To wonder what runs through some people's heads sometimes?

[FattyAirways]

I was at a cafe enjoying breakfast. The cafe is big, got around 25 tables in. I was the only one in the cafe. A couple, came in, placed their order at the till and came and sat at the table right beside me! They had 20-odd other tables to choose from. My table wasn't in an enviable position in the cafe, no views out of the window, nothing special about this area in the cafe, yet they chose to do this. Why?

Yes. Of course your day might not go quite as you visualised, but sometimes a bit of unpredictability and friendly/chatty strangers can be life-affirming.

It used to be a thing in Germany (not sure if it still is post covid) that if somewhere was busy you would ask to share a table with them. Perfectly normal, but infuriating if they then decided to light up. Fortunately smoking is now outlawed indoors in Germany, although their rules outside were less strict than ours.

But it's not interacting if you just occupy people's space without even so much as saying hello.

It always seems to me that whenever I park next to someone (whether an empty, middling or busy car park) that someone is sat in the car giving me evils in case I hit their car reversing in. The evils are more likely to make me hit your car.

I know it's unreasonable but can people please park and get out. Not sit there eating their cream buns and giving other car park users evils

I think it’s people being mean about people like ThoseDamnCrows’ MIL that seems a bit depressing.

If you want to interact you can. Plenty of people out there who like interacting.

It's a bit like trying to force people to socialise who don't want to. Why would you do that? Socialise with people who like socialising.

But this isn't about socialising, it's about invading space when there's zero need to.

Wanting to peacefully stuff your face with a cream bun without witnesses does seem more justified though.

This happens to DH all the time at the gym. He goes at 5am to avoid the crowds and its generally quiet but I'd say at least 50% of the time he comes home fuming as despite him being the only one on say, the treadmills and there being 10 empty ones to choose from, someone will always pick the one next to him, and they will always be smelly / coughing / playing music loudly through their phone.

Literally nothing runs through their heads, it's automatic and psychologists call it flocking. It's because we used to be fish or something

I had been with my 5 year old daughter in hospital overnight, (was in a state of epilepsy which they were trying various drugs to stop) nipped out to a cafe for some breakfast. Was deep in thought, paying not much attention to anyone around me. Ordered a bacon sandwich and went and sat down.
Heard a loud woman's voice saying "All these empty tables, and she's sat there!"

I'd sat at the next table to the only couple there. I don't know why. It wasn't on purpose. I hadn't even noticed them. I got up and moved to the other side of the cafe. For some reason it really upset me.

This is interesting to compare with beach etiquette I have observed, specifically at Dover Harbour beaches. Whenever I arrived, the density of occupation was such that everyone was evenly spread out, though less so along the groynes. People went to the middle of the space between two families.
But this was useful for me as a single woman. Whenever a single man turned up and parked himself much closer that the average distance, I could take evasive action. And prove he was UP TO NO GOOD by adjusting my bags to put a visual barrier between his gaze and me. Quite funny really to observe them change position in response.
Weird behaviour in cafes, though. And the family which moved all the things off the table.

So did the creepy man at a restaurant when I dramatically looked around the empty tables the rest of the place before telling him 'no'.

I was happy by myself, wasn't looking for company

This is SO annoying. Another classic is people parking in the parent and child bays that:

1. Don’t have a child with them
2. Have a “child” with them who’s about 14 and can get themselves out of the car
3. Don’t even have a car seat in the car

I think these smooth-brained individuals think that they are entitled to park in those spaces simply because they had a child, even if that child is not with them.

Certain parts of London are notorious for this.

I find this with parking! I have a bright green car, not unusual as such but not quite as oft-seen as red/silver/black etc. Absolutely guaranteed that if another green car enters the car park after me it will park next to/near me! I came out from a shop the other day having parked my car in an empty section of the car park & found one green car now parked directly next to me, & one in the space behind me. The rest of the car park still had plenty of spaces, & they would have had to have driven to the end of the car park to get to it. So odd 😅

It definitely depends. There are some days where you just want to be left alone. I’m a reasonably social person but if I don’t get some personal space time (physically and mentally) it can make me feel agitated. If you (not you personally) ask if you can join someone then it’s best to accept they may say no.

