Eating with a knife and fork in the wrong hands

[Getabloominmoveon]

Just sat in a cafe next to a whole family eating with their fork in the right hand and knife in the left. On the other side a young guy was struggling to chop up his food with just a fork. A few weeks ago an adult friend of mine admitted she didn’t know which way to set a table.This is In the UK btw.

When did this start? Have they never eaten with a table set with cutlery? Don’t people teach their kids how to eat properly any more?

At the risk of sounding like Hyacinth Bouquet AIBU to think that this is a basic life skill and people should eat with their cutlery in the right hands (unless left-handed, different cultures, Americans and all the other caveats of course).

@TheBirdintheCave
Yes indeed. Many people have tried to convince me that disregarding the cultural norm at the dining table is perfectly fine.

It only demonstrates that an astonishing number of people have no idea what table manners consist of and are quite happy to let their children grow up without any idea that there are certain conventions around eating that have been observed for several hundred years at this point, and they're not as optional in polite society as is believed on this thread.

I really couldn't give a fuck which hand people use.

This really only mattered when laying a table with all the cutlery for multiple courses, with people sat very close together, where you'd risk elbows clashing and cutlery clattering about as someone continually passed their cutlery over their plate.

Since next to no one eats formally like that any more, it really doesn't matter.

I really really dislike HKLP though, of course I would not say anything to anyone doing so, but I have never yet met someone who HKLP who a/ doesn't ping food off their plate frequently due to improper and inefficient use of their knife and b/isn't under the misapprehension that it makes them look posh/dainty/proper.

I don't mind etiquette for sensible reasons - not pinging food around, not clashing elbows or leaning across people to reach for stuff and risking knocking things over... all sensible enough.

But in the appropriate places, at a table that isn't set for multiple courses, where there is plenty of room and... crucially, at which you are not sat... it really doesn't matter.

@mathanxiety "Well, it's tradition" doesn't explain WHY it's important. "We've always done it this way" isn't a good enough reason. I'm staring to think that it's a tiny, petty thing that people use to feel superior to others.

I think using cutlery correctly is important. I hate to see knife and fork waving and we have always eaten at the table. I don't like using my fingers to eat and apart from eating something like a biscuit I have to sit down and eat from a plate. I can't bear to see people walking along eating a pasty or similar with a paper bag wrapped around it. Also I would never have take away coffee in a paper cup.

These are all my preferences and I realise that we are not all the same.

Both me and my mum are left handed and we eat "normally " fork in left and knife in right 🤷‍♀️

You sound like a barrel of laughs!

Maybe for some... but the origins of it were there for generally good reason.

If everyone uses their cutlery the same way round when you have got three forks on one side, two spoons and a knife the other side, side plates, water glasses, wine glasses, dessert fork and spoon above... then thats tidy.

You avoid elbow clashing, people passing their knife/fork over their plate potentially clattering or dropping them, knocking their water or wine over the table.

Doesn't matter of course if you have one course or two courses and everyones got lots of room, but at a big table with everyone sat close and a huge place setting for each person, it does make a difference.

I don't understand why people pretend these dining and cutlery etiquette rules were invented for no reason or to upset others - they weren't at all.

It was about eating politely in a way that didn't infringe on others spaces, didn't ping food across the table, clatter cutlery or drop stuff or knock things over, or increase the risk of anyone dribbling soup down their fronts.

Some things were an effective code so that waiting staff could do their job without interrupting conversation - for example, indicating you've finished your course by putting your knife and fork on the plate, tines of the fork upwards, together, in the six oclock position, rather than putting them down apart, at an angle which indicates you are not yet finished with them.

Some were polite manners - salt on the side of the plate rather than sprinkled over, meaning you salted individually, and suggesting you had tasted it first rather than rudely assuming your meal to be under-seasoned by salting all of it.

Not scraping or mopping up the last scraps of food with a spoon or bit of bread - to do so risks you splatting it about, scraping noises that detract from conversation and suggests you are still ravenous and your host has underfed you (which would be VERY rude indeed).

Keeping elbows off the table/not leaning on the table - one I see commonly quoted as unnecessary and pointless.. again, at a tightly packed long table, someone doing this would be encroaching on the space of the persons either side of them, blocking their view of the table in general and likely meant they were attempting to converse with someone several seats down, which means talking across someone, which is very unpleasant for that person!

These things were also there so one could make a point if necessary! If you wanted to, you COULD indeed scrape at your plate or oversalt the whole dish, should you want to indicate to your host that they are undercatering and mean, or underseasoning and thus lacking taste and also, mean. To do these things didn't mean you were common... it might mean you're rude though (but being rude has never been a disqualifier for the upper classes has it!)

As far as I know from the time I have spent with the truly and genuinely posh upper class set.. it is the HEIGHT of poor taste and manners to remark upon (or giggle at, stare at or smirk at) someone elses lack of education in etiquette - such errors are down to lack of opportunity, and to remark on anothers poor fortune is a cheap shot indeed.

@WiddlinDiddlin "it must have been there for a good reason" still doesn't explain why the way one holds their cutlery - not all the other stuff you mentioned - just this topic at hand.

You can say a lot of "it must have been there for a good reason" for a lot of things that were perhaps suitable for the time the practice was enforced, yet makes no sense in the modern world.

The fact that such an innocuous issue winds people up is bizarre. And I still have not seen a concrete expansion, so I'm assuming that there's none.

Also - other cultures eat differently. Are they also uncouth?

*why the way one holds their cutlery matters

I can’t believe how many people don’t seee this as important.

