What’s wrong with this picture?
Caution: this is a professional actor. Do NOT attempt this at a business meal!
There are at least eight things in this picture that demonstrate bad business etiquette. Scroll down for the answers.
Dining Etiquette – European vs. American Dining Style, with Kimberly Law
More Tips
- “Business Etiquette: Keys to Professional Success,” with Jill Kamp Melton.
- Dining Etiquette Guide – from What’s Cooking America
- FAQs and tips about dining etiquette – from Virgina Tech
- About dining etiquette – from Virgina Tech
Dining With Decorum (DVD)
Dining For Profit: Is that your bread and butter plate or mine? (DVD)
A Butler’s Guide to Table Manners
Broadwell’s Elegant Etiquette for Today’s Child & Adult (DVD)
Business Class: Etiquette Essentials for Success at Work
Tiffany’s Table Manners for Teenagers
Emily Post’s The Etiquette Advantage in Business: Personal Skills for Professional Success
Modern Manners: Tools to Take You to the Top
The Essentials of Business Etiquette: How to Greet, Eat, and Tweet Your Way to Success
Business Etiquette For Dummies
The Etiquette Edge: The Unspoken Rules for Business Success
When the Little Things Count . . . and They Always Count: 601 Essential Things That Everyone In Business Needs to Know
Table Manners 101: Basic Dining Etiquette
5 Steps To Professional Presence: How to Project Confidence, Competence, and Credibility at Work
You’ve Got Only Three Seconds: How to Make the Right Impression in Your Business and Social Life
First Impressions: What You Don’t Know About How Others See You
Benjamin Franklin’s The Art of Virtue: His Formula for Successful Living
Do It Right! The New Book of Business Etiquette
Don’t Take the Last Donut: New Rules of Business Etiquette
New Rules @ Work: 79 Etiquette Tips, Tools, and Techniques to Get Ahead and Stay Ahead
Multicultural Manners: Essential Rules of Etiquette for the 21st Century
The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice
Essential Etiquette Fundamentals, Vol. 1: Dining Etiquette (Audio CD)
The Gregg Reference Manual: A Manual of Style, Grammar, Usage, and Formatting
Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, By Geo. Washington
Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct
George Washington’s Rules of Civility: Traced to their Sources and Restored
The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude
Saving Civility: 52 Ways to Tame Rude, Crude & Attitude for a Polite Planet
8 Practical First Impression Techniques
Good table manners should be second nature so that you can concentrate on your meeting, not on which fork to use. So, what was wrong in the picture above?
- Place your napkin on your lap within 10 seconds of sitting down at the table.
- Buttering the whole piece of bread; butter one bite-size piece of bread at a time.
- Gesturing with food
- Holding spoon wrong
- Ladling soup towards himself (OK, it’s difficult to see, but you ladle soup away from yourself)
- Placing silverware on both table & plate (butter knife)
- Resting elbow on the table
- Eating with both hands
- And remember to pass the salt and pepper together.
Did you get at least six of these? If not, get the audio course “Business Etiquette: Keys to Professional Success,” with Jill Kamp Melton.
Easy Ways to Improve Your Table Manners – Stop Eating it Wrong
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