Students enjoyed a five-course meal to help prepare them for proper dining etiquette for the workplace Thursday evening.

Participants met in the Career Services building at 5 p.m. The group then headed to The Charleston Country Club dining area where Linda Moore, director of Career Services and the coordinator of the event, provided an hour of instruction on table settings, proper passing methods and other methods one is usually too embarrassed to address when being taken to a formal dinner for a second or third job interview.

After a brief presentation on wine by Paul Mejdrich, clubhouse manager, a gourmet meal complete with salad, sorbet and chocolate cake was served.

Three of the dishes were coordinated with certain wines to promote their flavor and give guests a better sense of how to make a meal more fluid as a whole.

“If you look at what has been going on in U.S. culture, it’s really begun to adopt incorporation of wine and carrying it with food, getting away from hard alcohol and not looking at wine as something to drink, but as a food process,” Moore said. “We wanted to make sure that students have a basic understanding of that.”

During the meal, further instruction and help was given to students in situations such as the proper way to enter and exit one’s chair or the most polite way to cough or mention a discrepancy with one’s food without causing a scene.

Moore said this is the 15th year since she and present and past members of Career Services decided to make the etiquette dinner an annual event for students and regional professionals.

“Every class needs to have some of this training,” Moore said. “That’s what we see from employers, they want people who are comfortable and confident with professionals.”

Students registered with Career Services were welcome to attend the event for free and those not registered required a fee of $30.

The dining room was nearly filled to capacity due to the popular demand for such training.

Moore said the event always sells out as soon as word gets out, and there is always a waiting list for it.

“It’s been very helpful,” Moore said. “We have international students. It’s very diverse and diverse in the majors. I think that gives you a better sense of life in America.”

Overall, the night was seen as a complete success by both the attendees and event coordinators and essential skills for dining interviews were definitely imprinted on the event’s participants.

“I think the students were happy and everybody learned something,” Moore said. “Anything can go wrong and they learned how to handle that in real time.”

Moore said the only improvement would be to have even more attendees in the future.

Alexis Evans can be reached at 581-7942 or

[email protected].