Megan Riksen:

Hello, and welcome to the Work Like a Laker podcast. I'm Megan Riksen, and today we have a very fun episode for you. We're discussing a topic that can sometimes feel a little bit intimidating, which is dining etiquette, but having a little etiquette knowhow can really go a long way to making your next meal, especially one that might be in a professional setting to be just a bit more enjoyable and also help you to really make a positive impression on the people that you are dining with or networking with. So we thought it would be fun today to do something a little strange. We're gonna have an audio etiquette dinner which we're gonna see how this goes. We are all just kind of making this work together. Hopefully a lot of you listeners, were actually able to attend our in-person etiquette dinner. We hold one every fall, and that is a your chance to actually get to eat the food and have a multiple course meal and really talk to people. But today we're going to do this audio version with Cindy Brown, who is the employer development manager here in the career center. So she's gonna be leading us through our etiquette dinner today. Welcome, Cindy.

Cindy Brown:

Thanks, Megan.

Megan Riksen:

All right. So Cindy, if you had to give us an estimate, how many etiquette dinners do you think you have hosted for Grand Valley students? Or I guess really any student? How many of these have you done?

Cindy Brown:

You know, if we looked at any student, it's gonna be over a hundred.

Megan Riksen:

Oh my gosh.

Cindy Brown:

I know, right? And then here you're aging me and here at Grand Valley

Megan Riksen:

No, you do like a hundred a year, right?

Cindy Brown:

Oh yeah, yeah. No. But yeah, here, I bet you it's, it's over 20. It's, yeah, and it's been awesome. And I'm so looking forward to this conversation.

Megan Riksen:

Awesome. So I'm assuming this will be your first etiquette dinner without food?

Cindy Brown:

You know, it's the first audio one during Covid. We had some, yeah, we had a few dining etiquette experiences with our students, our student athletes we got to do one with. Cool. And so it was virtual without, I think they were eating. And they all bought their own. So it, they were doing some stuff, but I was, yeah, not.

Megan Riksen:

Not, perfect. Great. So Cindy is going to be leading us through our etiquette experience today, and our dinner attendees who get to eat this magical fake food are the current interns in the career center. So I'm gonna have you each go around and introduce yourself with, you can just give us your name and your major, and we'll get to know you a lot more throughout the podcast today. So Katie, I will start with you.

Katie Chitwood:

Hi, I'm Katie. I am the writing and communications intern for the Career Center, and I am also a double major in writing and film and video production.

Sheridan Maske:

Hi, my name is Sheridan. I am our employer relations and events management intern at the Career Center, and I am currently enrolled in the Seidman College of Business as a human resources major.

Le Nguyen:

Hi, my name is Le and I'm majoring in supply chain management and marketing. Right now I'm working as a social media and marketing intern at the Career Center.

Gracie Roginski:

Hi, my name is Gracie. I am an advertising major as well as a marketing and photography minor. And for the Career Center, I am the event management and marketing intern.

Shelby Huerta:

Hi, my name is Shelby. I am an advertising and public relations major, and I am the alumni and adult learners social media intern.

Megan Riksen:

All right. Thank you all so much. So at this point, I'm going to pass things over to Cindy for the rest of the podcast. So Cindy, take it away.

Cindy Brown:

Thank you, Megan. And thanks to our our interns that are here with me today. So I'm not, not only doing this with audio, but I have some people in the room with me, which is great. And so I, I wanna throw out a question to everybody first before we get going. Is there something that made you nervous about attending the etiquette dinner last week?

Sheridan Maske:

I think I can speak on behalf of myself and also many GVSU students that the number that you see in Handshake when we have the event is up to 150 registrants. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of strangers in one room that you don't know. The event did have a dress code and we asked, you know, people to address their best, so to speak. And walking into a room, you're kind of, for some people that's walking into a lion's den, you don't have that experience networking. You don't understand that sometimes those opportunities don't come as easy to some as it does to others.

Cindy Brown:

I think that's one of the reasons why we do this, right? It's one of the most important reasons why we do this, is we want students to feel comfortable. It it takes a lot of effort to, to finally say yes and click the button and say, yes, I want to come, and then also come to the event. Because if you're by yourself, who do you sit with? Who do you, you know, who do you interact with? What, what happens if I make a mistake? And I can, I can honestly tell you last week, and I'm gonna try to just set the tone here a little bit, is we did have someone drop their water glass <laugh>. And I was standing right next to him and went, oh, <laugh>. And I, I think the whole place we, we, and I'm like, that is not what you're supposed to do, right? It just happened. And I think the, the, the, the most important thing is if you do something like that, it's, it's about the don't cry over spillt milk that happened. It's over, don't worry about it. We, we looked, server got their attention, they brought a napkin, we cleaned it up, and, and we continued on. So that was a great experience to have to prove that you don't have to be perfect when you're doing this.

