Starting to eat before everyone is at the table is rude!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Ok, someone hear me out on this. I just got into a heated discussion with my girlfriend on this topic.
I gave my girlfriend $20 to go pick up a pizza for dinner, so that it would be ready when I got home from work. Upon arrival home, I find that she has already eaten three of the breadsticks. She sees this as no big deal, “I was hungry” she says. Me, I find this to be one of the rudest gestures I can comprehend.

I mean, the sharing of a dining table is one of the most sacred traditions of human kind. You converse, you share, you bond. Also, I work hard, and when I translate my hard earned labor into the means to buy food and share with my friends and family I expect that they accept the gesture in kind.

Maybe it was my upbringing. I know every night my parents and I (only child) would sit down at 6 o’clock sharp for a family dinner. There were no excuses for missing this, you were there. The overall rule was you did NOT start dishing your plate until everyone was seated. Then, we sat as a family and talked, enjoying the meal my mother had prepared and my father had payed for.

My girlfriend, she never had family dinners. She grew up in a single-parent household. Dinner time to them meant fending for themselves when hungry (in the sense of cooking whatever was in the cupboards). This meal, if you can call it that, was often eaten in front of a blaring TV set, with no conversation between whomever might be in attendance.
Geez, why does this make me so mad?! I can see where her utilitarian ideas of meal-time come from, but I just can’t shake the feeling that I have been deeply offended.

2

Meh, I’ve always thought this to be an out-dated custom. Granted, I’ll oblige if I’m at someone’s house and they don’t explicitly give us the go-ahead, but if I’m at a restaurant where I paid good money for my meal, you bet your ass I’m digging in while it’s hot, regardless of whether others have their meal or not.

Likewise, I’m not offended when others begin to eat while I’m waiting. Why should I be offended that they simply don’t want their food to get cold?

As for your situation, I like you’re over-reacting. It’s three breadsticks. BFD.

3

My upbringing was similar, though there was no set time for dinner. Dinner was when it was ready. ‘Please’, ‘Thank you’, ‘Sir’, and ‘Ma’am’ were used. And not just one-way.

My sister is about 1,300 miles away and my parents are dead, so I normally eat alone. But on the occasions when others are here I don’t start in until everyone is present. My friends don’t either. Not to say things aren’t casual. When we had Wednesday Night Barbecue we’d sit on the couches and put the plates on the coffee table. The meat would be in the kitchen and everyone helped themselves. But they were all present.

There were people over for Thanksgiving. We all sat at the table for dinner. But pre-dinner snackage was fair game.

4

At a formal dinner, yes, it’s rude.
But a pizza at home is not really the sort of situation that requires “manners” in my book. If you’ve reached the stage of a relationship where you can fart in front of each other, heck, anything goes. :slight_smile:
Oh wait. If she had eaten all teh food and there was nothing left for you, yeah, that’d be very rude. But in this case, I think you’re over-reacting.

5

My previous post described how it was when I was growing up. In later life my dad was more casual. Everyone (friends, as my parents divorced) was present at the table, but there always seemed to be an awkward moment when nobody wanted to be first to dig in. Dad would say, ‘Good manners make for bad food,’ and get the ball rolling.

At restaurants sometimes I’ll be served first. My coworkers , for they were my companions, would insist I start without them. But it just didn’t feel right. If they insisted I’d eat a fry or two. But there seemed to be a time limit. If one person’s order was slow coming and everyone else was waiting, then there would be apologies and the one left out would have to watch.

6

Did she know about this hang-up of yours before she ate the breadsticks? I can’t personally imagine getting offended that someone had a couple of breadsticks–she didn’t even eat the pizza, right? And it’s just a pizza! We aren’t talking about a formal, fancy-pants restaurant. I really think you’re over reacting. But if this is a huge thing for you, in the future she should try keep it in mind. I don’t think snacking before a meal is inherently rude, though.

7

You’re insane. It’s a god damn take out pizza. If it were my relationship, you’d get serious demerits for acting like a pussy. Choose your battles carefully. IMHO. you are completely in the wrong, especially when considering the long term aspects of your relationship.

8

I absolutely agree with this post. When I read the thread title, I thought “damn right!” But then I saw that this was about takeout pizza at home, which in my opinion is the most casual of meals possible. Also, she only ate some of the breadsticks, not the pizza. She was hungry and you weren’t there. Is she not allowed to eat except in your presence?

