Please Keep Your Hands To Yourself...Thank You.

It seems that everyone laments the decline in common courtesy today. Customers complain about declining customer service (rude sales staff who barely make eye contact when making change, store clerks refusing to end personal phone conversations while they ring up purchases, incessant gum chewing). Likewise, salespeople think customers are just as bad. Boorish customer behavior is on the rise (yelling, cutting in line, “demanding” service). As a result, I feel a bit sheepish even bringing this up, especially since the breach in etiquette is being caused in an attempt to be more attentive to customers.

But is anyone else bothered when – out at a restaurant - wait staff pick up your napkin from the seat of your chair, handle and refold your gently-used napkin and then place it on the table when you have excused yourself mid-meal? While I am certain well-meaning restaurant management is asking their staff to do this as a way of providing superior service and enhanced customer attention, I am afraid it is misguided and inappropriate.

A napkin belongs on the table in only two circumstances: first, at the very beginning so diners can enjoy sitting at a perfectly set table; and second, at the end of the meal to signal – usually first by the host – that the meal has concluded and it is time to leave. At that time, one is to gather the napkin from its center and place it – unfolded - to the left of one’s plate.

During the meal, when a diner excuses themselves from the table, the napkin is placed on the seat of the chair, which is then pushed in. This makes the most sense. Otherwise, the rest of the people remaining at the table are forced to see a crumpled and used napkin on the table, which is not at all appetizing.

The problem is that as more and more restaurants implement this napkin refolding step it starts to confuse people who begin thinking they were wrong in putting their napkin on the seat of the chair when excusing themselves from the table in the first place. Napkins are tricky business when dining. People have a hard enough time keeping the napkin rules straight without wait staff inadvertently adding to the confusion.

Letitia Baldrige (Letitia Baldrige’s Complete Guide to the New Manners for the '90s, 1989) and the Protocol School of Washington agree that napkins are to be placed on the seat of the chair when you excuse yourself mid-meal. It is settled.