I've been to a&e in the past few years, and noticed that the waiting room resembled a social club! Full of people eating, drinking, chatting and walking to and from the toilet, vending machine etc.
None of those things mean that the people doing them don't genuinely need to be there. People sit in A&E waiting rooms for hour after hour, are they supposed to also sit there hungry, thirsty, in silence and desperate for a wee, just in case someone thinks they're there for fun?!
I was in A&E on Friday night because I thought I had sprained my ankle in a fall in the afternoon, did the PRICE thing at home but by 8:30 my ankle had not only generally swelled, but there was also a huge golfball sized swelling on my ankle joint itself and was hugely painful. I called 111 who advised me to go go to our OOH clinic, which is located in the local A&E dept, since the painkillers I had taken wasn't touching the pain and because of the rapid localised swelling.
I walked into the department and went to the OOH reception, who just re-directed me to the A&E reception, despite the fact I said I had been sent to OOH, they directed me to the general reception as there were no OOH doctors on-site. So, I signed in with the receptionist (who warned me about the long wait) and went to wait ... by 9;30 I had been triaged and they suspected that my ankle was actually fractured, not just sprained so I was sent for X-rays. This was at 10 pm, and I was then sent back to the waiting room for a doctor to have a look at the X ray ... it was 4am before a doctor had chance to look at them, say "Yeah, there's a hairline fracture, but as it's 4am, here's a Beckham boot, some crutches and an appt for the fracture clinic on Monday".
In those hours between 10pm and 4am, I sat in the waiting room with a book (because I figured there would probably be a wait), then after a while I got thirsty ... as I got up to go to the vending machine, a lovely lady sitting opposite who was accompanying her husband saw my clear pain at trying to walk and offered to get my drink from the machine. When she came back, I thanked her and we got chatting to pass the time, and a few other people who had also been waiting for hours joined the general discussion. After another couple of hours, I needed the loo - having sat there for a few hours, it was hardly surprising - by about 2am I was starving - having not eaten since having dinner at 6pm, so again I got a snack from the machine.
None of those things meant I and the others waiting didn't have a genuine need to be there, they were the by-product of a group of people all sitting in the same room for hours on end because the doctors were busy dealing with the ambulances that were bringing patients directly into the cubicles.