At home eating in front of the TV I guess it’s not an issue. At work we have a number of staff we no longer send to client events or to business dinners. Guess which ones they are? They are the ones who are of course entitled to eat as they wish at home, but who because they have never adopted proper table manners simply cant represent the company at certain functions.

it’s such a simple thing, that whether some people like it or not does make people stand out in certain situations if they can’t eat “properly”

As long as people close their mouths when they chew, I couldn’t care less.

I guess it depends on what you value, whether or not you see it as important.

Personally it matters more to me (in and out of work) who a person is, rather than which hand they hold their fork in.

I use cutlery the "wrong way" - much to my mother's dismay! It is that I wasn't shown or taught, I just can't physically use them the correct way around very well, it is just so much easier for me to use them how I do. Seems silly to struggle to eat my food because I am trying to use cutlery in the correct way. We would make a left handed person use a pen in the tight hand so I don't really see the difference.

Even though I actually DO use my cutlery the "right" way (not on purpose) I'd rather do it incorrectly than look down my nose at people for innocuous nonsense🤷🏿‍♀️

A basic life skill is not holding your knife and fork in "the right hands". Do you consider sticking your pinking out when drinking a cup of tea also a life skill?

I hold my knife in my left hand and, get this, hold my fork similar to how I would hold a spoon but a slightly different grip.

Essential manners at the dinner table is a must - not chewing with your mouth open, covering your mouth if you need to speak etc - but how to hold a knife and fork should be completely up to how the individual wants to hold them and shouldn't bother anyone else in the slightest.

*by essential manners I mean not something like the arbitrary elbows off the table or napkin on the left etc.

I’m left handed I eat the ‘wrong’ way.
id make more of a mess eating if I swapped hands. I struggle to cut with a knife as it is.

Actually I’m wrong 😂 I eat with the fork in my left and the knife in my right (it’s early, I’m sleep deprived)

however I do struggle to cut things with my knife in my right hand, I just can’t do it very well, I tear at the food but I blame school for that. My mum didn’t care which hand I ate with but school did.

@JennyNotFromTheBlock like you I am predominantly left handed, very strongly in fact. I do everything apart from 2 things with my left hand because I physically can’t do them with my right and I thought in the 21st century we’d left left handed discrimination behind but reading this thread we obviously haven’t.

being left handed has caused me problems in school and at work. I seriously injured my hand and needed surgery 4 years ago because my employer refused to take into consideration how my left handed ness affected my ability to operate a piece of machinery.

my late husband was a leftie, but he wrote excruciatingly slowly with his right hand, he was forced to by his teacher back in the seventies when he was five. As a result he had severe dyslexia and a stutter.

some of the comments on this thread are ridiculous

@Florenz Then if people think it is good manners, it IS good manners.

It absolutely does not affect your chances because most people are not backward, narrow-minded bigots. It is not the norm to have interviews in restaurants, unless you're interviewed for a restaurant position.

Just as it's not the norm for employers to ask you to write something down in front them to check your 'penmanship'.

And I would not want to work for such a hateful, compassionless, backward, narrow-minded, bigoted company if they judged me on something that I CAN'T HELP, such as what hand I write with or my dominant eating hand. Anyone who judges another human being by something they can't help, is lowlife scum imo. I wouldn't be seen dead working for lowlife scum like that.

@mathanxiety Wow, you're a real piece aren't you. 'Convention' does not equate to manners. In fact, quite the contrary, many conventions arose from and contain bad manners. I am so sorry that you are so closed-minded you cannot understand this. It was the 'convention' to try and turn left handers into right handers. That wasn't 'good manners', either. It was pure ignorance and bigotry. Just like you are displaying with the 'but it's CONVENTION!' narrow-minded and ignorant bs. Some 'conventions' are not good, and should be eradicated.

I don't know what horrible backwater you're from, given you said you're in America I can only guess. But the 'convention' to force left handed eaters into being right handed eaters stopped being a convention a long, long time ago in most of the civilised western world. We no longer judge; gay people, people with disabilities, or left handers. Sorry that your ignorance, your hatred, your bigotry and lack of class and education is not shared by most people.

@WiddlinDiddlin So you've confirmed that was for convenience of lazy waiters. Take what you've said, and apply it to left handed writers in classrooms. We no longer do that now (although I have no doubt a few on here would still do that). Also we had no facilities for wheelchairs back then, it would have been 'untidy' us having wheelchair tracks or lanes.

Generally the origins of these 'conventions' arose from laziness and bad manners. Nothing else.

Leftys?? That sounds a bit non pc could we be called people who use their left hand instead

Because it ISN'T important which hand you hold your fork.

It's important to eat neatly, make interesting conversation, be tidy etc

Bit it makes fuck all difference if you lift a fork with the handle pointing left or right.

@Witsendwilly Does your bigoted and backward company also have staff who are not allowed to be seen writing left handed? Or be seen in a wheelchair? Table manners, and the hand you hold your fork with are two entirely different things. Being left handed is not 'bad manners'.

I seriously injured my hand and needed surgery 4 years ago because my employer refused to take into consideration how my left handed ness affected my ability to operate a piece of machinery.
my late husband was a leftie, but he wrote excruciatingly slowly with his right hand, he was forced to by his teacher back in the seventies when he was five. As a result he had severe dyslexia and a stutter.

Yes it is incredibly shameful that there are still people who have such abusive, bigoted and prejudiced attitudes on this thread. I would never choose to associate with such compassionless hateful bigots in real life.