Is It Ever Okay...to Sip a Vaccinated Friends Drink Just to Try It?
Welcome to Is It Ever Okay, Bon Apptits questionable etiquette column. Email staff.bonappetit@gmail.com. Intrigued Iago  Yes, but I dont share my martini with anyone, so please dont ask me for a taste. It tastes like cold gin and its mine. Also a rule: You cant share fries if you didnt discuss the sharing before the fries were ordered. So if your friend ordered a burger that came with fries, and you had the nerve to order a garden salad with secret intentions to eat all of those fries, crawling your hand over to the plate like a midnight cockroachno. None of that shall be tolerated, and since we havent seen each other in a while, Im going to snap at you and blame it on my pandemic loss of social skills. However! All along, germs were lurking. (I know three parents with kids who have croup right now and gave it to the whole family. Its going around!) Theres a speckle of risk when we decide to share, and most of the time, Im willing to take it. Wash your hands before you eat, for goodnesss sake! And remember that youre not invincible. When a friend supposedly has allergies, dont get the nachos. Play it safe. Is it acceptable that Ive been doing that for a couple months?! Lol Whiny Wanda  If youre feeling an icky guilt when tipping 20 percent, something in your brain is acknowledging that the server and the restaurant deserves the extra five (or 15!). Theyve gotta bounce back; the servers have to deal with ornery, unsocialized, impatient, entitled diners, and clearly the federal minimum wage isnt gonna catch up in this lifetime. How embarrassing was the debate over Chipotle raising its hourly minimum to $15! Anyways. Dining in a restaurant is a luxuryno dishes! Seltzer on tap!so if your budget is too tight to justify tipping a tiny tiny bit more, which is really just making sure someone is paid a liveable wage, maybe stay in tonight. "Can I impose a (no-sweats) dresscode on the rest of my party or is that insane?" Formally Fran  Ha, I love this audacity. I say go for it and call it a theme. In fact, go all out and tell everyone to get dressed up and pretend its the pre-Prom dinner where you get your makeup done, put in $80 for a Hummer limo, eat pot brownies in the bathroom for the first time, and spend all dinner trying to remember how to use a fork. FUN! Yukky Yolanda  Yeah the wear-a-mask-to-the-bathroom was a charade once we got vaccinated, but there was that small window when some people were and some werent yet vaxxed and we were just MAKING SURE. But now, per the CDC*, the only people who need to wear masks to the bathroom in the restaurant, in Costco, and at the Q rallies are the unvaccinated so that they dont get the new COVID variant and DIE. Thats still whats at stake here, for them, and yet, not enough people are shouting the word DIE if you ask me. If the restaurant has a mask policy for when youre away from your table, it doesnt hurt to wear a mask for 30 seconds. A small inconvenience for steak tartare and seltzer on tap.