Katie Chitwood:

Yeah. And I feel like that's a great point. I feel like that's why the etiquette dinner is so necessary as an event. And why, I mean, I personally had no clue what an etiquette dinner even was before I heard that we were hosting it. But when things like that happen and people spill their drink it's a perfect opportunity at an etiquette dinner at GVSU to actually learn, okay, what do I do in these kind of unexpected situations? How do I kind of bounce back without being too embarrassed in letting it kind of get in my head of, oh my goodness, I, I totally just messed this up. But it was great to see everyone around that student kind of supporting and just kind of laughing it off and being like, Hey, like we've all kind of done this before. We've all messed up and we're just gonna learn from it for the future. So I think that was kind of the magic of the etiquette dinner for me.

Cindy Brown:

Exactly. And one of the cool things that you guys did was you walked students to the tables to start filling in the tables, which I thought was amazing because we did not have a cocktail hour or a networking where you're standing up with hor d'oeuvres and, and you know, drinks. We didn't have that. So they, you, you kind of put them together with people they didn't know, which I thought was amazing. At first I was like, uhoh, you know, are, is, is this gonna be, is it gonna be really quiet in here at the beginning? But it wasn't. People started talking. And so the etiquette dinner itself, and I'm gonna go through a lot of the, the essentials of it, but the important piece is that we had students learn small talk. We had actually learn or use it because I'm sure if they've been going to the career center or in any of those classes that talk about interviewing and such, they probably know how to network. They're probably nervous about it, but they had firsthand opportunity to be able to practice that while they were while they were sitting there.

Gracie Roginski:

So one thing that I thought was interesting was that in our generation, a lot of us like to use cell phones all the time. And something that I thought was really neat is all the students practically disconnected from their technology and did talk. And that's hard to come by nowadays. So actually seeing students sit next to people that they didn't know and talking with them, eating with them, it was, it was really wholesome. And I, I really enjoyed watching that happen unfold. It was, it was amazing.

Cindy Brown:

Exactly. That was very impressed. I was very impressed with that. I mentioned, I've done a lot of these, that was one of the one out of five times that I've seen that no one had their their, their phones. No one was using social media. Everybody was focused except for Le taking all the videos, <laugh>. But besides that, so, which was really good and necessary, and we needed it. And it was awesome because I was getting good comments about how it was going you know, at night. So if we would've had a networking event, it would've been like a cocktail hour or something like that. That's what they call it. You come in, you, you, you, you look at your surroundings, check it out, and then look for people that are welcoming. And what I mean by that is there's usually gonna be people that are they're standing next to a tall top table. They might have a, a glass of water, iced tea, coffee, whatever it is. They might have a snack if that's what's there. But the, the thing is, that's when it's not about running right into that to the room and, and going right there to get something to eat or drink. It's about having those conversations with people. And so, you know, stopping at where they have the drinks, the drink station stopping where they have the snacks grabbing something there if they have a plate, put it on the plate, if they have toothpicks or a fork, utilize that. And then grab a glass of water, whatever it is, and then come over to maybe one of those tall top tables or a group of people and then just start talking. Now, a couple tips with that is you always wanna keep your, your right hand open so that you can handshake or give a handshake and welcome yourself and introduce yourself to people that that are, that you're gonna be talking with. So simple, you know, when you first get there, if there's a networking event like that. The only other piece I wanna just touch on is name tag. If you do receive a name tag, it always goes on the right hand side. And, you know, that was kind of fun. I don't know if you guys noticed it, but I waited a little bit on that on Thursday night to talk about that. And then you just hear that, that rip of the, the, the name tag from going from the left to the right. And, and it's, it's important to have that because we, we don't remember everybody's names or we might call them something they're not by mistake, right? That could happen. So we wanna make sure that we're you know, utilizing people's names when we, when we meet up with them. Now, you guys, you noticed and you saw people where they were, where they were sitting at the tables net. Did you, like, is there, what did you think, is there any particular place you should sit when you go to a table at any type of events like this?

