So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Trenchfriend]

@Fading Fast

I think, those curious people are those, which probably generally walking around with the famous "tunnel-view". I think, it has to do with the increasing of allday-psychoses. People, which are "rattled" or maybe surrender themselves. "Whatever!-mentality"?

 

[Hercule]

re two handed eating with both knife and fork-

I've never really understood this business of piling, or more often mashing, food on to the back of the fork. I've pitched enough manure and hay in my lifetime to know that's not the most efficient way of using a fork!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Why anyone would think "etiquette rules" on eating are more important than practicality and common sense is beyond me. If you're eating something like meat, spear it with your fork and hoist it to your mouth. If you're eating something soft like mashed potatoes, use the fork as a scoop and shovel it up. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.

Oh, and if you're eating peas, dunk your knife in honey, slide the blade into the pile of peas and lick the peas off after they stick. Just like a monkey eating termites with a twig.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Aaah, right. That generic pseudo-noble affectation on eating, about I'm wondering the same, today, like as a child. And really everybody can see, how affected that looks. And by many people, that additional curious moving of food to and fro on the plate, instead of sticking the food in the mouth, finally.

 

[Haversack]

It is well to remember that a lot of the earliest rules on table manners were there for hygienic reasons just as much as they were for social differentiation. In German, for example, one of the early sets of rules is the Hofzucht by the Minnesinger known as Tannhäuser written about 1250. For example it admonishes: do not drink too much, don't speak with your mouth full of food, don't put the bones back into the serving bowl, don't use your fingers for the mustard or sauce, don't blow your nose into the table cloth or hand, and don't blow into a hot drink. This last rule makes sense as drinking vessels were often shared between diners. The eating fork did not yet exist.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I see people wearing their winter / heavy jackets, etc., inside happening quite frequently.

I live in the mid-Atlantic. I am frequently amazed at seeing young people wearing t-shirts and basketball shorts, and even men older than me (see photo) wearing shorts and golf shirts when the temperature is in the 40's or 50's. Of course I don't know, but I imagine that it's some kind of dysfunctional machismo at work.

Even so, men over sixty don't need to be wearing shorts in public unless they are at a beach.

 

[swanson_eyes]

Even so, men over sixty don't need to be wearing shorts in public unless they are at a beach.

Tell that to my dad. He's 77.

I think in Wisconsin they just put their coats on in November and don't take them off until May.

 

[ChiTownScion]

It's very frustrating that so many restaurants do not provide a place to place a coat or hat, especially in the really cold months. The only time I'm sans fedora is when I'm wearing my ANJ-4 jacket, or when the winds blow so strong as to send any round brimmed hat a-sailing. Then I'll wear my German Prinz Heinrich mutze (pictured below) or a wool stocking cap.. but whatever my cloak or lid, I still need a place to hang/ stow them, and the back of a chair, or stuffed into the booth, really doesn't cut it. Are coat racks now an endangered species?

 

[JimWagner]

I see coat racks in some restaurants and cafeterias, but I dont use them simply because these days you are as likely to have your coat and/or hat stolen as not. And that's especially true if they are nice ones.

 

[MisterCairo]

re two handed eating with both knife and fork-

I've never really understood this business of piling, or more often mashing, food on to the back of the fork. I've pitched enough manure and hay in my lifetime to know that's not the most efficient way of using a fork!

As one skilled in doing it, it's efficient for me!

Certainly more efficient than switching back and forth!

If I need to spoon up my food, I use a, well, a spoon.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I see coat racks in some restaurants and cafeterias, but I dont use them simply because these days you are as likely to have your coat and/or hat stolen as not. And that's especially true if they are nice ones.

In the Era, most every lunchroom had a sign on the wall: WATCH YOUR HAT AND COAT.

 

[Fading Fast]

I see coat racks in some restaurants and cafeterias, but I dont use them simply because these days you are as likely to have your coat and/or hat stolen as not. And that's especially true if they are nice ones.

Since I have an old style overcoat (but pretty new, in nice shape and not inexpensive as a good overcoat is a good long-term investment - this one replaced an almost twenty-year old one) - it would usually be quite obvious if someone was stealing it as almost every other coat is some version of a puffer, down-filled, etc. jacket. It seemed to me that in a blink of an eye the traditional overcoat became rare. My guess is no one would want my coat.

