Because it makes a loud noise. And some people think that seeing masticated food is nasty.
Like farting in public. It’s not a weird Manners rules made up, it’s simple courtesy.
Until recently the original Irish Pub in Atlantic City would only allow bar patrons to place drink orders with the bartender while food orders had to be placed with a waitress who came to the bar to take your order. The bar tab and food tab had to be paid desperately. And I THINK it’s all still cash. Still worth it!
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So, you had to was dishes and pint glasses?
There’s a difference. Everyone has to eat and pass gas; nobody has to wear a ball cap in a restaurant.
I still can’t get over the stupidity of the $10 credit card minimum nonsense at a restaurant that does 90% of their business from takeaway and everything on the menu is less that $10. Raise your prices if you’re so concerned about the processing fee. The particular restaurant I’m thinking about is not only located in an area of Chicago with heavy pedestrian traffic to and from a CTA train station, but is also located near a bunch of bars. There have been numerous times I would have stopped in to grab something, but then remembered the credit card minimum and passed on by rather than finding an ATM.
It’s significant because there aren’t hat racks in restaurants. I was in the Army so I’m well aware of the requirement to remove headgear indoors and while eating. It’s something I’m inclined to do if possible. But this isn’t the 1940s; restaurants don’t have hat racks anymore.
A ball cap can be stuffed in a pocket, but a real felt hat cannot. I finally got sick of trying to balance my hat on the back of the chair, or accidentally stepping on it under the chair, or having food fall onto it in my lap, that I just gave up, and now I wear it on my head throughout the meal. Not a single person has ever anything against it or even looked askance.
It really is outdated etiquette. Only old people and hat people even know it was once a rule. I stopped worrying about it long ago.
There was a place in Paducah, Kentucky that had a sign that said “No Whores”. I didn’t go in.
Ahem. :dubious:
Excuse me, but white tie is formal dress, and is worn with a tailcoat and a top hat. That’s not dinner dress.
Dinner dress is black tie and is worn with a tail-less tuxedo/dinner jacket. No tails makes it easier to sit and have dinner.
Aha! Another opportunity for profit!
I need to finish my work on a collapsible pocket hat rack. Works on the same principle as modern tent poles, with elastic strung through lightweight aluminum tubing. Is Ron Popeil still around?
here is a famous show with a comment on hats in restaurants. You can start the clip at 30 seconds in.
Most restaurants don’t have coat checks, either, yet people manage to eat without wearing a coat.
And plenty of people keep their coats on.
Coats generally fit nicely on the back of your chair, or can be put behind you in a booth. Hats, not so much.
In McDonalds or Taco Bell maybe.
My daughter phoned up and ordered fish and chips from a local fish shop last night. (We are in a holiday town at the moment and the place is full of Easter tourists.) She was told “Ten minutes”.
The universal rule is that you ring up, the shop takes your order, starts cooking, and when you arrive at the appointed time, you identify yourself, give them money, and they give you a warm paper parcel from the bain marie full of fishy, chippy goodness.
Daughter turns up and is told that they don’t start cooking until you arrive. The fuck? What’s the point of taking phone orders, and moreover giving estimates of time when it will be ready? “We’ve had too many no-shows, so we don’t start until you get here and pay. And the ten minutes was ‘just an estimate’”.
The fuck squared? I get the no shows, but the rest makes no sense at all.
Food took 40 minutes because of the holiday crowd, but daughter couldn’t just leave because she had paid.
Fortunately, the nature of these businesses is highly seasonal in such places. If they burn people like this, the locals won’t support them and they’ll be gone by the next big holiday season.
And I note that the Great Hat War has been going now across two decades with no reduction in vehemence. It has lasted longer than WWII, certainly as Americans count it and probably as Brits do to.
Oops. The across two decades thing. My error.
My take on the hat feud:
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This forum is for discussion, and telling someone who’s giving their opinion on here to mind their own business is ridiculous - there’d be no more discussion.
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Giving someone in a restaurant (or other place in public) a piece of your mind about their hat (or other clothing) is indeed far more rude than their clothing choices. If you do tell them, it’s you who has the problem. Stop wanting to tell them. You are wrong for wanting to. Get over it - now.
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If you go into a restaurant and you see a lot of particularly stodgy-looking people who also look uptight and likely to start jabbing at the mote in your eye despite the log in their own, consider taking your hat to a better restaurant. Such people are very likely to be stingy too, and any place they’re eating at will probably reflect that.
My weird-policies-in-restaurants post: Several years ago, I was in restaurants where the management required the staff to sing to any customer who was there for their birthday. However, they didn’t sing “Happy Birthday” - instead, it was some very clumsy attempt at making up a replacement song. At the time, I just felt bad for the staff, though certainly there are worse things on the job. But I realized afterward - hey, that stupid song probably only existed because of Warner Bros’ copyright greed over “Happy Birthday”.
Now that the copyright case has been decided in the public’s favour, the restaurant management may have changed their tune - literally.
I hadn’t formally heard that the state of the copyright had changed, but had suspected it had when I started to hear the real Happy Birthday in restaurants occasionally a couple years ago.
“No Outside Food” I can understand for bringing in McDonalds to some fancy restaurant but there’s a few places that you can’t even drink a sportsbottle of iced water you brought with you because it was part of your bag because the water they served was room temperature.