Shelby Huerta:

Well, of course, I think it'll always depend on the event. Like if there was an assigned seating and, you know, you had to sit in a specific area, that's gonna be, you know, a different situation. But for this event, we were able to seat people where there were opening spots. I, myself was able to walk a few of the students up to the tables to take a seat, and that was great, but a lot of people just took the opportunity to sit with people they didn't know, and they took that chance of saying, Hey, I'm sorry, I don't know, you let me get to know you. Let's enjoy this dinner and have a good time.

Cindy Brown:

Exactly. And because they were sitting in the open seats, it didn't they weren't particularly worried about which seat they took. If you're going to some, an event like this, maybe the e econ club lunch or a conference. And if you're the host or if you're the person that has invited others to your table, you should sit with your back to the speaker. Because the, and give the good seats to the, the people that you're bringing, if you're one of the attendees that are coming, you know sit with your, your, you know, viewing, being able to view the person that's gonna be speaking. But if by chance you can't, you can always turn your chair and, and watch the speaker as they're speaking. You don't have to like look over your head or stare in a different way to make it a little bit easier for you. You always wanna be either next to the person that you'd like to talk to or across from them, because as you're speaking, you're looking across. Or if you know there, if it gets quieter in between the speakers, you can always look to the people next to you and have a little bit of a conversation. But yeah, that's, that's it on seating. It's, it's very simple. There's a, like I said, there's a couple tips to it, but, you know, the important thing is once you do get there, pay attention to your speaker and introduce yourself to the people that are at your table. 'cause You can have a lot of fun, and you can make these types of events a lot more fun than just if you're going by yourself and you don't interact with anybody. So first thing you would do when you sit down is the napkin. And you know, the napkin usually has some sort of design, whether it looks like a, you know, they've, they've folded it some way on your, on, on the play setting. So you always wanna put that napkin with the big fold on your lap, and that that napkin is used in case you do spill. If you grab your glass of water and you if some of it the condensation spills or goes down, it'll go right on that napkin so it won't ruin your clothes, which is what it's supposed to be there for. That napkin will stay on your lap the whole time until you're done. Or if you need to use the restroom or get up it'll be on your lap until the absolute end. And when you're done, you just set it to the left of your plate and you don't have to make that, that design or whatever it was when they, when they gave it to you. And then the, I think one of the fun things did you guys know, like we've always heard, you know, go outside in, but did you know where the forks were on the right and or the left and then the spoons and knives were on the right? Did you guys know that? Yeah. You did? Yeah. All right. How do, how do you know that?

Sheridan Maske:

So this actually is gonna age me a little bit and maybe sound a little cringey, but when I was little, okay, no one judge me when I was little, there was a show on, I think it was like Disney Channel, and they would do these little shorts in between like the Mickey Mouse cartoons. And It was about like life skills. And there was one, and it was like a little song and they were showing how to like eat and how to set the table. And it was "the spoon and knife go on the right and the fork goes on the left." And it just repeated and it like stuck with me since I was like four years old. So like, when I would set the table when I was little, I thought I was so cool 'cause I knew exactly what I was doing. <Laugh>.

Cindy Brown:

That's great. Thanks Sheridan. So I had not heard of that. So that's another one I can add when I'm, when I'm doing these presentations. So thank you Sheridan. The easy way is now I've got that in my head, <laugh>. But if you, you know, if you're sitting down, there's either gonna be a, a very large dinner plate that's gonna be in the center of your place setting. You'll probably have a bread plate on your left, which will be right above it. And and then you'll have, as Sheridan has told us, our forks on our left and our, our our spoons and knives on our right. And you do go from the outside in, but a different way of, of remembering that besides singing, that that tune is the B the B and D rule. So if you were to make the okay sign with the, with your left and right hands, the one that's on your left is gonna look and it's gonna be a B, and that's gonna be the bread plate. And then the D will be the drink, and that'll be your drinks. So right now you can't see us, but we all have this above the table. If we were to be in a dining situation, we're gonna do that under the table or we're gonna sing that tune to ourselves, or we're gonna remember a car BMW bread meal or meat and water. So there's a couple different ways that you can remember which play setting is yours. And you know, I, I joke about this at the, whenever I do 'em lot these live, but if someone were to take your utensils by mistake or use your bread plate by mistake or anything, don't, you know, don't call people out. I think that's one of the biggest thrills too on all this is don't call anybody out. With that being said, you know, get the, get the eye of the server and ask them if they take someone takes your water glass, just ask for another water glass, and then you can they'll bring you one. Simple as that. And it, and it's probably a good time to talk about our servers, your server is your friend. It, it, it always blows my mind when people are, are mean to our servers, but that person's bringing you your food and they're gonna help you. And it's, it's, you know, if they see you stumbling or if they see that you're, you're struggling, they are the one that's gonna help you along if, if you're being nice with them. And so always say thank you to your, to your your, your servers and be polite to them and they will help you out. And and example of that is, I did have someone say to me once when I was doing this training, they said that someone told them not to over, not to say thank you every time someone brought them something at a meal like that, because you don't wanna overthink people. I've, I don't know anybody here at server, like, have you ever been over, over thanked?

