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Also: it is your responsibility not to make other people look bad. I found that interesting. Much of what was recommended was telling the young man to be very
by DanielBMarkham 9y ago
Also: it is your responsibility not to make other people look bad.
I found that interesting. Much of what was recommended was telling the young man to be very careful not to accidentally make anybody feel embarrassed or shamed.
- hammock 9y agoThat's the core of etiquette... Making others in your presence feel comfortable even at your own expense. Respect is a separate matter (as anyone who has experienced someone who doesn't like them in the south can attest)
- DanielBMarkham 9y agoAgreed. It is also easily forgotten (or perhaps never taught) in the modern world. Somebody with good manners always make you feel special and takes care of your needs ahead of theirs. Somehow or another, a ton of people grew up thinking manners and etiquette were about where the forks go at a formal dinner.
- hammock 9y agoYes. Even in the dinner setting case, the forks have a place so that you can feel confident in what you're doing no matter whose house you sit down in. But good hosts also know, if they see their guest start drinking the contents of the finger bowl, the host does the same :)
- DanielBMarkham 9y agogood hosts also know, if they see their guest start drinking the contents of the finger bowl, the host does the same :) I'm stealing that one.
- JackFr 9y agoI had heard the expression 'drinking out of the finger bowl' many times as the epitome of uncouth, uncultured behavior. Finally around the age of 30, I found myself for the first time at a dinner where there were actual finger bowls, I could not stop myself and had to pretend to drink out of it. (But interestingly, I also discovered they're quite useful. The meal featured a bit of a messy seafood course which required eating with your hands, and they allowed a bit of a wash up at the table.)
- hammock 9y agoOn the flip side of this, growing up eating whole lobster in Maine most of my childhood, the first time I ordered it at a 5-star, haute cuisine restaurant I was extraordinarily disappointed to find out they had already shelled it (albeit beautifully, perfectly) in the kitchen before serving it to me.
- Symbiote 9y agoThat is disappointing. I was very pleased, the first time I ate at a similar restaurant, to be given all kinds of tools with which to attack the large pile of seafood. (This was in Copenhagen, but two anecdotes isn't enough to generalize.)
- Bartweiss 9y ago> the forks have a place so that you can feel confident in what you're doing no matter whose house you sit down in Once I learned (some of) the actual rules around dinner settings, that sort of etiquette made far more sense to me. Using dinner forks isn't hard, even in high class settings: you start from the furthest-out fork and move in. But setting them requires knowing what you're doing so that your guests don't need to know - the goal of politeness being that you ensure no one else is ill at ease.
- 50CNT 9y agoWhich is why pointing out others breaches of etiquette is also a breach of etiquette.
- feintruled 9y agoReminds me of something I once read on the difference between good manners and good etiquette. With good etiquette, if your guest starts eating the soup with the wrong spoon, you correct their mistake. With good manners, you use the wrong spoon to match.
- Danieru 9y agoAre you sure that is not backwards? Your parent post would suggest that correcting the mistake is in fact poor etiquette, right?
- VLM 9y agoThe amount Venn diagram overlap of gentlemanly behavior and good etiquette is apparently extremely high, essentially they overlap each other.
- monocasa 9y agoI'm reminded of this. http://imgur.com/gallery/nPsQa20 http://imgur.com/gallery/nPsQa20
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoExcellent point!