Based on this comment - have I been badly brought up?

[Canwehaveahotsummer]

There was a conversation at work between myself and two colleagues. We are all roughly the same age give or take 5 years. I’ll call them Sam, Hannah and me.

Sam was saying how she was going to visit her mum but how she’d have to eat lasagne again, as her mum always makes lasagne when she visits. She was saying how she hates lasange and it makes her want to gag.

I asked Sam why she doesn’t just kindly tell her mum that she doesn’t like lasagne and ask if she could make something else.

Sam and Hannah both looked at me like I had two heads. Sam said that she couldn’t say that.

Hannah then said that I would think that because I hadn’t been brought up well, like Sam had and so wouldn’t understand that you can’t say things like that.

It played on my mind a bit because I do have doubts and insecurities about my background, but I don’t think I’m rude or behave in a rude way.

When I first met my now dh he was making poached eggs for us a lot when I stayed at his house. He made the eggs very very runny, and they were getting more runny each time to the point that they were quite slimy. I mentioned it once and said I liked mine slightly more cooked. He got really upset and said that I was out of order and how if someone makes you food you should eat it and shut up whether you like it or not.

I don’t see it that way, so for example I always made scrambled eggs and they were a bit shit. Dh (around the same time as he got upset with me) showed me how to make them a better way and I took it on board as they were definitely better ‘his way’.

I certainly wouldn’t go round to anyone’s house and start criticising their cooking. But if a very close family member such as my mum or Dh was making repeatedly something that I hated I would gently ask if we could perhaps have something else.
.

Manners are about being considerate of others and making them feel comfortable.

Surely telling your work colleagues behind your mum's back that her food makes you "gag" is beyond rude.

If I were Sam's mum I'd be very hurt by that and the fact that she felt she couldn't tell me herself that she'd like something different. Presumably her mum wants her to enjoy visits and make something special for her?

As PP have said, if it's a one off where you're a guest of someone you don't know well then you probably have to just eat a bit to be polite, but if it's a regular thing with a family member then I think not saying something (gently and politely) borders on dishonest.

They are ridiculous and probably the sort of people who have terrrible sex lives because they can’t ask for what they want. They are the ones who have been neglected in my opinion as they lack assertiveness.

Hannah is a rude twat!

I know some people can choke down any food even if they don't like it, and they take some weird pride in it like it's a moral virtue. Other people like me get mocked and called fussy because we can't do that. I physically couldn't force myself to eat something I don't like, I would gag and retch which I think is far more rude. It's not a moral failing to have a sensitive sense of taste.

I think if lasagne were being served once and it was merely dislike, I'd suck it up. Bad mannered not to.

But if it was every time, I'd politely say that I'd prefer something else in advance (whilst trying not to imply I found it horrible). I managed to do this with my own parents.

However, I admit I was a complete mouse with my ILs - who served lasagne with buttered jacket potato (baffling side in itself), when I was temporarily off dairy due to breastfeeding.

Partly because I was desperate for cheese by this point and partly because it was enough of a job to stop MIL feeding it to my lactose-intolerant son. I looked pregnant afterwards I swelled up so much.

Managed to get DH to have a word, and next time I had the full works of dairy free cheese presented to me.

Sounds like she was badly brought up in that she can’t have an open comfortable relationship with her family.

They are weird including your husband, you are the normal one x

Agree. If I were her mum and found that out I’d feel so sad. I encourage my kids to be honest with me, though they’re still working on doing it with tact 😂

🤣

I would suggest your colleagues have very strange and unnatural relationships with their families if they can’t say something as innocuous as ‘I hate lasagne’.

I grew up having to eat everything and not complain. If we didn't finish a meal, it was given to us again, cold (assuming it had been hot in the first place), the next mealtime. I went veggie as a teenager to avoid eating the tough, over-cooked meat that we were served. My mother's response to that was to not serve the meat to me, so I got potatoes and overcooked watery veg for years. Probably not surprising I ended up with disordered eating.
I would far rather someone tells me their preferences than eat something to be polite.

I couldn't tell my mother if I didn't like something either.
And I was also told that "respecting" my parents was desirable and that meant not questioning what they told you.
So I get where the "badly brought up" comment comes from. But sadly, suspect it comes from your colleagues being brought up in a controlling family, and not having yet realised how many ideas they have absorbed and not thought about them from an outside perspective.

So it's OK to say someone is badly bought up, in a professional setting, but rude to tell your mum you don't like lasagne?