Gracie Roginski:

I know I used to do catering as a summer job. And I cannot tell you how many times I wish I got thanked more. I just, you know, dealing with all the plates and everything. And the people who did thank me, they were honestly my favorite tables. I would help them more than maybe another table since they were just nicer to me and I made my night easier. They had a better night. So just, I would never say overthinking is a bad thing. It was, it was always great being thanked.

Katie Chitwood:

Yeah, I work at a restaurant right now downtown, and I'm not a server, but I am a host. And the amount of times that people don't thank just the people around them, even just like holding doors for people or getting like the server assistance who are bringing you your water. I think overthinking really isn't a thing <laugh> in my mind because it doesn't cost anything to be kind and it doesn't cost anything to just display gratitude. And I think it makes such a difference just in the minds of people who are working of, oh yeah, I am actually making your night better and I'm helping you. I'm taking time to really make your experience enjoyable. And saying thank you just really reflects that. So I always, always, always want people to say thank you if they can.

Cindy Brown:

Excellent. Those are great examples. Thank you. And you know when you're, when you're talking about being nice to the servers it, it just shows that, it just shows that this is more than just the actions of learning how to eat. This is about the whole experience of being able to utilize your small talk be able to have interactions with others besides the people at that are at your table and just, you know, have a, a really good, strong experience. And then of course, you know, not being nervous about which fork to use. And I think that's one of the important pieces too. So continuing on as we, as you're looking, as you're imagining your table in front of you, there's probably a basket of bread. There's, there's gonna be salt and pepper shakers on the table. There's gonna be salad dressings probably on the table. So the, the easiest way to pass things is the person that's closest would grab like the bra, the basket of bread, and they would then offer, so this is the interesting about passing, and what I love about dining etiquette is you can ki we know the rules, but there's some things you have to do to adapt. And I kinda like that. So in a normal setting, we would take, I would take that basket of rules I would offer to the left. They would take it out if they want one, set it on their bread plate, then I would take one, put it on my bread plate if I want one, and then I would go to the right. And, and I can tell you right now, I, I don't hardly anyone does it that way. So we practice it when we're alive so people can get used to it, but nine times outta 10, we're gonna just probably start by putting it on your plate and then going to the right because that's what people are used to. And sometimes if the tables are big, they'll be like if there's, if there's ranch dressing, there'll be a couple of 'em. So you can start 'em, you know, at the opposite sides of the table. And continue on from there. The, the one thing to remember with, with passing is you always wanna take whatever it is and put it. So like if it's the dressing you, you don't try it you don't set, you know, you put it right directly onto your salad and then, then you can, you can try it and go from there once it's on your salad. Salt and pepper you always wanna remember too that as you're eating or trying any of the foods, you always wanna make sure you eat first before you put any any salt and pepper, any frank's hot sauce, any of those types of things on it. The only thing that you would eat with putting something on it first, before eating or before trying it would be the salad. 'cause The salad has the salad dressing. And then so you put that on before eating a piece of dry lettuce if you don't wanna do that. So, and I got a question.

Sheridan Maske:

I do have a question for you. So we didn't have seafood at the event, but I know a lot of times when people are served seafood, they're given condiments like cocktail sauce, tartar sauce, or even like a lemon wedge to squeeze over their seafood just to kind of, I feel like it's a commodity nowadays. So would that go for the same rules as salt and pepper? Would you wanna taste it before putting any of that on there? Even if you're served that as like an accompaniment.

