Have you noticed how, when people are gathered and sharing food from a buffet table, they\u2019re reluctant to take the last piece or portion or whatever?<\/p>\n
Is this a practice that\u2019s codified in a book of etiquette somewhere? Is it an unwritten rule? Or is it just that nobody wants to be \u201cthat person\u201d that deprives the rest of the gathering of the last piece of chicken curry or nanaimo bar or whatever?<\/p>\n
I see it so often. In most buffet settings, there\u2019s usually one dish that\u2019s more popular than the others, and so its contents disappear quickest. Let\u2019s say it\u2019s lasagne. The buffet table endures an initial assault from the ravenous horde, and in the feeding frenzy the table loses its pristine appearance. Over in the lasagne dish, there\u2019s one portion left.<\/p>\n
Joe goes in and cuts it in two and takes the bigger part. He might even scoop a little of the meat sauce out from under the remaining pasta.<\/p>\n
Next, Joanne moves in and cuts the residue in half. She takes most of the larger half and spoons some juice out of the meat balls to wet the lasagne down a bit.<\/p>\n
Then Jamie comes along, sees there\u2019s still a credit card-sized piece left, swoops in, and cuts it in two. He\/she\/they takes half and moves on to the salad bowls.<\/p>\n
Uh oh! Here comes Reg! His appetite is legendary. He\u2019s sure to take the rest!<\/p>\n
But no\u2026 he cuts it in half and does the same as Joe did. Now there\u2019s this postage stamp of pasta with next to no sauce under it.<\/p>\n
Surely John will take it all\u2026<\/p>\n
Of course he doesn\u2019t. He knows the rules. He takes a big-toenail-sized piece of pasta, smears it round the dish on his fork to get some sauce and walks away safe in the knowledge that he did the right thing.<\/p>\n
Julie\u2019s hovering. She sees the other toenail-sized piece and wonders what she should do.<\/p>\n
She dissects it and walks away with her fingernail trophy.<\/p>\n
\u201cLegendary appetite Reg\u201d moves in for thirds, and is shocked to see how small that third helping is going to be. Fortunately, he\u2019s prepared. He removes his trusty multitool from its sheath on his belt, selects the extra sharp knife, and trims the fingernail substantially. For his troubles, he gets a piece of pasta the size of a bitten pinky nail with some slight staining from the sauce on its underside. He wipes the blade clean on the white tablecloth, stows the multitool, and proceeds to the crockpot, where he takes the last but one meatball.<\/p>\n
Jasmine, who had arrived at the buffet table just after Reg is horrified that she\u2019s going to have to cut such a small portion of lasagne in two and opts for cutting the last meatball in half instead.<\/p>\n
In the ensuing thirty minutes or so, the meatball become a meat-hemi-demi-semi-ball, the sausage rolls become a sausage roll and a dusting of abandoned puff pastry, and the lettuce salad remains untouched. All the chicken drumsticks have gone except for one that looks like it\u2019s actually a malnourished-sparrow drumstick. All that remains otherwise is a generous helping of coleslaw, the picked-over carcass of a spinach rip-and-dip, some semi-desiccated cheese slices, and a singleton bread roll that a bored child had poked three fingerholes in to make it look like a bowling ball.<\/p>\n
Plus the final bitten-pinky-nail-sized piece of lasagne.<\/p>\n
All this time, Reg has been wondering about the lasagne. Finally, his curiosity gets the better of him and he wanders over to the buffet table. He gets his forceps and scalpel out and successfully cuts the fingernail of pasta in three. With a pair of tweezers, he picks up each piece in turn and places them in the three fingerholes on the bread roll.<\/p>\n
Next, he carefully cleans and stows his surgical equipment, picks up the bread roll, wipes the lasagne dish with it and rams the entire roll in his mouth. His cheeks puff out to accommodate the bread, and he chews and chews, and chews. Unfortunately, his allergies are playing up, and he\u2019s forced to open his mouth in order to breathe, and cannot prevent the contents of his mouth from being put on view. Finally, he sneezes and shares the now-unrecognizable bread-bowling-ball with those in the sneezing line.<\/p>\n
What a breach of etiquette! And someone notices, nudges her neighbour and lets out a gasp of horror. Within seconds, the entire room is aware of the transgression.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my God, Reg!\u201d says Jasmine. \u201cYou took the last piece of lasagne!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Have you noticed how, when people are gathered and sharing food from a buffet table, they\u2019re reluctant to take the last piece or portion or whatever? Is this a practice that\u2019s codified in a book of etiquette somewhere? Is it an unwritten rule? Or is it just that nobody wants to be \u201cthat person\u201d that deprives the rest of the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[490],"tags":[610,609],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-commentaries","tag-etiquette","tag-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}