Get those forking elbows off my forking table!

If you seek to irk the hell out of your server, patron his or her restaurant in total ignorance of the proper use of the stemware (glassware) and flatware (silverware) placed on the table.

At one restaurant I worked at, the basic knowledge and etiquette behind use of stem- and flatware on the table seemed to be especially difficult for doctors and nurses. This fact doesn’t do much to restore the already lacking faith I have in much of the medical profession.

Many of the parties that restaurant’s smaller, private dining rooms offer are rented by pharmaceutical companies trying to promote their drugs to doctors who they hope will prescribe their drugs (think “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”).

Ever wonder why prescription drugs cost so much? At one party, in one night, at one restaurant in one small town (Milwaukee), $2,000 to $8,000 is blown on wine, food and renting a room for doctors and nurses to watch a PowerPoint presentation on why they should use the drug company’s latest opiate.

All of this is facilitated by a pharmaceutical representative who hosts these events all over the nation for a living (probably on commission). Many of the representatives have $100 per head (doctor or nurse) limits on what they are able to spend at any given pharmaceutical presentation.

It seems the courtesies extended to a server — a person — when dining in the main dining room are thrown out the window when someone else is footing the bill.

At a recent pharmaceutical party, doctors, nurses and pharmacists sat around a table to be convinced of the new, preliminary treatment a drug has for a certain disease affecting a large amount of people.

The group was reaching for the water and wine glass to their left, the bread and butter plates to their right and taking others’ utensils (let’s hope they don’t transpose surgical instruments in the same clueless manner).

Let’s go over the basics.

The fork is on the left, the knife, on the right. The glassware one is to use is on the right.

Sometimes the plates sent out of the kitchen are 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Believe it or not, this is a temperature hot enough to actually burn. When elbows are on the table and a patron is gibbering to his or her colleagues, completely unaware I am being scalded, I want to drop the plate in his or her lap and watch the branding take place. This, unfortunately, still remains a fantasy.

Get those forking elbows off my forking table! It’s rude! Sound familiar? My mother taught me that. I was 5.

It seems some of the ineptitude servers encounter is comprised of things all mothers should have beaten into children’s heads when they were little. Perhaps the esteemed knowledge doctors and nurses have absorbed takes up so much space in their heads that there isn’t room for basic etiquette and manners.

Well, allow me to prescribe some advice to you, Dr. and Nurse Know-it-all. I am not willing to suffer a second-degree burn because of your ineptitude. I don’t want to visit the hospital you work for because of something your ignorance caused. (That’s known as malice for your own, personal gain; perhaps malevolence.)

I am often tempted to nudge the blistering plate against your forearm in an attempt to move it out of the way so that I can place your food in front of you.

If you all back out your chairs so they are firmly against a wall, creating an aisle-block (as this group of hotshots did) your water and wine glasses will hit empty. Though I will try to fill them, it is difficult to reach you when I have to walk all the way around the confined, wall-locked table. This takes time, as all of your doctoral-degree-holding chums are out in the aisle as well.

This brings up a very good point: do not state the obvious. This is definitely a hallmark of one in the medical profession. Yes, I see you only have half of a water glass and you see me with the carafe of water. This is not a cue to slam the remainder of your water down your bloated hatch and shout at me for more. It’s quite clear that you are in need of more hydration, hence the water pitcher in my hand.

People, especially those in the medical profession, feel the need to inform me what to do with the liquid I am carrying, despite the fact that I am on my way to pour it, walking directly at them and making eye contact. If I walk by you a dozen times, ignoring you, then yes, say something. If I’m walking toward you with what you want, shut the fork up.

Few doctors who attend these events seem to understand the concept of linen napkins. They should be placed on the lap, not kept on the table. I can’t set the food down in front of their blubbery, saggy-jowl, upturned-nosed faces if the napkin remains.

On the same token, do not place a dirty napkin on the table: other people are eating and it is nasty. Once removed, it is never to be returned to the table. The napkin remains in one’s lap until one is ready to depart from the restaurant. Even then, it is only placed on the chair.

Then go. Leave. The doctors and nurses have read enough books in medical school — in fact, I hope they are continuing their education — but they should make time for some basic etiquette knowledge. I recommend “EatiQuette's The Main Course on Dining Etiquette: A step-by-step guide to dining with confidence in the 21st Century,” by David Rothschild.

> Comments