Last night, as part of my leadership class, I had to attend a formal dinner and etiquette training. It was actually pretty fun and I felt like I learned a lot about social niceties. There are so many crazy little details that seemed to border on ridiculousness, and I know I don’t remember all of them. The group included an etiquette teacher, a dean from the College of Engineering and his wife, the other students in the class, and various staff from the UK Alumni Association who are responsible for attending banquets and other formal affairs. Let’s see how much I can recap for you guys:

• The forks, from left to right: salad fork, pasta fork, entree fork. The spoons, from right to left: soup spoon, drink spoon. The knives, from right to left: salad knife, entree knife. The knife on the little saucer is the bread knife. The spoon and fork above the plate are the dessert utensils.
• The smaller wine glass is for white wine and you hold it by the stem because white wine is served chilled. The larger wine glass is for red wine and you hold it by the stem as well. You only ever hold cognac by the bowl because you want the heat from your hands to keep it warm.
• Black, dark gray, and navy blue are the most professional colors. Blue conveys sincerity while red conveys power.
• A woman will be taken more seriously and seen as more powerful if she’s wearing black and a jacket.
• When eating soup, the spoon should be moved away from you while spooning it up.
• Some foods you’re expected to eat with your hands: fries in America, though overseas they may expect you to use a fork; asparagus if it’s al dente; shrimp if they still have the little shell on the end; fried chicken, ribs, and lamb chops if served outside, and use utensils if they’re served inside.
• Standard dining tip: 15%. Excellent dining tip: 20%. Standard hair dresser tip: 15-20%. Bell hop tip: $1 per bag.
• When someone considerably older or higher in rank than you comes in, you should rise and remain standing until they sit down.
• At a table, it’s okay to rest your elbows on the table if there is no food anywhere on it.
• When dining, each course should begin by the host or hostess eating; you shouldn’t start until they have.
• With handshakes, three pumps or about three seconds is good. Be firm but don’t have a death grip.
• When dining, if a lady has to leave the table, she should say ‘excuse me’ and wait a moment for one of the men to scoot her chair back. All the men rise when a lady leaves or arrives at the table. When a lady arrives, she should hover over her seat while a man pushes it in, then she can sit down when it’s far enough in to her liking. When I asked about how this was done, I asked, “So we just kind of… hover?”, which got a big laugh from the group and our etiquette teacher said she would call it ‘the Sarah hover’.
• Twirl your pasta up onto your fork and get it pretty compact before eating it. If some flops off, just bite the strand off, don’t slurp it up.
• You can eat with a knife and fork in the American style, which involves swapping hands a lot, or you can try the continental style, which lets you keep your fork and knife in either hand and not have to swap them around to take bites of the food you just cut. The teacher had an American mother and a German father, so she learned both ways but preferred continental. I tried that but it just felt too weird to flip my left hand up with the fork to stick food in my mouth. Whichever way you go with, you should stick to it for the duration of the meal.
• Whatever you put on your utensil should be eaten in the next bite, don’t eat just half of it and leave some left on the utensil.
• The napkin goes on the lap and stays there for the entire time you’re seated at the table, even after all the food is taken away. The only time it leaves other than to wipe yourself off is when you excuse yourself, and then it gets dropped in your seat.
• When you’ve finished a plate of food, set your utensils (for forks, tines down) in the 3 o’clock position across your plate.
• Don’t cover your wine glass or turn it upside down if you don’t want wine, just tell the waiter you don’t want any. The same goes for coffee cups and coffee.
• Generally, for food you have to take out of your mouth, it goes out the same way it went in. So for a cherry pit, you would spit the pit back into your spoon. For gristle, you would put it back on your fork and then set it on your plate. Our teacher had tried muskrat at one point, apparently, and found it disgusting, so she discreetly spit it into her napkin.
• If you’re allergic to any food or are a vegetarian, you should inform the host of this when you RSVP to the event.
• If you’re not going to eat something on your plate, eat around it but kind of swizzle it around so that it looks like you’re eating on it. If it’s a lemon in tea, just drop it in, don’t set it aside. Don’t remove your croutons from salad, either, just leave them in and eat around them.
• Don’t discuss politics, religion, or sex at the table.
• Your bread plate is to your left, your drink to your right. You can remember this by using a little trick: hold your hands forward and put thumb and forefinger together on each. Your left hand makes a little ‘b’, your right makes a little ‘d’. If you’re going to use this trick at the table, do so subtly, in your lap.
• Anything put on your plate will be edible, so you can eat the garnish if you like. Last night, we had an orchid blossom on top of our pasta, so I tried it and it tasted kind of fruity.
• With the bread bowl, the first person to take it should offer a piece to the person on their left, take a piece for him- or herself, then turn to their right and pass it around. After that first initial offering, it doesn’t get offered any more, it just gets passed.
• Don’t reach for something more than an arm’s length away from you. If something has to be passed to you, it should go through everyone in its path: don’t just reach for it across someone else.
• If something gets passed to you for you to pass to someone else, don’t think, “hey, I need some of this, too,” and take some then for yourself–keep passing it. You have to ask for it again afterward in order to get some yourself.
• The salt and pepper never get split up. If someone asks for just the salt, the pepper goes along, too.
• Whoever is closest to an item on the table, when that item is asked to be passed, is the person that starts passing it. In the case of last night when the sugar container was in the center of the table, I asked, “What do you do when it’s equidistant from everyone?”, which got another laugh out of folks and the comment that that “was spoken like a true engineer.” Ha! The teacher said then to just grab for it.
• To eat bread, you should break off a piece that’s about two-bites big, butter it if you want, then eat it. You shouldn’t just eat off of your big piece.
• Write thank-you notes after attending a banquet, to scholarship donors, after visiting someone’s house, etc.

I’ll probably add more to this list later if I think of others, which I probably will. It was a lot of info in one night.