9

Formal dinner party, yes; “Go pick up a pizza for dinner tonight,” no.

And what’s with having your girlfriend go chase the pizza down, and not letting her have a snack while she waits for you to get home? What’s that biblical quote that goes something like “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn”? It’s not like she ate her entire half of the meal and left you to eat your half by yourself.

My vote: Lighten up, Francis.

10

I think the worse offense was arguing with your girlfriend over an innocent act. Manners handbooks tend to say that only parents correct their children on manners - of course, in this case you’re asking for input so we’re giving it. :wink:

She ate a few breadsticks; it’s not like she tore into the pizza and left it messed up, top open and cooling, and you found her burping in front of the TV, wiping her hands on the sofa and saying “I left some for you.” She waited for you to arrive before starting on the pizza.

If you want her to appreciate your position on this, you need to do something like say that you know it doesn’t make sense to her, but for you, sharing food is (insert stuff about communal breaking of bread/takeout pizza, talking over the day’s experiences, etc., here) and an important part of your bonding as a couple, and you would love to share that experience with her even if it doesn’t mean the same to her right now. And for god’s sake, don’t tell her that she offended you.

Edit: And if I were her, I’d be wondering what else you might freak the hell out over if this caused an actual argument.

11

I gotta consult the Seinfeld manual on this one:

Let me see, you ordered pizza right? To be eaten by you and your girlfriend? You don’t say if she is a live in girlfriend, which has a whole other set of rule. She ate three breadsticks without you? Now, you don’t mention if there was a pre-dinner salad. I have to assume there was not. So, three breadsticks for a pizza dinner with you and your girlfriend?

I have to say no foul. Now if it was Chinese, or there was a salad with dinner, she was rude. There was no family or close friends invited, right?

Sorry, the girlfriend was right. She was hungry and wanted a snack. Breadsticks are snacks in this case, my friend. Only a snack.

SSG Schwartz

12

I want to say ditto the above, and plus- if the two of you have very different upbringings and ideas about how to do daily mundane things like have dinner, you may want to reconsider marriage if it gets that far. It’s those little things that you don’t have in common that add up to one big problem in the future, IMO.

13

On closer read of the OP: And by the way, la-de-dah, you were lucky enough to grow up in a functional home around the Sacred Family Table, with a father to buy the food and a mother to cook it, and she was not. It’s kinda sounding like you’re holding that against her. “This meal, if you can call it that”? Please. A meal is a meal whether it’s eaten in front of the TV or in the dining room with candles and china. I can think of plenty of family dinners where a blaring TV would have been preferable to “conversation” with my father.

I think if I were your girlfriend and I saw this thread, I’d be rethinking the relationship.

14

Yeah, I don’t like starting a meal alone, and if a restaurant is for some reason not bringing all the food at the same time, I’ll start eating before it gets cold. I do prefer to wait until at least one other person has a meal in front of him, and at least two would be ideal. At home if I’m cooking for people, mostly things don’t come out at all the same time (because I’m not a good cook). So it would be even weirder for me to have everyone sitting around and waiting for me, so I tell them to eat before things cool.

So I kind of see your point Cap’m, and I agree that it would have been just a little rude for her to have eaten a slice of 'za in the car on the way home. But breadsticks? Eh. And the fact that you actually got angry about it, even with your rationale behind it, seems a little over-the-top. Your snarking about her “utilitarian ideas of meal-time” where food was “eaten in front of a blaring TV set” seems pretty elitist and snotty to me.

I understand that you’re upset because you see mealtime as important as you do, and I think that’s something that you can get your girlfriend to understand. But at the same time, I don’t think getting angry at her is going to accomplish anything. If she had been out picking up the pizza, and there happened to be an open bag of chips on the table, would you have specifically refrained from eating a handful? Even if you would have, would you expect your gf to do the same? You’re both coming from logical positions, and can probably come to an understanding over it. But the level of vitrol in your post was a little shocking.

15

I think the issue here is that you’ve taken a stance. “I was brought up right. You weren’t. My way is sacred. Your way is uncouth.”

