To think this was an unreasonable bit of table hogging?

[Vycount]

This is probably going to all end in tears.

Anyway, I've just been to a very popular local cafe with a friend and spent about an hour and a half stuffing my face on a brilliant brunch, more coffee, and then some cake. (Katie Hopkins eat yer heart out!).
It's a really busy place, you can't book tables.

When we got there a long table for 8 was occupied by a group of 6 women, some with babies. We were doing that sort of scanning for space thing and hoping someone was about to leave, so I could see that a couple of them had cups in front of them, others didn't. Luckily a space came free behind them so we got in.
They were still there when we left an hour and a half later. In that time they ordered no food or ore drinks drink, but hung on to their couple of cups whenever the staff came to look to clear the table. Meanwhile people were arriving and hovering about trying to find somewhere to sit to eat, asking to share tables etc.
Now on the one hand maybe the serving staff should have asked them if they'd finished and kind of moved them on. But on the other, it just seemed to me they were pretty entitle/rude/pretending to be oblivious. Bit unreasonable to use a cafe as basically a warm place to meet and jiggle babies do you think?

why didn't one of you get a table?

NottheKitchen - My post said "When we got there a long table for 8 was occupied by a group of 6 women, some with babies." I think that's pretty clear. I wish I hadn't mentioned the babies now (although it was a bit of fun to joke about Mums and Babies...). I can't see why them having babies with them or not makes any difference. If my memory serves me there were two babies, but who cares for the purpose of a rant about entitled table-hogging? My post also says that a couple of them had drinks in front of them, I don't know if they were the mums or not, does it matter? For the sake of completeness they also had a baby's bottle on the table as well - the gits!

Maybe I should start a new thread about sitting people down while someone else goes to get food. It's a bit different to a group who spent an hour and a half sitting at a table and ordering sweet FA?

You did say the mums had the drinks but it doesn't matter.
It is selfish to hog a if I want a guaranteed seat I don't go to a cafe I suppose.
I personally can't imagine anything worse than skulking about in a cafe for hours but the management can't have been that bothered.

*Hog a table

I recall being in a really busy Chinese restaurant for Dim Sum, and the next customers stand directly behind your chair coughing loudly to hurry you up to leave. My DH lived in Hong Kong for a while and he said this is pretty standard practice.

To my shame, I have been known to do similar in the past, except it involved farting

Bit unreasonable to use a cafe as basically a warm place to meet and jiggle babies do you think?

Vycount - from your OP, last sentence. You did make it seem as though your gripe was about Mothers and Babies. Sorry, but you did.
Regardless, table-hogging is annoying, whoever the hogger.

I think it's bloody rude to hog a table with one drink for one and a half hours. As for sending people to sit down while you order food, I'm not sure how to do it with a 7-year-old and a 3-year-old in a buggy. I can't push the buggy up to the counter, and most cafés won't let kids that close anyway.

Ah, but they might all have had a turn at baby-jiggling... and anyway, what I can't work out is why it makes a difference if some, all or none of them had babies.

Nope, makes no difference at all. A selfish table-hogger is a selfish table-hogger, whether with children or not. However, you appear bemused as to why some posters picked up on your 'Mother and baby' references'. I'm trying to give an explanation, because you pointedly referenced 'babies' in two separate paragraphs in your OP. So you are now working hard at alienating posters who were originally agreeing with you. Now that really is bewildering.

It was because some people mentioned that because they may be on mat leave they may be one of the few regular day time customers and so therefore must be "protected" somehow as they might take their custom elsewhere if they felt unwelcome.

Regardless, the fault lay with the duty manager who should have said that seeing as it was busy, if they didn't intend buyin any more drinks or food they would have to vacate the table as it was needed for customers. They themselves weren't customers anymore, were they? They had BEEN customers but were now just some randoms from off the street taking up a table that others needed to eat their food off.

YABU
I hate the attitude in this country that you have to eat drink then go on as quick as possible. Takes all the pleasure out of it.
You don't see that on the continent where people take their time.
If I pay a premium for my cup of coffee or whatever in a nice cafe I expect to be able to sit there as long as I like otherwise I might as well just eat at home!

Bodicea, did you miss the bit where they were there for at least one and a half HOURS puchasing nothing? This isn't about people being allowed to take their time in a nice cafe is it?

But in the U.K, cafe owners and waiting staff generally don't say anything, do they Curly? Out of a strange sense of politeness.

Evans, I honestly don't care if people get alienated or not. If they can't understand that this is a simple, and fairly light-hearted rant on my part, about a group of people who sat their arses around a table ordering nothing and guarding a couple of cups for at least 90 minutes... well... it's only an internet forum and it's not the end of the world.

Yes I totally agree, those that make a cup of coffee last 2 hours.

Loletta that drives me crazy too. I went to a cafe with ds the other day, waiting to pay for coffee, a great long queue behind us, and 2 women came in, one queued and the other breezed over to the only free bloody table. Leaving me and ds (and everyone behind us) hanging around like lemons waiting for another table to be free (ds being a particularly noisy lemon, because he doesn't do waiting very well!)

And yes, maybe the young staff should have intervened, but my suggestion is that the people concerned could have had a bit more courtesy for others and shifted themselves.

I was a simmering ball of rage in GBK in South Kensington once as I watched two very posh young girls (on a table for 4) eat their burgers insanely slowly FOREVER while I loitered for a table with the younger DSs, one of whom was still reeling from the unfairness of having been forced to go to a museum and was in a right strop. I out-stropped him in the end. Waitresses were apologetic - but nothing they could do.

Well you don't know for sure what they purchased before you got there and no I didn't miss it. My point is we are all in too much of a hurry here and if they want to sit for 1 and ha;f hours chatting with their cup of coffee then I don't have a problem with that.

But if everyone did that cafes would go out of business. They aren't charities.

That's fine Bodicea, as long as we don't all do it after we've finished our meal, or drink or whatever we had. Because if we all did it then a lot of small independent cafes (like the one I was in today) would rapidly go out of business.

The point is, they had finished their meal/coffee/whatever they had and were just sat there. I'm glad I don't own a cafe if the customers think they can sit as long as they like when people are queuing. It's just common courtesy. If I had finished my meal and saw people circling wanting to sit, I would just go, I couldn't brazen it out and just sit there for 1.5 hours.