Ugh I know! Same on an empty beach. I pick a spot well away from everyone else. Miles of open sand and another large family literally pitches up right next to me. I mean why???? You had the whole empty beach!
I tend to pack up and move elsewhere but it’s annoying.

Flocking, eh?

Cheeky Flockers.

That's weirdly sweet!
On long drives, I've been known to "befriend" cars whose driving I approve of - if they're not speeding, aren't middle-lane-hogging, are giving the driver ahead of them loads of room, and have been alongside me long enough... I've even absentmindedly found myself following them instead of the sat nav and going off the wrong way 😳

Another one: drives my DH nuts - 9 times out of 10 when you’re overtaking on the motorway, the car you’re overtaking will speed up. So we can be going at 60mph and in order to overtake we’ve sometimes had to go up to 100mph because the other car starts speeding up.

Interesting explanation from Quora here:

The reason people speed up when you are trying to pass them is because of their animal heritage. If you ever examine social animals in the wild, they tend to hang together for survival reasons. Sometimes that is to help hunt and gather in a pack and other times it is to survive a predator attack. So lets look at other animals first and then get back to humans.
Other herd (social) animals will go in a pack and when attacked they will generally flee the attacker. Now the predator when chasing the pack will try to exert as little as energy as possible and so the main ones it picks out of the herd are the slow ones (usually the old, sick, injured, or young). It catches up the the laggard and now it has a yummy meal that it can kill and eat (not necessarily in that order).
Now lets look at humans. While we might be on the upper end of the food chain (mainly because of our ability to create bigger and better tools along with a societal memory of 10,000 years of experience from books and stories) it wasn’t always that way. When mankind first came out of the plains and trees, we were weak, slow, and made a fairly easy prey for the larger predators. So when one of the predators started chasing us, you ran along with the rest of the group and if someone was passing you, that increased the chance that you would be the laggard and become the next meal. So our instincts (our biological memories and experience coded into the junk DNA) adapted and changed.
So now when someone starts to pass you on the road and you feel the sudden need to speed up so you aren’t being passed, it is because you still instinctively feel like prey and on some level feel weak. Only the bigger and stronger males would slow down to stop and attack the predators (thereby saving their offspring and mating partners). So they aren’t really being jerks or even really thinking about what they are doing, they are just responding instinctively hoping that the unknown predator won’t get them next.
Now when you drive down the road and see people speed up when you (or someone else) try to pass, just remember it is because on some level they are scared. Likewise, if you are driving down the road and someone tries to pass you and you hold steady or actually slow down so they can get by, then most likely you are instinctively one of the bigger stronger types that feel the need to protect others. It is all just animal nature.

It helps to calm DH down to point out that the speeder uppers are smooth-brained un evolved beasts.

It’s still very annoying that they are driving dangerously and putting lives at risk.

I asked a woman once why she had parked next to me when the car park was virtually empty (I told her I was just curious). She said it was bec she found it easier to centre her car within the space by using another car - otherwise she would park crooked. You can't make this stuff up.

when I was on the bus during the pandemic at the stage when people were mostly wearing masks and doing their best to sit alone and have all the windows open. a maskless man plonked himself next to me and began coughing.There were loads of empty seats. Thick, inconsiderate or deliberately unpleasant?

I’m not having lunch away from home to entertain some stranger. It’s not a social occasion (unless I bump into a friend). I’m having a peaceful meal on my own in a cafe, not having to attend to anyone else, which is what eating at home involves.

I hate this so much! I just think that they're absolute d*ckheads though.

Some absolute creep sat next to me on an otherwise empty bus once, literally just us two and he came and sat right next to me. He tried to strike up a conversation asking me where I was going. I instantly got up and went to sit near the driver. Piss off creep.

Reminded me of this
www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/10ub3q7/man_tries_harassing_woman_on_a_bus/