You two need to have an unheated discussion about what each of you expect or don’t expect about dinner. And everything else. If you had told her that sharing dinner was extremely important to you and she blew that off, that’s a huge issue. If you had told her that and she thought, “I know it’s important, but I’m hungry and it’s just a couple of breadsticks,” that something else entirely.

Talk, you two!

16

Whoa. Are you serious? Really? This type of thing pisses you off enough to have an argument with your girlfriend about? God, if I was dating someone and this offended or set them off on an argument, I’d be “see ya buddy. I’ll go out with someone a little less insane.”

17

A few things I notice on re-read that are not mentioned in the OP, probably which help her side and my side equally (even though there are no real sides, as we ended up watching Simpsons and eating pizza, so there’s no real loser in this):

This is far from the first time. She knows this act is a pet peeve of mine, so to me it seems she should respect that. I mean, I stopped some of my habits that I know bother her.

She doesn’t eat much. Some days, all she’ll eat is a piece of toast. On numerous occasions, I’ve cooked a huge meal, and she’ll be full before it is even served from snacking on a carrot or something. There is a good chance that pre-meal snacking leads her to having no appetite at dinner time.

Also, FWIW, we’re poor. She’s still in college and I work full time at a McJob until she’s done so we can move. This is the first time we’ve had food we didn’t have to cook ourselves in about three weeks. When I can finally budget in something nice, it seems only reasonable to me that she should wait. (I think this is my main hangup)

Bah, I’m done venting. It’s in the mundane and pointless forum and not the pit for a reason.
edit: I think some of you are misinterpreting the term ‘argument’. Argument to us is a voicing of differing opinions, not the top-of-the-lungs yelling I think some of you are picturing. I should have defined better.

18

???

She did. She only ate three breadsticks. As pointed out above, she didn’t tear into the pizza and “leave some for you”. She only snacked.

I’m hearing that you derive validation from (A) cooking for her and (B) watching her eat what you’ve cooked. Thus, if she “ruins her appetite” (you sound like my grandmother, BTW, :wink: scolding me, shaking her head at my sugar sandwich at 3 p.m. “you’ll ruin your dinner!” ), you’re personally offended, because she carelessly deprived you of your hard-earned opportunity to be validated.

And because where you come from, everyone sitting around the table eating together is how you demonstrate family solidarity, and if in your new ad hoc family with this girl, you aren’t sitting around the table eating together because she carelessly (childishly :wink: ) spoiled her appetite with pre-dinner snacking, then what you’re hearing is that she’s demonstrating a lack of solidarity, that she’s saying “I don’t want to be a part of your ad hoc family”’. Because in YOUR family, you sit there and eat dammit. And if you’re not gonna sit there and eat dammit, then you can just leave. Eh?

And that you need to have her eat what you cooked, and your feelings are hurt when she doesn’t. Question: did your mom and dad make a huge issue out of it on the occasions at your family meals when someone didn’t clean their plate, or otherwise seemed disinclined to eat? Did your father go, “I worked hard to pay for that food, and your mother worked hard to cook it, so you’ll eat it by god!” Because that’s what I’m hearing; when your GF isn’t hungry enough to do what you consider justice to the meal you cooked, are your feelings hurt, because you worked hard at McJob to pay for it, and you worked hard to cook it?

???

Takeout pizza is “something nice”? So, what are the “huge meals” you cook for her? To me, a nice homecooked meal with all the trimmings, and candles and napkins and stuff, would be the “something nice” you’d have a right to expect her to wait for you to sit down before digging in.

I’m also hearing that you feel she ought to be grateful to you for working full time at McJob so she can finish school, and that she ought to demonstrate her gratitude by following your rules for mealtimes.

19

I would like to know why she only eats a piece of toast on some days. Does she have an eating disorder, or are you guys that poor, or is there some other reason? I know, I’m being nosy, so you don’t have to answer. I’m just curious.

But that’s all the more reason not to begrudge the poor thing a breadstick or two before you’re ready- jeez, she must be starving!

20

For me there’s a very clear delineation between eating, and sitting down for a proper meal with others. I’m a “fend for yourself” kind of cook most of the time. Yeah, I cooked it, it’s there, serve yourself.

I wouldn’t dream of starting to eat at a meal served at a table with others, until the others are all situated and someone announces “let’s begin” or something to that effect.

This pizza thing though, I find hard to take a side about. Your girlfriend pinched a snack, she didn’t sit down and have dinner without you.