Cindy Brown:

You would, you'd wanna try it first and you can just take a little bite, right? And then know that it's what you thought it was gonna be and then you could go ahead and, and put the the cocktail sauce on it if it's shrimp or whatever it is. Yep. Perfect. That's a great question. So bread, so we, we, we put our roll on our bread plate. I'm gonna say it's a roll. And you know, a lot of people like to slice it in half butter, both sides eat it like a bread sandwich. And unfortunately we're not, we don't do that in public anymore. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna tear off one slice or one piece of the roll and then butter it and then eat it and go from there. So I always recommend keeping a little bit of the bread or the roll with you because you always wanna be eating at the same time as others. So if by chance you get something that you can't eat, just to give you an example, I'm allergic to peppers like green, red, yellow, orange. So if I were to get something on my plate that has peppers in it, I'm not able to eat that. But if I have a roll, I could still be eating my roll while everybody else is eating and then no one would even know that I, I wasn't able to eat that meal. Now, normally you'll be able to RSVP ahead of time and let people know what your allergies are. So if you have that opportunity to definitely do it because people, the chefs are being, there's so many unique different dishes that are out there, so make sure you do do that so that you are served what you are able to eat.

Katie Chitwood:

I just had a quick question. What if you are gluten free or you have a dietary restriction that you can't eat the bread or you can't save that bread

Cindy Brown:

For later? Yeah, and you just, unfortunately you can't Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> unless you were given if they were to figure out some other option for you because if you were to say gluten-free, maybe there was another option they could give you. And then if that's the case, then you would be able to save that.

Katie Chitwood:

Okay. Yeah. Gotcha.

Cindy Brown:

Sorry. Should have peppers as an allergy.

Katie Chitwood:

No, it's okay.

Cindy Brown:

Alright, so continuing on soup. Sometimes you'll get the different courses. You'll have salad soup and the entree. Sometimes it's either just salad in the entree or just soup in the entree. So a lot of times I don't get to see people practice soup, but soup is really easy. You just make sure you scoop the soup away from you so it doesn't spill on you. And then remember if it's, if it's hot, you can't blow on it, you don't put ice cubes in it, you don't stir it, you just have to wait it out. And I will tell you in the history of me going out to lunches, I've, I've really never had a soup that's been too temperature hot for that to happen. So they try to make sure that it's not that hot. And then you have the opportunity to put only oyster crackers in your soup. So, you know, remember the days where you would get the, the saltines and scrunch 'em up and, and put 'em in your soup. You can't do that. And so just oyster crackers are the only ones that can go in there. Sometimes they trick you 'cause they don't give you oyster crackers. But that's, that's basically the only thing that can go in the soup.

Speaker 7:

I have a question. It's regarding soup. If it is the best soup I've had in my entire life, am I able to just flip the bowl over and drink the whole thing?

Cindy Brown:

No, unfortunately no. <Laugh> no, you are not. And so even when it gets down to the, to the end, you don't pick up the bowl and, and slurp it out. Okay. In other countries, you absolutely can. So good little plug to Google if you're going to a different country to check out what those different etiquette rules are in different countries. But here you do not do that. You can tilt it and then try to get it with the, the, you know, the spoon as much as you can without spilling it on yourself and do that, but you're not allowed to do that. And then just, I'll throw this in now. Regarding doggy bags or like the, the take home bags and that, if it's a, if it's a conference, those types of meals, a luncheon, those types of things, absolutely not. There's, there's no way to take the food home. And then if you're out to lunch with somebody, maybe it's an interview or those types of things, you're not supposed to, but if the person that's there with you as their host recommends that you do because they know that you're a college student, they know they don't have a lot of extra money laying around then they wanna make sure that you, you do get this to take home, then you absolutely can if they allow you to do that. So, and then, you know, the utensils themselves eating I make this, you know, pretty clear when we, when we do these live, that we, I recommend that there are gonna be two ways to eat. Once you, once you leave this, the, the training one's gonna be the American way and one's gonna be the continental way. And so imagine your place setting again, where you've got you've got your forks on your left and your knife on your right. You're gonna pick one up outside in, and then you are going to use your pointing finger and you're gonna put the, the end of those utensils towards there the end of your fingers and you're gonna flip it over in the continental way. You're going to, you're gonna cut, and then you're going to eat with your fork, which is in your left hand upside down. And then you cut, and then you eat and you cut and you eat. And then if you wanna rest, you just set your fork and knife down the way that you're holding them on your plate. And then you can have a sip of water to have a conversation with people. You pick them back up and you start again, and you cut one, and then you're eating upside down. And then if you're gonna eat the American way, you pick it up the exact same way, the fork and, and your left hand and the knife in the right, you're gonna flip it over again with your pointy finger towards the ends of the, the utensils you're gonna cut. But instead of just eating upside down with the fork, you're gonna take that knife and you're gonna put it at the top of the, your, your dinner plate. And then you're gonna move your, the fork from your left hand to your right hand and kind of flip it over. And then you're gonna eat that way. So you're not going to or then you're gonna grab the food with your fork and then eat it that way so you're not eating upside down. So you're gonna cut, you're gonna cut it, put your knife down on the top of the plate, and then you're gonna move your fort from the left hand to the right hand upside down, so, or upside right now I guess. And then you're going to scoop up that food and then go ahead and eat it. Same thing if you need to rest, you set your fork down on the plate, your knife is already there, and then you have a glass of water or a sip of water and then have a conversation with people and then you continue on from there.