Your colleague was rude to you and she was rude about her mum because she was complaining to other people about her food rather than telling her mum she's not a fan of lasagne.

If her behaviour is an example of being well bought up I'm happy to be an oik.

Oh, and @Canwehaveahotsummer no I don't think you were being rude or badly brought up. If I was your mother and making what I thought was your favourite food and it ended up not being, I'd be mortified!
Is it that she likes lasagne but noone else other than you does? So the only time she can eat her favourite?!

I don't know...I've never found a way of telling my friend politely that the lasagne she invariably makes when we go round just isn't great and we eat it out of politeness - and really isn't the best lasagne in the world.

You’re really not badly brought up but your colleagues might be as they’ve been so rude to you. And absolute wet wipes if they don’t have the balls to tell their own parents they don’t like to eat bloody lasagne.

If I was invited to a friends for dinner, I'd probably grin and bear it. But as an adult my mum would already know what I like and don't like anyway. I find it weird that she wouldn't just say she doesn't like it. The mum is probably making it cause she thinks it's her favourite, with her eating it every time she visits. I'd much prefer my kids to tell me if they don't like something (which they do when I make something new), I wouldn't go through the effort of making it again.

So I’ve been brought up wrong then.

Sam and Hannah should be a bit more concerned with how they have been raised.
I have an intolerance to fish, am I considered not polite or raised wrong because I decline something that makes me poorly..
Absolute madness

Strangely I think I was so hurt by the comment, I don’t think I had really considered how rude it was of Hannah to say what she did.

I grew up with a lot of negativity about where we lived, a lot of snobbery so I think I always internalised that those who were more well off were ‘better’ and knew better.

I am learning to get out of this mindset but it’s a hard one to shake off.

When it's a one-off, you shut up and eat it.

When it's someone who might be cooking for you reguarly, you tell them.

When it's your mother and you've been eating it for years, it's pretty awkward. I can't see myself though, how their mother could think they like it if they've beren giving it to them since they were kids. Kids are not backward about saying they don't like things; and even if they are told not to complain, would show by their actions whether they were keen on something or not. A mother would have to be pretty oblivious not to have noticed her kids hate something she's giving them regularly.

I would not eat food I didn’t like (I will try everything once like when my neighbours prepared oysters but my DH and DC refused). I also can’t drink shit wine either. I always take my own and have it open ready to drink. I don’t do superficial relationships unless I don’t care about the person and then I may play along just to keep my disdain towards them hidden.

Having said that, my mother stopped cooking for us as soon as we got married. I love lasagne and would welcome anyone cooking it for me. In fact there isn’t much I won’t eat apart from oysters again.

I wouldnt tell an acquaintance/friend that the lasagnes are crap.
I probably gently tell a good friend and I’d have no hesitation to tell them that I prefer my eggs less runny (because it’s a preference, nothing to do with their cooking ability)
Parents or a partner? How do you expect them to know if you never tell them? Are you suppose to gag on lasagne for the rest of your life ‘because it’s rude to say Theyre crap’??

Can I bring up another point of view?
I was brought up to always eat what was on my plate, never complain and eat it all up.
My adult children on the other hand would always say if they don’t like something.
However this means that my life has been spent eating what other people like.
In the ops example perhaps the colleagues mum likes lasagna but thinks it’s a bit of a faff making it just for herself or for her and her DH. So when the colleague goes home makes it to show love for her DD.
Just another example of how women of a certain age always have to put other people first.

If it's a friend, cooking occasionally, and it just "isn't great" then no, you say nothing. "Isn't great" is fine for something you're not paying for.

If you really don't want it start telling her not to make any food at all; say you have eaten earlier, or will later.

There's a difference between
"Do you like lasagne? I was thinking of making it."
"No, I don't sorry."

and

"You know this lasagne you've been making me for 25 years? I hate it with every fibre of my being. Every visit to you has been an ordeal."

What strange people your co-workers are. Of course you can have these perfectly normal conversation with your family members.

When I was a child, my mum always used to make minestrone soup for us to eat on Sundays (which were busy yet dull, because weekends were the times to catch up on chores for my working parents). I hated minestrone soup. But I was a child and never spoke up. Years later I reminded mum of this and told her how much I loathed the stuff. She looked momentarily astonished and then burst out laughing and apologised for all the years I’d been eating this stuff I hated. She didn’t fly into a rage; why should she?