Rude Bitches Make Me Tired: Slightly Profane and Entirely Logical Answers to Modern Etiquette Dilemmas (2 page)

Here’s what you say:

“Roscoe and I didn’t have wine, so y’all can split that and leave us out of it.”

Man, oh, man, how I’d love to be a fly on the wall when that happens. Sorry. I was assuming this was a Denny’s, but then I remembered the “fine wine” thing.

Their jaws will drop and they’ll be shocked that, after many months of sticking you with a third of the fancy wine you didn’t drink, the metaphorical scales have fallen from your eyes. Crappidy-doo-dah. Game over.

You see, they’ve been wondering what is wrong with you for all this time anyway. Are you so desperate for friends that you have to buy them? Because that’s what you’re doing every time you meekly fork over your credit card for your third of the bill. We’re done here.

Almost …

Is there anything more agonizing than hearing a humiliating recitation of everything you’ve eaten by the number-crunching weirdo in your party?

“Madge, you had the arugula-beet salad, but you added on the gorgonzola crumbles for a dollar seventy-five, so … your share comes to…”

It is just such a terrible end to what could have been a lovely lunch or dinner. To hear your every lamb lollipop recounted (two at $11.95 each…) is simply horrifying.

The rule is simple: separate checks if appropriate (that means a party of six or fewer) and, for larger groups, a commitment to accepting that the bill should be split evenly.

There’s often an outlier, of course. There’s the pale friend who must have everything “gluten-free” or she will double over and collapse in a tower of her own shit mid-meal. This is always such a downer for the rest of the table. Maybe you could ask her to sit elsewhere? Like Indiana?

While we’re still in the restaurant, so to speak, let’s take a moment to remind one another that the waiter is there to do a job, not to hear about your “gastric bypass,” “lactose intolerance,” “gastroesophageal reflux,” “homoerotica fantasies,” and the like.

He or she also doesn’t need to hear that if he accidentally gives you caffeinated coffee, your heart will fly out of your chest and sit on the table, thumping away, while all you and your lunch companions can do is watch until it finally, mercifully, stops.

Here’s a tip: They don’t care about your coffee preference. They asked you only because you expected it. The truth is, you’ll get decaf if it’s convenient, and if it’s not, well, that’s a mighty fine-looking aorta you got there.

Remember that it’s important to tip generously, especially if you ever plan to return. Servers remember the cheap creep that ran ’em ragged and left a cool ten-spot for a hundred-dollar meal. You know who you are. For the love of Bobby Flay, tip for good service, tip for lousy service, just tip. Some of y’all can be pretty demanding.

Example: “We need more bread. And when you get back, I’m going to think up a few other things we need, but I’m only going to list them one at a time so you have to make a bunch of trips.”

Just remember: These servers can do awful things to your food right before it comes out. Awful things.

That’s Not a Salad Fork, You Stupid Bitch

A lot of people get confused when they’re in a nice restaurant and there are, like, a million forks surrounding their plates.

There’s no reason to fret. Generally speaking, silver is placed in the order of its use, so you pick up the piece on the outside first. See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?

When you’ve finished eating (or, as we say in the South, “had a sufficiency”), avoid announcing this by saying, loudly, “Damn, I’m stuffed!” or worse, “I’m chewin’ high.” There’s no need to announce the state of your stomach. No one is interested, and the notion that you need to give alerts—as though, if you lifted your shirt, a fuel gauge just like your car has would be revealed with a wand wavering between
E
and
F
—is truly off-putting. Along these lines, never, ever burp and then say “Yay! Room for more!”

That said, when you’re finished, really finished, not just talking about how full you are and continuing to shovel it in, place your fork on your plate, prongs down, beside your knife with the blade facing the fork. I am, too, serious. Good table etiquette is all that separates us from Kardashians—er, savages.

Some other tips … Always break bread with your fingers; never cut it with a knife. The bread knife is just for buttering and is also dreadfully unhandy for stabbing intruders; trust me.

A word about artichokes: Don’t ever order them. Nobody looks good sucking on leaves. Not even a koala bear, and damn sure not you.

