To think these are correct table manners or am I just a snob??

[Justintime3]

I was raised with strict table manners, yet I have never been sat at a table with anyone who has the same table manners I do! Are these over the top?

This is what I was taught

1. Do not eat until the person who cooked sits down (excused if the chef says you can start)
2. Do not eat until everyone has their food in a restaurant (excused if the person without their food says you can start)
3. Chew with your mouth closed and do not speak with your mouth full
4. Do not take calls or use your phone at the table. Excuse yourself if you need to
5. Put your knife and fork together at the front of your plate when you are finished
6. Offer the last serving of XYZ to the table before you take it
7. Thank the person who cooked and offer to clean up
8. Elbows off the table
9. Tear bread into small chunks to eat in a restaurant, don't bite off the whole roll

10. Use cutlery correctly

• index finger on top of your knife and fork
• spoons for soup and dessert only. Spoon the soup from the farthest side of the bowl
• load food onto the back of the fork with your knife. (No 'shovelling' as my mum called it)

My mum's always been really strict on it and is the type to point out people's bad table manners so I've always followed these to a T. Thoughts? Is this over the top and I'm a snob, or are these just normal to expect?

Because of how I've been raised I can't help but be put off when I see someone without these manners.

Just keen to see how others were raised!

I admit I always found this a tricky one to gauge, I think you’re supposed to use the butter you have and then either use the butter knife or just be able to eyeball how much butter you want in the first place. If you fail it’s keeping a stiff upper lip as you manfully chew your way through dry bread 😅

Perhaps this is another enormous faux pas I didn't know I was committing, but I sit close enough to the table for crumbs from my bread not to fall onto my lap. Just conceivably a few may fall onto the table. I will admit that it is usually a very bad decision on my part from a laundry point of view to wear a white or light grey top on days when I am going to eat anything involving a tomato sauce, as the two are magnetically attracted to each other. Crumbs, however, are not something I've ever worried much about.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I respect your point of view and I’m not suggesting you ought to worry! I was just suggesting a possible reason that custom may have come to exist.

My boyfriend will frequently eat up to two-thirds of a loaf of bread in front of me, with his face (just biting it as you would a roll) and my reaction is generally vaguely impressed/amused he can eat like that and also brushing the crumbs off his clothes, which inspired me to suggest that reason for the tradition. I don’t mind it at all, it actually helps me to see someone eat enthusiastically, but if you’re at a formal occasion or something it just might help things stay tidier? That’s all I meant.

Basic good table manners.👍

Or, everyone could use the same traditional very long-standing convention, both customers and waiting staff, to save the waiting staff keeping coming over to ask. People finish their meals at different times. It gets a bit annoying if you're trying to finish a story but haven't quite finished eating, or just are slower than the others, or want a rest because you're having a drink of water and a bit of wine, and you pause and put your cutlery at the traditional "pause" position and you get a waiter or waitress coming right to the table and saying "have you finished?" and reaching out to take your plate. Half of me wants to say "well, no, surely you can see that my cutlery position shows that I'm just having a rest" but then I've kind of accepted that some people DON'T seem to know these things anymore.

These rules aren't really for casual eating with just family though, they're for formal dining in larger numbers, or in front of people you may wish to if not impress, at least not offend.

I absolutely eat with my elbows on the table at home or even in a pub, but I wouldn't if I were sat at a tightly packed table with lots of people.

It doesn't matter how I leave my knife and fork on the plate at home, we can ask one another if we're finished. But I might well park them in a way that lets waiting staff know if I have finished or not at a formal dinner, where wait staff asking if each diner has finished would interrupt discussion around the table.

Knowing the general rules means I can apply them as and when necessary (and I applied the 'quietly observe/discreetly ask the person next to me' rule a lot when I was younger and ate out and in other peoples homes much more) - not that you stick to them religiously no matter how little sense they make!

Yes, that's the experience everyone wants in a restaurant. But if customers just leave their knife and fork all over the place when they've eaten all they want, how, if there is some food still left on the plate, are staff supposed to know that the customer is finished without having to ask. The onus is on the customer to "behave proper" 😉and that's why these social etiquette rules matter. They just make life a bit easier for everyone. No discussion needed.

@CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau TBF l can imagine crumbs down your bra are really irritating, so doing this whilst wearing something which exposed cleavage would make sense.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I had a friend who once said he needed a wine coloured tie and a curry coloured shirt. I had a lovely dress that, for some reason was very attractive to oily salad dressings. The only time I ever spilled dressing lade food on myself was in that dress!

I like grey tops. Every so often I buy another one, having suppressed the memory of why the last one had had to be taken out of circulation. My husband and I have been married so long that we can communicate with no words at all. He sees me getting out the new grey top and just looks at it in a pointed way.

I'm sorry, but I disagree. Why is it better? It serves no practical purpose.

Agree withRampantIvy

Yes, so do I. This sounds very much like the people who call their evening meals 'dinner' (absolutely fine), but then sneer at or act faux confused when somebody from the north or midlands calls that same meal 'tea' - even though it's clear from the context.

A sensible, mature adult would realise that people in different regions/cultures sometimes use different words for things, and that's great; but a snobbish dullard will, like a young child, genuinely believe that only their way is THE correct one, and so anybody who has a different way is horribly, embarrassingly and shamefully categorically wrong.

My post has disappeared but squashing a few peas at a time onto the back of a fork is not something a toddler would do, they wouldn’t have the fine motor skills to do it.

I'm not saying that a toddler would succeed at it; but that it's exactly the kind of thing that I'd expect a toddler to try to do - like when they have toys with a specific intended purpose that they don't really understand, so they just use them to repeatedly bash other toys with instead.

We say tea for our evening meal

I agree apart from number 9

If you’d bothered to read the thread, you’d see that a lot of people who think these rules are universal also can’t agree on exactly how a knife and fork should be placed to signify they have finished. Just use words; it’s easier

My boyfriend will frequently eat up to two-thirds of a loaf of bread in front of me, with his face (just biting it as you would a roll)

I would have ended things there and then if a BF did that in front of me.

What do you do if you’re eating with chopsticks? Or eating with your hands? How ON EARTH will anyone know you’ve finished??

Most of them fine I reckon. No.3 though - chewing with mouth closed - should be absolutely mandatory. I have a complete intolerance for anybody eating like a cow - my earpods have to go in or I leave the room if I have the displeasure of being in the company of somebody who does this

This isn't considered to be good manners in Italy! Fork only.

The positioning cutlery thing obviously isn't going to work with varied cuisine and modern restaurant layouts.

It needed flat plates and servants standing behind you.

I'd rather waiters asked whether we had finished than came breathing down our necks studying our cutlery.

Also - how have all the people who can't eat bread spread with butter without getting crumbs and grease everywhere been coping with sandwiches since the 1700s?

Deleted because I realise it had been said before

Some of these are pretty basic manners.
Others, like the ones about how to use cutlery, are pretty damn snobbish, ESPECIALLY if it's being made a point to 'correct' others about it.

I'd argue that the whole waiting for others before eating is definitely not the norm for many people

I'd say YANBU, simply because you're not actually enforcing it on others, but your mother very much is unreasonable

You wipe your mouth with a napkin, open the top button of your trews, lean back in your chair, and let out a nice, loud burp, followed by a long Ahhhhhhh, and beam around at your fellow diners.

That’s just basic table manners that a child would and should know. Mine certainly does.

I will however ever forget being about 9 at a friends house for dinner and her grandmother looking at her in horror and declaring in shocked tones “Katherine you are eating you egg with a grapefruit spoon”