Forking Etiquette

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/forking_etiquette/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FihdT+%28The+Dilbert+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

by fogus • 16 years ago

84 54 16 years ago

dilbert.com

zbanks• 16 years ago

And I thought this was about github...

w1ntermute• 16 years ago

Even after seeing the domain name, I was hoping beyind hope that it would be...

sigzero• 16 years ago

I must have missed that meeting. Why?

epochwolf• 16 years ago

I had no clue what he was talking about with tines down until he mentioned the american method being tines up. As for cutting stuff with a fork: I've unconsciously avoided doing that in nicer restaurants but I've always done it at home when I don't have a knife handy.

I think I would pick up on other people around me using forks differently just because I like to watch what everyone else is doing.

edw519• 16 years ago

Was I supposed to open doors using nothing but my elbows?

Yes, actually.

My mother called me with directions to her new apartment...

"Go into the lobby and hit '614' with your elbow. I'll buzz you in."

"Go into the elevator and hit '6' with your elbow."

"Get off the elevator, turn right, and go down the hall to Apartment 614. Hit the doorbell with your elbow. I'll let you in."

"Why with my elbow?" I asked.

She replied, "You're not coming empty handed, are you?"

srean2• 16 years ago

In winter that would be a resounding yes. For all things such as metallic elevator buttons, metallic doors......

Hate getting spiked by static. I don't know why I get an unfair dose of those as compared to others.

pavel_lishin• 16 years ago

I usually just slap the offending surface hard enough for the shock to not matter.

tung• 16 years ago

I pull out my keys and touch the handle with it. No more door handle shocks.

I wish I could say the same about my kitchen sink.

macrael• 16 years ago

Etiquette is such a funny thing. I know I sometimes notice people who aren't following protocol, usually out of ignorance of the rules, and it can really bug me. Why should it matter to me if someone is holding their fork in a fist, rather than between two fingers? But it seems ugly to me. Obviously it is the vey definition of uncouth, but it surprises me that it seems ugly. As if all of us following the rules do something pretty by doing so.

burgerbrain• 16 years ago

I generally go out of my way to not follow "proper" etiquette while dining, but this is because I think that "etiquette" is a piss-poor reason for me to be uncomfortable while dining as a left-handed individual.

Screw old english ladies' definitions of proper, I am going to rearrange my utensils and plates.

ugh• 16 years ago

I dare anybody to tell me that it’s bad manners to hold the knife in my left hand. (I’m left-handed.)

jerf• 16 years ago

In my personal etiquette system, things should go both ways; individuals may have certain behaviors they should engage in, but the group is not off the hook. Failing to flip the service for an off-handed person is just as much a faux pas as anything else.

Etiquette often has its reasons, so I'm actually not annoyed at etiquette per se anymore, but I'm still annoyed when the rules trump the spirit. I'm very much a "spirit of the law" sort of person when it comes down to it.

mindcrime• 16 years ago

I like to do it just to piss off the poor sods who care so much about trivialities like that. My attitude towards arbitrary procedure-for-it's-own-sake can pretty much be summed up as "fuck it." <shrug />

Waywocket3• 16 years ago

I've always felt lucky for being left handed when it comes to utensil etiquette. I'd be almost incapable of using a fork in my right hand so I've always felt some sympathy for all those right handers who have to use their cutlery the wrong way round for etiquette reasons :).

joshu• 16 years ago

Dining etiquette is goofy. But there are other places where it is useful. Like how to walk on a sidewalk or which goes first through a door. These are like traffic rules, and when followed it can improve everyone's efficiency.

sachitgupta• 16 years ago

Rules are just guidelines that are meant to be broken. How else can change happen?

johngalt• 16 years ago

If your cutting don't send the fork all the way through the meat to hold it against the plate. The tines will drag across the plate as you cut and you'll get that high pitched screeching. Just thinking about that sound is irritating. Take your time and let the knife do the work.

varunsrin• 16 years ago

Is it bad that when I saw this I thought it was gonna be about git.

doki_pen• 16 years ago

I thought it would be about forking processes.

ecaroth• 16 years ago

if you are going to fork my trunk, at least give me cab fare

viraptor• 16 years ago

As much, as I don't mind "proper etiquette" in public places, at home there's only one thing I use: http://www.lightmyfireusa.com/spork.html It fits in the hand perfectly and I can finally cut stuff with the side of the fork (who needs a knife anyways?). I really recommend that one.

snarkyturtle2• 16 years ago

Rice is the hardest thing to eat with a fork. Especially the non-sticky kind. Foods like rice and other loose foods should be exempt from etiquettes in favor of the most efficient method. Otherwise, as noted in the article, it'll lead to either an excruciatingly slow and/or messy meal, which is all the more noticeable than the way you hold your fork.

mootothemax• 16 years ago

Strong disagree. With a bit of practise one can learn to balance a decent amount of rice on the back of one's fork. Green peas, alas, escape even the most practised forking, regardless of which method - balancing on the back or stab-them-to-death - one chooses.

snarkyturtle2• 16 years ago

That's the thing though. Why even practice balancing when you don't need to balance it using the contour of the fork to your benefit? It's like having a car only to put it in neutral and push it the rest of the way. Sure, you can do it on level ground and it's plain easy to ride it downhill. But if you're pushing it uphill you shouldn't think "hey, I'll just keep pushing this until I become strong enough to do this without effort", you should think "let's just use an essential function of the damn car".

