The demise and rise of rudeness

Before Martha Stewart, there was Amy Vanderbilt. She wrote Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette, a comprehensive and wide-ranging guide to gracious living, containing practical advice for every occasion, ensuring that all social interactions would be handled with grace and confidence.

Obviously, a lot of her observations are outdated today. Men no longer dress for dinner in suit and tie (except on old television shows) and women no longer wear a hat and white gloves, and I can’t recall the last time I had a table setting that included a finger bowl.

Amy Vanderbilt was the “go-to” person when you were having a dinner party and the exact placement of the eating utensils was of utmost importance. There was a fork for every serving, a dinner fork, a salad fork, and a dessert fork, not to mention an assortment of spoons and knives, and each had its own special place on the table.

With the introduction of fast-food, people are no longer concerned about which fork goes where because there is only one fork — and it is plastic. Plastic forks come in one size and you can use it for every course, except soup or chili. For that matter, one creative fast-food restaurant has solved the problem of fork or spoon by combining them into a “spork.”

(spoon/fork). It is a spoon-like contrivance with sharp ridges along the rounded edge that allow you to spear a French fry. You can even use the handle of the spork as a knife, called a “sporkni” (spoon/fork/knife).

Setting the table is no longer a mystifying dilemma when there is only one implement. I believe there is direct correlation with the demise of dinner etiquette and the rise of rudeness, caused by the introduction and use of the cell phone at the dinner table.

I was having lunch with my niece last week. She would scroll through her cell phone and send texts while I was describing each of the Christmas trees at the Biltmore House. When I told her she was being rude, she replied that she was not being rude, she was just multi-tasking.

Then there are those who refuse to silence their cell phones in restaurants — and they are the same ones who have the loudest and most obnoxious ringtones. I was enjoying dinner with friends at a lovely eating establishment, when an ear-splitting donkey-braying noise resonated through the restaurant. I was so startled, I dropped my spork. Since it is impolite to cause a commotion in public, I refrained from dumping my super-sized soft drink over the baseball cap of the offending party in the next booth.

If we returned to formal dining, men would be preoccupied with which tie to wear with their sport coat and women would dump their denim for stilettoes and pearls and everyone would be so concerned over which fork to use, that there would be no time for scrolling and texting.

Amy Vanderbilt would be proud.

Just a quick word of cell phone advice here — it is not a good idea to use your cell phone to fact-check your boss when he is giving a presentation.

Southerners have always taken pride in their manners and begin early by teaching children to respect their elders by replying “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” I can still remember the first time I was called “ma’am” by a charming little nine-year old — bless her heart.