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!

This is the absolute bare minimum OP

Incorrect

I grew up with all of those rules and do follow them all in more formal environments (although I don’t live in the Uk anymore and cutlery etiquette varies around the world).

I do think the British fork rules are a bit stupid and seem contrary to the actual design of the utensil, though. Spooning away from you also seems a bit pointless, although not really a faff.

If this catches on, that's the end of MN, Mere!

I was with you until 8 & 10

Unless there is limited room I don’t see why it matters what anyone does with their elbows. And never in my life have I stopped to think whether an index finger is on anyone’s cutlery.

I can’t stand pointless rules, especially when people are looked down upon for not subscribing to nonsense. If it’s not harming you or anyone else why does it matter?

The peas thing is why I never order peas with a meal in a restaurant. Too tedious. At home I throw caution to the wind and scoop them up with my fork. The bread thing- I do this because a) I have a small mouth and it isn't attractive to have a face smeared with butter and crumbs and b) because if I'm wearing lipstick (rare) and I'm in a nice restaurant with linen napkins I don't want to wipe my lipstick all over the napkin.

I was also taught never to allow my back to touch the chair ("No slouching!") and always ensure that I brought the food UP to my mouth, instead of bringing my mouth DOWN to the plate. This would also have incurred the "No slouching" refrain, of course.

This is absolutely my list of expectations at our dinner table and they are well adhered to in our household.
my absolute biggest pet hate is people chewing with their mouths open and talking with their mouths full.
vile!

You forgot.
No slouching at the table, your back must be straight.

I grew up with all those rules. If you even put your forearms on the edge of the table, we'd get a telling off.
The knife and fork had to be sat next to each other at half past six position.
Ripping off bits of a roll and spreading butter on it.
My ex father in law had horrendous table manners, eating with his mouth open and talking with his mouth full, locking his plate clean, locking his knife. I hated eating with him.
I always thought all the rules were because my maternal grandparents were well off and had Victorian era parents.
Now with my own kids, as long as they eat with their mouth shut, don't talk with their mouth full and wait until everyone is finished, elbows on the table is not my hill to die on.

It’s good manners to rest your cutlery on your plate between mouthfuls and whilst chatting.

Putting your knife and fork together when you’ve finished isn’t just to signal that you’ve finished (pretty obvious in a family situation).

It means the person clearing plates can easily grab the used cutlery with one hand rather than having to gather it up from different angles.

As PPs have said, there are reasons for most of these ‘rules’.

YANBU at all OP, these are standard.

However, despite teaching my kids these manners from day one, I still have to constantly remind them, even now they’re teenagers. Why?

Because apparently ‘no one’ else does this.

My ex did this and meals took ages. I found it quite rude actually, not polite at all. I think it’s fine to hold your knife and fork as long as you’re not waving them around.

The ‘shovelling’ thing does bother me. Knife should be in your right hand and fork in your left and the fork tines should be pointing downwards so it makes a bridge. You stab things with the fork and cut them with the knife, then push the cut food into your fork tines (not onto the back of the fork like some people are suggesting) so it’s all sort of stuck on there nice and securely. Then you eat it.

This is only for a dinner that requires cutting though - if it was eg shepherds pie or risotto then a fork in the right hand used as a shovel is fine.

If you’re worried about crumbs in the butter, loads of people buttering individual morsels is worse than people just buttering their roll at the start. And if it bothers you, serve individual butter curls or something.

You don't butter individual pieces of bread from the communal butter dish! You take an amount and place it on your side plate, then butter your bread from there

Someone mentioned dinner versus tea...just to point out, it's not a 'northern' thing, I grew up in Devon, and we all called the evening meal 'tea'. It's definitely a class thing and it's because in days gone by, working classes doing long days at hard, manual labouring jobs would have their main meal in the middle of the day, when they needed the energy. In the evening, when they got home from work, often quite late, they would have a mug of tea, maybe some bread and butter.
Middle class, Upper middle-class and the aristocracy with either what we would now call 'white collar jobs' or no jobs at all would have a light lunch, possibly 'high tea' in the afternoon, but the evening meal would be a formal 'Dinner' for which it was customary to change clothes, and eat more than one course.
'Dinner' is simply the biggest meal of the day. When you had that meal depended on what you did. Though most of us now eat dinner in the evening, calling it 'tea' has stuck with most of us.
Bit of a derailment, but since it was mentioned...

The only time I put my cutlery down during a meal is roughly halfway through during a pause. I need a pause during a meal. I’ve never seen anyone doing it after two or three bites.

I think dinner v tea/supper is both a class and a regional thing. I’m southern and have been raised by fairly snobbish Northerners so to me we have lunch in the middle of the day, tea in the early evening or supper in the late evening. Lunch at school was dinner, oddly. But I’d understand someone talking about dinner or tea to mean different things in context and I wouldn’t think twice about it.

The putting your knife and fork down sounds like a step too far for me - particularly for me, I already take forever to eat! Just lower them and keep them near your plate, don’t gesticulate with them if you’re talking. It seems particularly illogical to do it while chewing as you won’t be gesturing! Plus the way it was done sounds very showy and odd for it to show up in adult life - one-upmanship or compulsion?

About the teenagers who won’t comply with the household table manners, it could just be a bit of rebellion? But it’s really thought-provoking regarding some of these habits because it was ingrained in me that people would judge/be disgusted if I didn’t comply with them whereas only about half of them have good reasons behind them, which always helps enforcement. It’s really difficult to think how as a parent you would incentivise or get compliance without resorting to snobbery or bullying (for me this is probably because I haven’t experienced table manners teaching any other way).