Waywocket3• 16 years ago

>Green peas, alas, escape even the most practised forking, regardless of which method - balancing on the back or stab-them-to-death - one chooses.

Personally I choose not to eat peas at all unless furnished with a spoon :P.

(And what other colours of peas do you get where you come from?)

caf• 16 years ago

This is why green peas should always be accompanied by a good thick gravy, to act as a binding agent.

jtg• 16 years ago

That's why, in many countries in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines), you eat your meal with a spoon and a fork; the spoon goes in the right hand and the fork goes in the left. You push food onto the spoon and shove it into your mouth. Try it sometime. It's the most efficient way to eat rice. I find it even more efficient than the East Asian way of picking up the bowl and using the chopsticks to move the rice into your mouth.

If you've ever eaten at a nice sit-down Thai restaurant, that's why they'll give you a spoon and a fork. I've had this confirmed by friends whose families were from Malaysia and Burma. If you're looking for the most efficient way to eat rice, this is it.

icegreentea• 16 years ago

It depends on the stickiness of the rice. If you make rice to normal (for Chinese... ok, Taiwanese I can't actually speak for the mainland) levels of stickiness, then shoveling in with chopsticks is every bit as efficient as using a spoon, especially if you use the small rice bowls (it's hard to cram a spoon in there while it's up at your face).

The looser the rice becomes, the more efficient spoons become. When I get fried rice (typically fairly unsticky) with my western friends, I always laugh a bit as they attempt to eat it with chopsticks. Pretty much every pragmatic Chinese immigrant (of my generation anyways) just ends up falling back to spoons then.

...and the incredibly systems engineer in me points out that since most chinese main dishes are meant to be eaten with chopsticks (the whole grab a bit, eat it above your rice and let the sauce enrich the loveliness), and the fact that it's nice to keep a hand free for liquid, using a spoon to eat rice in an entire Chinese meal would decrease the overall efficiency.

mikeklaas• 16 years ago

Surely it would be "spnork"?

tlrobinson• 16 years ago

"napkinforkspoon" isn't a very efficient word for such an efficient tool. Clearly it should be "sporkin".

dkarl3• 16 years ago

For the last time, fellow Americans, it is not proper etiquette just because English people do it that way. If it's called the Continental method, it's probably the result of the English blindly copying the French. Isn't it silly of us to insecurely copy the manners of a country that insecurely copies the manners of another country?

nailer2• 16 years ago

It's designed as a mechanism to spot people of lower class, and some would argue it still works. Go dining with a seriously monied American and see what they do.

jrockway• 16 years ago

But wait, if you are of the lower class, then you can use your fork however you want without any social repercussions? Excellent.

dkarl3• 16 years ago

Copying the mannerisms of the upper class clearly marks one as a striving member of the middle class.

kgo• 16 years ago

Sure it's silly. But it'd be sillier to either

(a) invent a whole new etiquette system from scratch

(b) descend into thunderdome-level anything-goes anarchy

at the dinner table just to prove we're not silly.

Before you know it, people would be cracking open eggs at the big end.

dkarl3• 16 years ago

You forgot

It's false to regard one system as trumping another. We do not regard it as a breach in etiquette when someone eats in the "Continental" way in a setting where the American style prevails. The only reason to be embarrassed about the opposite is our American tendency to assume that European manners are more refined than our own, to the extent that we feel a little guilty when we go straight home after a soccer game without beating anyone up.

code_duck• 16 years ago

Similarly, I was informed a few years ago that I hold my fork like an utter heathen. I tried to solve this, but still have no idea what the proper technique is or how mine differs.

shawndumas• 16 years ago

There are two differing styles[1].

----

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fypq2qhRZnI&feature=relat...

Sniffnoy• 16 years ago

Oh, here I assumed this was going to be stating something like we need fork the whole notion of etiquette and make our own version. To an extent, we already have.

artpop• 16 years ago

I was truly shocked the first time I saw an American eat a meal and I'm Australian so that's saying a lot.

rflrob2• 16 years ago

I've found that, for a great many foods, the continental method is more efficient. Assuming you still use the knife with the right hand (and if you're right handed, that should be what gives you the most control over the cutting surface), then it's a bit of a waste of time to constantly switch your fork into your right hand for plate-to-mouth delivery. With the continental style, you never have to change your grip (until you switch to eating the rice and other rollables).

flexd• 16 years ago

Am i the only one holding the fork in my right hand? I thought that was normal.

autarch• 16 years ago

All of this stuff is completely hilarious.

It's incredibly rare for me to use a knife in a meal (although I did when I went out earlier this evening). I'm vegan, and I mostly eat non-American food.

About half my meals use just a spoon and chopsticks. Many of my other meals are things like Indian food (just a fork, or just your hands).

I hold my fork in my right hand, because I'm right handed. I use the contour of my fork to pick up my food. If I'm using a fork, I'm often eating something saucy (like an Indian curry). Attempting to eat this tines down would be a messy disaster.

I really don't get these ridiculous etiquette rules. As Scott Adams point out, eating like this is inefficient, and generally annoying. I eat to enjoy myself, not to impress others with my memory of ridiculous minutia.

Luyt• 16 years ago

Correct way of using cutlery:

1. Concentrate the food on the center of the plate.

2. Using knife and fork and with a scissoring movement, reduce the food to small chunks.

3. Using the fork, mix and stir well.

4. Use the spoon for moving the resulting mash into your mouth with maximum efficiency.

Forking Etiquette

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