To despair that so many people have appalling table manners?

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Maybe I am just old fashioned, but when did it become acceptable for people to make loud slurping and lip smacking noises, chew with their mouths open, talk with their mouths full, scrape their fork against their teeth with every mouthful...aaargh!!! Whatever happened to good table manners? How can people eat and drink so noisily with no consideration for the people they are with? Surely it can't just be me who finds it disgusting? It gives me the rage!

If you're using your cutlery the opposite way round, you're still using both hands so one again I don't see how being left handed is relevant. I'm left handed, and I have my knife in my right hand and my fork in my left. My DD is right handed. She often switches them around.

It only becomes relevant if a person is eating American-style, ie, one-handed, only using the fork. I didn't allow that because it (for us at least) meant hands in the plate and food pushed off the plate.

You are correct @FemmeNatal. It was in context with using your hand to eat with as well and nothing to do with which hand you hold your cutlery in.

I think the previous poster was alluding to cultures from the Maghreb / Middle East where it’s normal to wipe your bottom directly on your left hand and then to wash the hand afterwards.

I’m happy to be corrected if this isn’t right, but it apparently gives rise to taboos around what you do with that hand

Why the left hand? Because it's non-dom so you eat with your dominant right hand and wipe with your left?
If your non-dominant hand is your right hand, wouldn't it be more natural to wipe with your right hand and then use your left hand to eat? Still seems unfair to lefties who can't eat with their dominant hand due to this taboo.

If you're using your cutlery the opposite way round, you're still using both hands so one again I don't see how being left handed is relevant.

Because someone said (not the one I replied to given) that people can hold their cutlery in the "wrong hand". There isn't really a wrong hand. I don't see why it only becomes relevant if you eat one-handed "American-style", surely there's still no "wrong hand", it just depends which is your dominant one.

YANBU, it’s horrible.
We used to have a friend who made revolting pig noises and talked (a lot!) with his mouth full of food. There was always a fight in this family as to who was not going to sit opposite him!

He’d evidently not been taught as a child, but OTOH he’d been very successful in his career at a high level, so how on earth he didn’t pick up better manners on the way, I can’t understand.

My DF always made a massive Thing of table manners, which could be a PITA when I was a child, but OTOH I’m really glad I was taught how to behave in a civilised manner.

They're discussing table manners on This Morning right now. What a coincidence.

We have battled with our oldest son who is now 15 who just gobbles down his food especially pasta, drives my husband mad and we have always sat down for dinner since he was young, he just doesn't get it and no SEN he just doesn't seem to get the fact that you need to use both cutlery and eat properly. The younger son eats fine😀

And also when I was in school in the 80's we had a teacher who always ate lunch with us but he was too strict, no one was allowed to leave for break until everyone had finished and put their cutlery in the right position and so on. We hated him. This sounds like some sort of public school but was actually a school in Scandinavia

I ended up eating in a crowded community eating room & I realised that although I am familiar with people eating without cutlery for cultural reasons, I found my neighbour licking his fingers and making lip smacking noises when doing so really off-putting!

Actually, lunchtime staff ratios are 1:90 there literally isn't time to deal with things like table manners other than very occasionally. Seeing to children with medical needs takes priority.

The thing I don't understand is why people who are younger hold their forks so awkwardly , have fingers sort of one under one over the handle . Is it meant to look cute? It does seem a trend and stabbing food and biting bits off rather than cutting it. Lolling on one elbow and eating with one hand. It doesn't look easier , just looks like a trend.

Your mealtimes sound like fun, are you one of those families that sit "properly" around a table looking completely bored and miserable.
I often happily eat my meals upstairs on my bed with 3 of my cats close by, that's the joy of not giving a toss or doing things "properly"

I've long thought this about etiquette. Good manners and good etiquette are by no means tantamount to the same thing; there's a sense in which etiquette can actually be bad manners. And 'othering' others by showing superiority through particular gestures, to my mind is bad manners. (Thinking of poor old Jack on Titanic ...)

Some of these posts illustrate exactly what's unpleasant for others to have to watch and what comes from a silly rule book, the breaching of which is offensive to no one. The world is not going to end if you don't lay your napkin to the left-hand side of your plate.

To me it’s not a question of e.g which implement goes in which hand. Of course ‘lefties’ will do it their way.

It’s much more a question of not making disgusting pig noises, eating and talking with a mouth full of food, etc. A friend of ours had such revolting table manners, there was always an argument in our family about who was not going to sit opposite him - it was enough to turn your stomach.

He evidently hadn’t been taught as a child, but he’d been very successful in his career, and was a very sociable person, earring out and so on, so how he never picked up more acceptable manners/awareness I will never understand.

My husband and I are both righties, and both take our fork in our right hand.

But then I'm dyspraxic and he has mild hemiplegia.

If someone thinks it's more rude for my food to neatly enter my mouth with my right hand than for me to accidentally flick it onto the next table with my left, then they haven't got their priorities straight!