In chapter 4 of Essence of Life, I wrote in detail about table etiquette. It's actually something I had to learn in business school, which was an insane class back in the fall of 2005.

People think of the early and mid-2000s as the second gilded-age sometimes. I sort of agree in retrospect. My freshman class were ushered to our university's executive dining room, then taught a series of lessons on where spoons, forks, knives, and plates are at a "proper" dinner. It's an unnecessary thing to do by modern standards, but back then when mortgage-backed securities and rising valuations made money from nowhere, it was considered necessary for us to learn this stuff to not stand out in the world of the "new rich". Not billionaires like Gates, Bezos, Musk, or Trump, but high-value Americans with assets over a million dollars who wanted this kind of lifestyle.

Dining Clubs are essentially an extension of this world of the "faux" rich. I wanted to give you guys a taste of the group that Finance majors were trained to serve and emulate.

I switched my major from Economics-Finance to pure Accounting in late 2006 before the housing bubble burst, but I still remember these weird classes on etiquette.