A contributor at Slate suggests that a once-popular American method of cutting and eating meat, which the author calls “the cut and switch” may be inefficient. For those unfamiliar with the technique, which the author says originated in France: it basically involves holding the fork in your left hand, the knife in your right hand when you cut meat, and then switching the fork to the right hand to eat the recently cut meat.
And you always thought “cut and switching” at restaurants involved your friends cutting toward the washroom, and switching seats when the bill arrives, to the farthest seat from the bill (which is coincidentally the empty seat of the person who left for the washroom!)
3 Bigger Wastes Of Time At The Dinner Table Than Switching A Fork From One Hand To Another
1. Why not bring all the utensils into the mix? If you’re going to waste time moving forks needlessly around, why not give the spoon some action? For example, you could stir your soup with a spoon, than drink it with a straw. Then when the straw gets clogged with noodles, and there’s nothing left in the bowl but carrots, you can use the cut and switch method to eat the carrots! And while you’re doing all of this, you can test whether your date is gullible enough to believe this is proper etiquette!
2.Holding the fork and knife backwards, resulting in cutting your hand, and then switching, and accidentally cutting the other hand. The good news: at least you did not cut any meat, in full support of your vegan friends. The bad news, they may think you have depression issues if you keep cutting yourself!
3. Just use the fork in your left hand to do everything, because your right hand will be busy writing a spec teleplay on “the cut and switch” to submit to Larry David for a potential future episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Sure there haven’t been any new episodes of the show since 2011, so you might have to find a way to shred any current projects Larry is working on and switch the cut-to-pieces script with your work.