Gracie Roginski:

So I know you said you set the fork down on the plate or the knife on the plate. So can you set it down next to the plate? How does that work? Like on the table? Is that allowed?

Cindy Brown:

Once the piece of cutlery is placed up or you grab it from the tablecloth, it never touches it again. So it has to be on some sort of plate. And then in our scenario right here, we've got our, we're we're eating our salad, let's say. We still have a knife and a fork that are left. So once you're done, you leave those, your, your, the fork and knife you're using now you leave it on the plate because you know that you're gonna get, you have a fork and a knife for the next next course. Make sense?

Gracie Roginski:

It does.

Cindy Brown:

All right, excellent. So you continue on. So we've, we do our salad we'll eat our salad. You don't have to eat everything on your plate, you don't have to leave something on your plate eat what you feel comfortable eating and then then they'll, the servers will come and take that away and then they'll bring you your entree. Same thing. You know, you, you eat, you don't have to eat all of it. And then if you have some of your bread leftover, you can, you know, continue on with that. But you wanna kind of say the same pace as the person that's with you. So that, I think I mentioned that really quickly, but you wanna kind of be doing the same thing that they're doing while you're having that rest of the conversation. So as we've, as we've kind of walked through a lot of the small talk ahead of time and, and getting it to the table and all the basics that are on the table. And now the actions of actually eating this is really when the business starts after this, you know, after you eat is usually when, if there's an, if it's an interview or if there's conversations, if there's a speaker, that usually happens at that time. So you're, you're pretty much either gonna be close to being done or not done, or you might have dessert at that time. If you're at a conference, they'll, there's generally gonna be dessert and you don't need a knife for it. You, they'll usually give you a, a spoon or a fork at the top of your plate and then you use whatever they give you to, to eat your dessert. But you can eat that while the speaker's going. So you can, you don't have to rush through to make sure you get it all done before that that actual speaker is is there, other than that, there's some tips and tricks if you're, if you're at a restaurant on what to order. I get this question a lot is, is how much should I spend? And really you should follow the lead of your host. If the host is not, you know, giving you any examples or anything, the best thing to do is just ask and and you don't have to say, how much can I spend? But maybe the best thing would be, you know what do you recommend? And then hopefully the host will give you some ideas of things that they would, you know, I usually will say I, I know someone that's had the, like the french dip sandwich, that's really good. I've known somebody that had the chicken breast meal and that's good too. So now I've given you, given you kind of an idea on how much to spend. So yeah, it's pretty simple stuff. I think it's simple. The easiest thing you can do is come to next year's dining etiquette if you like. We'll be hosting another one in November of 2025. Other than that, you can always go on the internet and take a look. I would recommend that as you're going to different types of meals, just to make sure that you're comfortable. Because once again, it's, it's not about which fork to use, it's about that conversation or that presentation that's happening and not so much about, you know, worrying about where you know what actions to do. So if you can learn those actions, it makes life a little bit easier as you go to these events. So does any, do anybody have any questions? Are there any more questions or anything, Le?

Le Nguyen:

So I don't have any questions, but I just wanna say thank you so much for hosting this because coming from a different background, I didn't know how to use fork or like knife. We don't have that, we only have chopsticks, so I don't even know how to like use them until like I went to the etiquette dinner in person and I see how you do it on the camera. It's so good to know how to do it because I was so confused and I was so nervous. I would just like other students. So, so thank you so much for hosting this. I think it's so helpful for students.

Cindy Brown:

You're welcome. And we didn't mention it, but our six interns that are in our office actually put on the, the event the etiquette dinner and did everything from the logistics all the way to getting the really cool speaker. And then also you know at thank you notes to our servers, did everything. So I wanna say thank you to all of you guys too 'cause it was, it was a great event.

Megan Riksen:

Alright, well thank you so much everyone. It's fun to hear perspectives. Now you've had both an in, in-person dining experience and a fake one. Cindy, you nailed it. That was hard. I'm sitting here watching and I'm thinking she is really nailing this placement of the fingertips on the fake fork and knife. So it is great. So thank you all so much for listening and we hope you tune in to a future episode soon.