I’ve only seen it happen once in real life: a man was dining with my party during a banquet event held after a day of “Model UN” activity at the Adam’s Mark hotel in Winston-Salem. He snapped his fingers, a waiter came over, and the man requested another couple of pieces of chicken. He received said chicken shortly.
In another thread, this was referenced as a rude activity.
Was this formerly commonplace and polite?
Do we have a Miss Manners citation or something from an etiquette guide from a bygone era we can consult?
On edit: The above-referenced incident occurred in 1999, give or take a year.
My adult restaurant experience only goes back to around 1975 but it was condescending then, and certainly was in 1999. I doubt it was ever considered civil or appropriate. It may have been depicted in entertainment media, the way that many stereotypical behaviors are caricatured to get a point across, but that doesn’t mean people commonly did it.
According tothis, it’s acceptable/appropriate behavior in India.
I can’t find anything that says it was ever appropriate in the U.S., but I found some references that it happens to waiters in Europe, as well – and not just from Americans. They don’t like it either.
However, I do remember my early days in Catholic school. While attending the (pre-Vatican II) daily Mass, each class would march, single file behind the teacher, into church, genuflect simultaneously and file into our assigned pews. Since we were single file, the students in the rear couldn’t see the teacher lead the genuflection, so she (it was always a she) would signal with – a clicker! I went to three different Catholic elementary schools in different cities, and it happened at each of them, so I have to assume it was a somewhat standard practice.
I always thought that when such an act is portrayed in media, it is either because the snapper is
a) a sufficiently large enough bigwig that he can get away with it, and he doesn’t care about how bad it looks because to said bigwig, flaunting your social power is always acceptable
b) a clueless buffoon who doesn’t realize his erroneous ways
I did it once when I was about fifteen and my father told me what a low life rotten thing it was to do until I was about 40. I never did it once during all those years. I swear he stopped lecturing me about that sort of thing when he found out I had an American Express card. What that had to do with it was that he spent most of his life explaining why I was such a loser and losers obviously couldn’t qualify for the American Express card. I guess I showed him, huh?
I was hoping to find something in an Emily Post book, but the nearest I could find was that clapping or whistling at a waiter would not be acceptable in the US but one must be aware that customs unnacceptable here might be routine in other cultures. She did not mention finger snapping, but it’s in the same category.
The book is searchable for snippets on Google Books.
Once when I was a kid we were at a restaurant, and my mom snapped to get my attention. The waitress came over, and (smiling but clearly not happy) said “You don’t have to snap at me, Miss.”
Ooooo big drama.
But actually my mom just apologized and explained the misunderstanding and swore she’d never really do such a thing, which she wouldn’t. The waitress then apologized back, and everybody liked each other.
I can vouch that as far back as the 1960s in the US it was about as unacceptable as it is today.
I agree with teh poster above that all the times I’ve seen it in movies & TV the person doing it was Mr. Bigshot. And everybody came eagerly running to answer the call.
ISTR one Terry Pratchett character doing it in the series that included “Johnny and the Bomb,” but he was the guy that owned the entire chain of hamburger shops in question.
If you own the place, you can snap to your heart’s content, one imagines.