Ladies First?

We ate out a lot when I was a kid. My father wanted to see other restaurants, specifically hotel restaurants, the vibe, the decor, the menu. Waiters would often take orders starting with my mom and then me, and then my brothers and lastly my father. When I asked my mother why this was, she said it was tradition: start with the most mature woman at the table, then the younger women, then the younger men, then the oldest man last.












I haven't thought about it much since then -- and I rarely see servers go in this order nowadays -- but I remembered this restaurant quirk while reading about gender and eating out this week in the New York Times.

I'm a fairly confident person except when it comes to ordering food. I guess I don't like that there's someone between me and my dinner. I hem and haw and abruptly change my mind mid-order. Now this article makes me a smidge more self-conscious. Is the server sizing me up in ways I don't know about? Heavens. I just want my steak.

Flickr image by Julia Rosien