Know your limits: Don’t order lobster, tails-on shrimp, Cornish game hen, and so forth, in a nice restaurant. You’re going to look like a doofus no matter how hard you try not to, and it honestly doesn’t help when you insist “I eat this shit all the time. Really.” Ditto ordering something you don’t know how to pronounce.

Good: “French onion soup.”

Bad: “Duck cawn-fit.”

A word about finger bowls: Okay, don’t freak out when you see one for the first time, Gomer. And don’t take a bath in it, either. Just dab the tips of your fingers in the bowl, and for the love of God, don’t try to make a joke by also dabbing at your underarms and crotch.

Okay, maybe the underarms. That’s actually pretty funny sometimes.

Don’t talk with your mouth full. Don’t talk with your mouth full. Don’t talk with your mouth full.

Now. Since you drove …

chapter 2

Funerals: Now Is Not the Time for Store-Bought Cakes and Backless Maxi Dresses from Forever 21

Okay, let’s just get the most important stuff out of the way first. Never, ever take a store-bought cake to the bereaved family. I don’t want to hear that you know an “amazing bakery, really the best!” or that “everybody does it, so what’s the big deal?”

Y’all are going straight to hell for thinking like that. This is a funeral, not some godless Unitarian Universalist potluck.

Look, I get that you’re terribly busy, which also explains why you never visited poor, dowdy, and now quite dead Aunt Fern while she was alive. Yes, you were so, so busy. There simply wasn’t time.

Sure, she could be a handful. Everyone knows that. She was dotty as hell and, toward the last, spent twelve hours a day watching
Law & Order
reruns. When you did visit, she spent the first thirty minutes accusing you of things and the second thirty minutes proving why she was right. But she’s dead now, and you better rustle something up quick.

And please quit whining about how Fern was so inconsiderate as to die on the weekend when your teenage son’s traveling soccer team was in the play-offs and just who did she think she was anyway?

I’ll tell you who: Fern was the one who showed up at your mama’s baby shower with a stack of crocheted blankets that she made just for you. Your mama still has them because they were the dearest thing on earth to her. Fern’s arthritic hands crocheted those blankies for you all those years ago, and you can’t even toss together a little flour, sugar, and baking powder in her honor?

The phrase “trifling heifer” springs to mind.

Let me be clear. I’m not saying that you have to bake a cake for the family. I’m saying that you do have to do something that honors Fern’s memory properly. This will never include a ghastly spice cake from Food King with a big orange carrot clumsily piped on the top and a list of unpronounceable ingredients as long as the book of Revelation. And it’s not much better to do that cake-mix thing where you try to make it look like you actually creamed butter and sugar and gave much of a shit.

Whatever you take to the family should be made by your own two hands. Don’t make me mention those hand-crocheted blankets again. Simply stated: Any idiot can bake a ham, and a ham is always a welcome addition since it can be both centerpiece for the luncheon after the service and used in biscuits for the morning after. Here’s how you do it:

Ham Fit for a Funeral

1 (6- to 8-pound) fully cooked bone-in ham

48 whole cloves

1-pound box light brown sugar

1 cup spicy brown mustard

1 cup cola (I’m a Coke girl, but Pepsi will do fine.)

¾ cup bourbon (Well, it is a Southern recipe, now, isn’t it?)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove the skin from the ham and trim the fat to ¼-inch thickness. This will keep the ham moist while it cooks. Make shallow cuts in the fat ¾ inch apart in a diamond pattern. Stick the cloves in the centers of each diamond.

Put the ham in a lightly greased 13-by-9-inch pan. Stir together the brown sugar, mustard, cola, and bourbon. Spoon this mixture over the ham.

Bake at 350 degrees on the lowest oven rack for 2 hours and 30 minutes, basting with pan juices every 15 to 20 minutes. Remove the ham from the oven and let stand 20 minutes before slicing. You can baste the ham a bit as it rests to give it a glossy look.

This is my go-to ham recipe, and it came from
Southern Living
magazine, which, along with the fabulous
Garden & Gun,
should be on your coffee table at all times, praise Jesus.

