Students got a taste of good manners at the University’s Business Etiquette Dinner and Dress For Success Fashion Show on Wednesday night.
This is the fifth year that Rosemarie Burns and Linda Reed, etiquette consultants for Burns & Reed Enterprise, have given presentations at the University, sponsored by Aramark Uniform Services. Burns and Reed met at The Protocol School of Washington, which was located in Washington, D.C., at the time, and have been business partners since 1998. Burns, based in Danville, Calif., and Reed, of Eugene, teach etiquette classes for everyone from six-year-olds to business executives.
“Normally we charge $190 to $350 per person for a dining tutorial,” Reed said.
Wednesday’s seminar, sponsored by the University Career Center,
was free and open to all University students.
“Dining etiquette is important because, in many situations, part of your interview may be over dinner or over lunch,” said Ronnie Casanova, employer relations specialist for the University Career Center.
“Dining skills really are for the benefit of the people you’re dining with,” Reed said. For example, when drinking from a glass, it is considered proper to look down into the glass rather than over the top of the glass at another person. The reason for this, Reed said, is that one might be unaware of having food caught in his or her teeth and might unknowingly inflict that sight upon others.
Even experts are not immune from mistakes. As Burns instructed students on the proper way to tackle a cherry tomato — hold the knife blade steady against one side of the tomato and then spear the tomato with the fork — she described an embarrassing personal encounter she once had with an independent-minded cherry tomato in Washington, D.C.
“It went bouncing down the table, so I never forgot how to do this,”
she said.
As people ate, Burns and Reed walked around the room, giving instructions and answering questions ranging from what to do with chewing gum at the table — “Swallow it, that’s what I’d do,” Reed said — to how left-handed people should
follow rules designed for right-handed people.
University Catering provided a three-course dinner for the event: salad with lettuce, cucumber and cherry tomatoes; garlic mashed potatoes, chicken piccata or eggplant parmesan, and asparagus; and apple pie.
“I found it humorous that somebody had to pass the bread around the entire table to get it to one person,” University Catering server Mandy Brice said. Brice said she often doesn’t notice customers’ table manners in her work with University Catering, but “sometimes the students aren’t as professional.”
Burns and Reed’s lessons were surprising to many dinner guests.
“I didn’t know how to eat my bread,” sophomore business major Sasha Welka said. The proper method of eating a bread roll, Burns and Reed said, is to rip off a small piece from the roll on the plate, butter the piece and eat it.
Burns and Reed also discussed the difference between American and Continental (European) styles of eating. In the Continental style, one never puts down the knife and frequently stacks food on the back of the fork.
“I had friends from Denmark
last year, and we always talked about it,” junior sociology major Kim Klier said.
The dinner concluded with a fashion show sponsored by Macy’s, and Casanova and Career Center GTF Heather Marshall offered pointers on business dress.
“Regardless of the knowledge and expertise you have, a first impression is a lasting impression,” Casanova said. She suggested that students wear subtle and conservative clothing and accouterments for job interviews.
Welka said she was recruited to be a model in the fashion show while at the Career Fair. She modeled a business-formal outfit of a pinstriped jacket and black pants. Business formal wear consisted of suits, including ties for men, and business casual wear included dress shirts without ties for men and knit tops and skirts for women.
To sign up for future Career Center seminars, visit the Career Center Web site at uocareer.uoregon.edu.