@Hobbitfeet32 ·

A ridiculous suggestion, which comes entirely from your own fantasies!

To adapt a MN cliche: are you always this paranoid? 🙄

Something else - I think you should always check your neighbours at the table have been served with side-dishes etc before starting. It's basic common sense (on which all manners are based!!!), but oh boy, it sometimes doesn't happen. I've often sat at a table where people help themselves to veg etc and then just leave the dish where it is so that others, out of reach down the table, can't access it. I hate having to constantly ask for things to be passed, but it should be common sense. It must be either self-absorption or a lack of imagination.

My PILs were guilty of this at Christmas - they'd just help themselves and then start, leaving everyone else waiting and watching, only to have to reach over.

Simple rule: have your neighbours got all they need? Veg, sauce, salt etc? Check on this before digging in.

@CoffeeCantata I think it's only sensible, when having a social meal, to wait until everybody has got everything they need and is ready to start eating. If everybody starts at the same time, you run less risk of someone finishing way before or after everyone else. Of course, some are slower or faster eaters, but if everyone starts at the same time, there's a better chance of nobody being left feeling awkward when everyone else is ready for dessert. If someone is, naturally slower, though, it's impolite to make them feel they have to rush. Each course should be started at the same time, because it's not a race to the finish line (allowing, of course for reasons people may have for their eating pace which may induce them to tell others to carry on or ask if they can start).
In re: passing sides, the best restaurant I ever went to in a large group had round tables with a lazy Susan affair built into the middle. You helped yourself and moved the rotating middle round to the next person.
People are OTT about this sort of thing in both directions, IMO. None of these things being discussed should be used to make crass value judgements about other people's socio-economic status. Fortunately, the instances of remarks on this thread casting such judgements have been low, as have instances of being completely OTT about the effect on them personally upon witnessing someone using the fork wrongly. Thus it's been, largely, a fun thread about something we are all familiar with, and because there are fewer people making a big song and dance about the moral decrepitude of those who do differently, there are fewer people (myself included) being OTT in the opposite direction.

Utterbunkum
People are OTT about this sort of thing in both directions, IMO. None of these things being discussed should be used to make crass value judgements about other people's socio-economic status. Fortunately, the instances of remarks on this thread casting such judgements have been low, as have instances of being completely OTT about the effect on them personally upon witnessing someone using the fork wrongly. Thus it's been, largely, a fun thread about something we are all familiar with, and because there are fewer people making a big song and dance about the moral decrepitude of those who do differently, there are fewer people (myself included) being OTT in the opposite direction.

Definitely!

I think some people are very over-dramatic about what is basically common sense practicality and consideration for other people.

I've never adversely judged anyone for not knowing the finer points of etiquette (I don't know them myself) but people who barge into queues at buffets or public eateries, only think of themselves and have no imagination as to the off-putting effect of say, burping, or talking with their mouths open while eating...I do judge them, but not from a class pov (as some pps would have us think).

If anyone puts someone down because of how they're holding their knife, well - they're telling you who they are! But I might get put off if someone was brandishing their cutlery, and using it to jab or point while speaking - which I have witnessed, and who on earth would think that was OK? But again, it would take a pretty aggressive and unpleasant person to do this!

I am a working class northerner brought up in a council estate in the 1950’s and my parents taught us to be polite but not deferential. We were taught table manners like the op mentioned, we followed our parents example and they’ve become second nature, slightly more relaxed but still basically the same, I can’t eat any other way.

Knowing how to eat with manners is important. You can move in different circles with ease.

.I see lots of people using forks like Americans where your elbow is on the table, you stab the food and then force it to fit in your mouth wholly or mostly, moving it in as you eat. Mouth open the whole time. Yuck. Who wants to see that daily.

It’s good manners to rest your cutlery on your plate between mouthfuls and whilst chatting.

Just shove them pointy bit-down and park them in your massive mound of mashed potato

I think some people are very over-dramatic about what is basically common sense practicality and consideration for other people.

I've not seen anybody on here cavilling at the more sensible points in the OP, but it's the arbitrary snobbish ones that people are not seeing eye-to-eye on.

Apologies, Utterbunkum - that was remiss of me; of course you're right that the use of 'tea' for your evening meal is not just restricted to the north or the midlands. A bit like people assuming that anybody on MN referring to their 'Mom' must be American, when most of Birmingham call their mums that.

I can’t imagine resting my cutlery between forkfuls. I cut the food up, food to fork, fork to mouth and while I’m chewing, Im using the cutlery to prepare the next forkful. To do it any other way would take forever, I’m a slow eater as it is.

These are just basic table manners. Nothing particularly formal or fancy about any of them (I guess possibly the bread roll tearing could be considered a little OTT nowadays).

But obviously people who either weren’t encouraged to demonstrate basic table manners growing up or have chosen not to use them as adults will tell you you’re super uptight because they’d rather make out manners are uptight and old fashioned rather than acknowledge a lot of what they do (being on phones at the table, shovelling food in when others are still waiting unless told to start without them) is really rude.

YWBU if you’re getting irritated when out and about over the more minor things though e.g a child with elbows on tables, not holding cutlery correctly etc as they’re things that are nice but aren’t really rude in the same way some of the others are - like people bellowing away on a phone call in the middle of a restaurant.