Ms Manners

Five minutes into my meal with Connie Sturgess, a harsh realization dawns on me. For the past 30-odd years, I have been eating my dinner rolls all wrong. Sturgess, etiquette coach and principal consultant of Western Protocol & Etiquette Services, has been putting me through my paces to demonstrate her “executive dining” seminar. “We don’t butter our bread in the air,” she says, after gracefully offering me a roll. “We take the butter we think we’ll need – would you like some butter? – and we break the roll into small, bite-sized pieces as we want to eat it. And we always butter it on the bread plate.” more...