIINE[/quote]
I bet she would not. It’s easy to be brave on a forum for ladies.

I think it would be an unkindness to not teach a child how to eat "properly" to easily hold their own in social situations. Comfortable, after all, is
(In this case) mostly a function of habit.

But you are a bloody adult and other adults should seriously butt out of your eating habits.

I could see my boss correcting me - I have a superformal job that is big on etiquette - but in a situation of equals (partners, family and family-in-law, friends) just MYOB and let the poor person enjoy their meal.

As you demonstrate. I wonder if you would be as foul and insulting to people's faces as you are on here?

@Janegrey333

I bet she would not. It’s easy to be brave on a forum for ladies.

As you demonstrate. I wonder if you would be as foul and insulting to people's faces as you are on here? I hope not.

The only things I can't stand is the when people use their fork as a shovel. With their whole fist wrapped round the handle with fingers facing down, as if you were using a little shovel in the garden and are leaning down over their plate just ramming heaped forkfulls of food in like they haven't eated for weeks. And eating with your mouth open. And not wiping greasy hands before you touch things. If your chicken wing sauce ends up on the communal salt shaker then we have problems.

I bet she would not. It’s easy to be brave on a forum for ladies.

I don't wish to offend your sensibilities, but there are quite the number of men on here as well.

I don't see what this forum being aimed at woman (or "ladies") has to do with anything.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that somebody with such extreme views on how categorically wrong other people are, with such a silly thing as how you hold your cutlery, is so assured that her preference is the only universally-accepted correct one that, instead of bothering to discuss (on the public discussion forum she's deliberately chosen to participate in), she just stands back goadily (and somewhat school-bully-ish) and pronounces in a couple of words how terribly foolish somebody clearly must be. No bothering to discuss or expand, which is the very basic idea of a forum.

Like the kid at school who would just stare at you, raise their eyebrows and ask in a deeply condescending way "Did your mother really send you to school in that cheap unbranded coat, hmmm?"

The kind of unpleasant kid who would then go on to make sweeping generalisations and start rumours, based on their first assumption of 'guilt' - e.g. your mum must have shoplifted the coat, she only ever gives you crisps for your dinner, she 'entertains' the local men to earn money to buy drugs etc. etc. - and then take their assumptions as truth, because they have said them.

When all somebody has left to beat you for is the time of day you post on MN - without knowing anything about you, your schedule, your daily family and work schedules; as well as sneering that you wouldn't be 'brave' enough to respect another country's culture (no idea what that's supposed to mean - unless the bravery jibe was at me for daring to have and voice a different opinion from her?) - I think it's time to call it a day. Thanks to (almost) everybody else for a bizarrely fascinating discussion, whatever your views are on the matter in question.

I'm sure "Jane" is very well aware that there are men posting on MN.

It's baffling why "Jane" has such extreme rage over and such an intense fixation on how other people hold their cutlery.

@verylittlepen

I’ve never seen anyone hold a knife like a pen. Some of you lot must have terrible pen grips.

i never knew there was any other way to do it until i was about mid 20s, and started reading things like on here. went to private boarding school, and university x2. social events in the deanery of st paul's catherdral etc. no problem. no one mentioned or seemed to notice. guess they were all looking down on me secretly. but i was one of the very few who curtsied correctly to princess anne, and she smiled on me, so there.

I do the same as you OP - 'normal' but the wrong way around. I was ambidextrous when I was younger although wrote with my right hand now. I also wear my watch one the 'wrong' wrist.

As long as you have good table manners then I don't see the problem.

@DownstairsMixUp

Ignore. I judge people heavily who judge on how people hold their knife and fork though. They come across super common to me.

yep.

Read this thread on fb earlier today , it wasnt mumsnet 😬

@acatcalledjohn

His first “interview”, in leaving university, was in the form of a lunch for all candidates. Even dress code was left deliberately vague and people were asked to “dress comfortably”. That was the first test, obviously.

So they actively misled the candidates with that dress code.

They can keep their snobby job in that case. Nothing "obvious" in that being a test and incredibly classist to boot.

I was a civil servant for a very long time. No dress code, not even an unwritten one.