 

[HudsonHawk]

GHT, I'm an Essex guy that's lived in the US for 25 years and I still find it odd how people handle the cutlery here.

It's interesting that I notice people I eat with regularly, colleagues, family, etc start to eat the proper way after hanging out at meals for a while.

I've never seen anyone eat in any way other than the "proper" way with both utensils. If Americans have a reputation for cutting their food, putting down their knife and then moving their fork to the other hand, I don't know where it comes from. I've never seen it.

 

[Hercule]

I live in the mid-Atlantic. I am frequently amazed at seeing young people wearing t-shirts and basketball shorts, and even men older than me (see photo) wearing shorts and golf shirts when the temperature is in the 40's or 50's. Of course I don't know, but I imagine that it's some kind of dysfunctional machismo at work.

29 degrees and breezy this morning and we saw kids in shirt sleeves and shorts walking to school.

It's very frustrating that so many restaurants do not provide a place to place a coat or hat, especially in the really cold months. ... but whatever my cloak or lid, I still need a place to hang/ stow them, and the back of a chair, or stuffed into the booth, really doesn't cut it. Are coat racks now an endangered species?
View attachment 41390

Hear Hear! It makes my wife so mad when we're seated at a booth or even at a table and I take it upon myself to take over a couple of chairs at a nearby table to put our coats and hats on. Of course they also frown on seating us at a table suitable meant for more than are in our party just so we have a place to put stuff. Pack people in seems to be the motto. More often than not, though, I simply leave my hat in the car.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Some of us were raised on food that didn't need to be cut with a knife -- if I wanted a knife I had to get up and go into the pantry and get one out of the drawer, they weren't set out at the table. Casseroles, macaroni dishes, baked fish, and such things don't require cutting. You just stab them with your fork and shove them into your face.

We'd use a knife when we ate beef or pork, but those were rarities at our table. Our meat was usually ground up in chunks in a casserole.

I've never seen anyone cut up their food all at once and proceed to eat it, or do this "fork switching" thing that apparently the internet is all up in arms about, and I've been an American all my life. Must be some kind of weird regional/bourgeois thing.

Food historians will tell you the more you have to use your knife, the less refined your culture. If you hold it the entire meal, you're basically a caveman. Truly advance civilizations don't need to cut their food at the table.

 

[HudsonHawk]

That's just gross.

As to the coat thing, I've kind of notice an opposite thing where people wear the puffy jackets, vests or similar item indoors in places like restaurants or libraries. I've seen people come in from the cold outside wearing a puffy jacket, sit at a table at a diner near us, order, eat, pay and leave without taking the coat off - and the diner is properly heated. While not everyone does this, many do today. I'd boil over, but clearly, these people are comfortable or they wouldn't do it - I just don't get it.

Hey, I don't get living somewhere you need to own a coat!

 

[Hercule]

As one skilled in doing it, it's efficient for me!

Certainly more efficient than switching back and forth!

If I need to spoon up my food, I use a, well, a spoon.

Really, how hard it it to flip the fork over and use it correctly? Then again I also think it's very uncouth to go at it two handed, kinda barbaric in my opinion.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've never seen anyone eat in any way other than the "proper" way with both utensils. If Americans have a reputation for cutting their food, putting down their knife and then moving their fork to the other hand, I don't know where it comes from. I've never seen it.

The only place I've ever heard of it, much less seen it, is on the Internet. Which, as we know, is an infallible guide to all things correct.

What amuses me in looking at all the many times this question seems to come up in forums and "we answer your questions" websites is the desperate insecurity of the people asking whether what they're doing is "correct." Talk about your First World Problems....

 

[HudsonHawk]

The only place I've ever heard of it, much less seen it, is on the Internet. Which, as we know, is an infallible guide to all things correct.

What amuses me in looking at all the many times this question seems to come up in forums and "we answer your questions" websites is the desperate insecurity of the people asking whether what they're doing is "correct." Talk about your First World Problems....

I once had an old Indian man tell me that using utensils is like having a stranger consummate your marriage (that's the printable version), if you can't touch your food, what's the point. When in Mumbai, I always say...

 

[Trenchfriend]

@LizzieMaine

I think, on the "question-answering"-websites is very much trolling, too.