I am a banquet server at a party center. There are several behaviors which I'm not sure fall under bad manners but are still bad behavior. I'm not in a position to say anything as part of my job but I wish I were. Here are a few things that happened at a reception today...
1) Young children ( guessing 6 and under) behaving as young children were completely ignored by the adults. They chased each other through the reception room, between tables, and across the dance floor pretty much for the entire event. People were walking through the room with trays of full glasses, hot food, etc., while these kids dashed in, around, and between their feet. Any of those kids could have been seriously injured if they had run into or tripped a server, let alone injury to the server or anyone hit with food, glass, and so on. No one said a word about it to any of the kids for the entire event which lasted for about 4 1/2 hrs.
2) Still the young kids... While dancing was starting a little boy about 5YO shoved a 2YO and knocked him flat on his face on the dance floor. 2YO was carrying what turned out to be a sippy cup. Thank goodness it had a lid or people would have been sliding around the dance floor. 5YO followed 2YO around and did this to him again at least 4 more times. 2YO spots me and comes over for help. I asked him to show me where his mother was and I would take him to her. While we were looking she stopped dancing and called out to him so I took him over and explained. She did keep him with her for quite a while after that.
3) When the arrangements were made the time for arrival, food service, and ending were established. It is not uncommon for the food service to be delayed by 15 min to 1/2 hour for any number of good reasons so not considered bad behavior. However, today after the toasts were made person after person came up to make a speech. Servers do not go out onto the floor while anyone (except the DJ) is speaking, including intro of the wedding party, grace, and toasts. The dinner service got delayed by almost an hour and then one of the guests berated the owner because the food hadn't been served yet. Same person berated the owner because the cake hadn't been cut and served and owner had to explain that we were waiting for the bride and groom to cut the cake.
I realized as I was typing that some of the other things I would have included don't happen at the receptions, they happen at other events so I won't list them here.