Coffee Etiquette to End Your Jitters

My “Après Lunch Coffee” (or in this case, Cappuccino), was not covered by Miss Manners in this particular column, but it certainly was delicious!

How tea came to be perceived as the official drink of the etiquette business, Miss Manners is not sure. Personally, she would have chosen champagne, preferably with a bit of fresh peach juice in it and a view of the Grand Canal,

But a less exciting addition is in order. Coffee is making great headway on the social scene, what with all those nice copper machines puffing away, and it seems time to review and revise the rules connected with serving coffee under a variety of with all those nice copper machines puffing away, and it seems time to review and revise the rules connected with serving coffee under a variety of conditions.

Here, then, is a coffee schedule for the day -a day less likely to end than to careen straight into the next day.

• Breakfast: This is the only meal at which coffee cups and saucers are properly set on the table from the beginning. Miss Manners hopes to get this rule past those who love coffee during all their meals by stating it early, before they are fully awake.
• At informal breakfasts, mugs may replace cups and saucers, provided no one puts a wet spoon flat on the table, a prohibition that does much to explain why cups have saucers in the first place. The spoon may never be left sticking up inside, even for a second. Don't ask Miss Manners where to put it instead; she always uses a cup and saucer.
• Late morning coffee: This is properly served with bread, sweet or otherwise, and gossip, sweet or otherwise. Mugs are used, as, contrary to popular belief, paper does not hold coffee.
• If the gathering is in someone's house, the person who lives there naturally makes and serves the coffee. If it is in an office, people either take turns or fend for themselves, now that putting a particular employee in charge of fetching coffee for others has become so fraught with unfortunate symbolism.
• Lunch: The rule against serving hot coffee during lunch is admittedly sometimes in conflict with the rule about pleasing one's guests. One way for the individual coffee drinker to get around this is to claim having skipped breakfast, so that starting with coffee represents breakfast.
• Iced coffee is a proper luncheon drink, but the tumbler or stump-stemmed glass in which it is properly served presents the same spoon problem as the coffee mug. Hot coffee may be served at the table with dessert only for an informal lunch; at a formal lunch, coffee service follows the meal, preferably out the dining room door, as at dinner.
• Coffee break: See Morning Coffee, above.
• Teatime: You may well ask what coffee is doing at tea, but it is a customary second offering, although a cold drink may be offered instead in hot weather, and hot chocolate in cold weather.
• That coffee is not the star of a tea party is shown by the fact that the person who pours tea at a tea party (a high honor designated to a distinguished friend) is considered to outrank the person who pours coffee.
• Dinner: The only coffee properly taken at the dinner table is in those households that once were considered conservative but now are thought of as wildly permissive, where the smokers (formerly known as gentlemen) are left at the table to take cigars and port, sometimes accompanied by coffee, while the non-smokers (formerly known as ladies) withdraw for serious conversation. Otherwise, coffee is served away from the table, in demitasses with wee little spoons that keep falling off the itty-bitty saucers. – by Judith Martin, aka “Miss Manners,” in the Press Democrat News, 1993

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