spit it out

At All Souls College, Oxford, as part of the interview process there is a legendary test of resourcefulness when the nervous candidate is invited to dinner. The meal is almost guaranteed to contain a challenge in terms of etiquette and not offending the surrounding highly intellectual and highly demanding dons. The timebomb is usually planted in the dessert, by which time the examiners reckon the candidate will have relaxed, maybe had a glass or two of wine and may be starting to think the ordeal is virtually over.
The classic trap is cherry pie - with the stones left in the cherries, naturally. As I never set foot in All Souls, let alone dined there, my knowledge is limited to Oxford student pub gossip, but apparently the correct technique is to remove the flesh from the cherry stone, put the stone in your spoon, and place the stone on the edge of the dessert plate. Or something like that. At any rate, most observers would agree that spitting it out is not a good idea.
Tell that, though, to Ann Marie Sabath who, according to the business section of the LA Times, is an accomplished "etiquette maven", defined in my online dictionary as "someone who is dazzlingly skilled in any field".
This lady was in California recently, imparting her table manners to the students of UC Irvine before they undergo the gruelling process of job interviews - and lunches, it seems.
Faced with olives amongst a salad, Ms Sabath's advice is apparently to spit the stone quickly onto the plate, "making sure the little guy doesn't richochet off the crockery toward the prospective boss". Quite how the pupil is supposed to ensure this happy outcome, once the pit has been propelled towards the plate from a distance of two or three feet, Ms Sabath does not explain.
Clearly, the poor lady has an uphill task. She was called in because an Asian student, confronted with a burrito, started spooning the contents out of the wrapping straight into his mouth as if it was in a bowl.
This another demonstration of the way in which southern California is a melting pot of cultures, religion and races. Somehow they all have to co-exist and co-ordinate, if not co-operate, and the dominant culture is still wasp. Hnce the etiquetee classes.
But please, Ms Sabath, don't encourage them to spit out food. All Souls may be a bit out of touch in many ways, but putting pits, stones and other unwanted material onto your spoon or fork, to transfer to the side of the plate, is far more acceptable simply because it is less risky and less liable to cause offense. Even better is to remove the pits etc while the food is still on your plate. That may be a bit fiddly, but you don't have to scrape off every last morsel of flesh, and the route from plate to mouth should ideally be a one-way street.