It should be noted that I’m assuming that Aunt Fern was a Christian woman, which is why I suggested ham. If she was of the Jewish persuasion, as my grandmother would say, may I suggest a lovely platter of latkes or a nice brisket? I don’t have any Jewish recipes because I’m a Methodist, but some of my best friends are Jewish, and I can ask if you need me to. Really, it’s no bother.

While we’re talking about funeral food, if there’s one thing that pisses off a bereaved family, it’s being saddled with the hellish chore of returning dishes to people who brought food in nondisposable containers.

These inconsiderate assholes usually trot in, place the food down, and say, “Oh, you can just get that platter back to me whenever it’s convenient.”

How magnanimous of you. Look, not all families are blessed enough to have a gay son who lives for this kind of thing, making notations of china patterns in a notebook and cross-referencing with the name of the dish and the hands that prepared it.

No, most of us muddle through in a grief-soaked haze, and three weeks after everybody’s gone and the surviving spouse is resigned to watching
Wheel
by herself and getting entirely too many calls from her idiot sister-in-law, she realizes that her kitchen counter is full of dishes of unknown origin. The burden is so great that she might, just for one horrible second, contemplate blowing her brains out right there on the kitchen Congoleum so she won’t have to deal with them.

Yes, I know your deviled eggs look so much prettier in your heirloom egg platter with the little porcelain chicks on the handles, but do you think the bereaved should worry about babying your precious porcelain and making sure you get it back in a timely fashion?

Actually, in any situation—not just ones involving the stopping of a human heart—it’s advisable to take food in containers that are obviously not meant to be returned. It’s why God made GladWare. And we’re mighty glad he did. Oh, and don’t you dare put one of those little address labels St. Jude sent you on GladWare. Nobody’s going to return a plastic container. That sort of behavior lets me know you probably took those labels and never even sent any money to St. Jude.

Question: Is it ever okay to email condolences? I just learned that my cousin died, and while we weren’t very close, I’d like to do something.

Oh, why not just text your condolences? You could say something like

Sorry 4 ur loss.):

I mean, why be so formal as a telephone call or a card or letter or flowers? It’s just a death, after all. It’s not like you forgot to DVR the season finale of
The Voice.

No. It is not okay to email condolences. Ever.

Question: I am going to a visitation at the funeral home for a guy I used to work with and I’m a little anxious about it. Can you help?

I imagine you’re anxious because you’re afraid there might be an open casket and looking at dead people wearing too much foundation is creepier than tonguing your cousin. Yeah, I said it. Point is, I totally understand how off-putting it is to be in a room with the freshly dead. But in some families, this is tradition, and you have to respect that. I find it useful to picture everyone in the room naked. No, sorry. That’s what I do when making speeches. What I meant to say was that it’s useful to engage in conversation with the non-dead people in the room. Don’t linger. There isn’t a Chinese buffet in the corner. Just get in, tell the family you’re sorry, shake some hands, share a warm memory of the deceased, and get out. This should take no longer than fifteen minutes. Set your watch if you must.

Question: I can’t attend the funeral of a church friend, but my husband plans to go. Is it okay for him to write both our names in the guest book? If he does, it’s possible that the family will think I attended. I don’t mean to be disingenuous, but what’s the real harm?

I’m sure you’re expecting me to pronounce this tacky, but that would be extremely hypocritical, since I’ve done the same thing myself. Look, I baked the damn ham. I don’t owe this person my entire life. Still, tongues will wag if they know I skipped the funeral to go to the outlets with my best friend from high school who is in town for only one day. Okay, three, but still …

I guess what I’m trying to say is that—and it
kills
me to say this—I can’t pass judgment on you, because I’ve done the same thing. In a case like this, let your conscience be your guide. I asked my conscience, and it agreed that the dearly departed would not want me to miss the 65 percent off sale today only at the Kate Spade outlet. If your conscience is a bit more, uh, active than mine, then, well, you should be turning in your hymnal to page 353 right about now.