not to share my table at outdoor cafe

[ShirleyEyeRosebud]

Went to my favourite cafe with my lovely dog for a relaxing Sunday morning brunch fry up.
All the tables were occupied, so we stood feeling a bit self-conscious waiting for about 20 minutes for a table to become free. In the meantime, a kind couple did ask if I wanted to share their table, but I didn’t want to disturb their relaxing morning so I said thanks for the offer but it’s ok.
So, eventually a table became free so I left my bag there to reserve it and went inside the cafe with the hound to order. When I was queuing up to order a woman asked if I had finished with my table so I said no I have just arrived. She then said are there many of you (obviously not) or can we share your table?
I said Sorry I have been waiting for a table and I would rather have it to myself.

AIBU?

Although the picnic tables up thread claiming to seat 6, would only seat 6 very close friends who are happy to get up close and personal, physically squashed up next to eachother and literally touching.. A table with a 3 foot gap between me and a stranger eating, I would politely tolerate. Anything less, and those bench sizes are far less than that, is an absolute no. Not happening. That is nothing like someone sitting at the next table.

A standard picnic table for six is six feet long, allowing each occupant 24 inches of space. How much personal space do you need? Two people at either end would have at least 24 inches between them, as a pp pointed out an adjacent table would probably be closer.

@ManateeFair

They'd have been no closer to you than a couple sitting at an adjacent table.

You really don't know that. Ime, picnic benches tend to be spaced quite a way apart.

I regularly go somewhere with picnic tables. They're communal and I've got no right to one to myself in the setting. If someone sits on the other end, there's easily a wide space between us. I don't feel like I'm sharing space at all.

No one is sidling up. It was a 6 man table which would have had OP at one and and a couple at the other. You're making it up.

I was at a family picnic table on Sunday at a picnic forest, they're actually not that big. We were four of us and just about had room without touching each other. 6 people would have meant people sat VERY close to each other and touching each other.

It's perfectly reasonable to want to sit alone on one.

52% agree with OP on this
Yesterday it was 50/50

What does any of that have to do with the price of tea in China? It makes no difference to OP's potential table of three, that at a different venue on a different table at a different time with different people you might have been crowded had two more of you sat down. Christ alive.

Why aren't you saying this to the people saying the bench has oodles of space for 6?

I just related my experience, as others have done.

Why are you picking on me?

Exactly. Hilarious that Earrings is trying to claim that the majority are against the OP, when the poll shows the opposite.

I'm not picking on you - you quoted my post. You initiated the interaction. Why are you so incoherent?

Why are you inconsistent? Why are not questioning other people saying a bench has plenty of space for 6, but questioning me saying that ime a bench seats 4.

3 foot. That's what I need. Minimum. And I'm not sitting on the outer edges to make room for unwelcome imposters.

I did? The post you first quoted was me talking about why 6 people didn't matter. Therefore I don't care about any of the posts regarding 6 people - that's what I said to you too.

What matters is that the table is big enough for three.
Do you get what a chat forum is and how it works?

I have no issue with you posting to me! I post you too and quoted too.

My point was that we really don't know that the bench would have seated 4 strangers comfortably, let alone 6 (i.e. not touching each other).

Obviously you only agree with opinions that share yours so what's the point of asking. Reserving a whole table for 6 for one is really rude. Go somewhere else with smaller tables? It's can't be the only cafe in your area.

@ShirleyEyeRosebud Congrats, you're in the news!

Some lazy journo has lifted this straight into the Daily Fail. MSN link:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/other/woman-slammed-for-taking-up-table-for-six-people/ar-AA1bQgnO?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=63bafcc1a0124f0fbde0c58775741319&ei=55

Oh lawd, I've been quoted 😂

The OP said they were tables for six near the beginning of the thread.

So what do you do on a train or a bus? Or at any normal communal meal? There’s nowhere that will allow you 36 inches between you and the next person. And as for insisting on sitting in the middle - words fail me.

Already said, if only you could be bothered go read it, that the train / bus is different. It's a means from getting from A to B. Having a meal out is supposed to be an enjoyable experience. I only do communal meals with my friends and family. I like them. So I'm happy to sit in their company and eat with them.
That doesn't mean I want to sit next to weirdo strangers for dinner though. Even less, now I see how persistent many seem to be for the company of strangers at the dinner table. Talk about gate crashing. A bit rude. Maybe go and join a club or something if you're looking for company to eat out with.

No one goes out to a cafe thinking, “I’m not here for the sandwich, I’m here to crowd onto some weirdo’s table and eat accompanied by the whiff of her hound”. The people on this thread who would sit down at a large, partially occupied table, or would ask to, really have no interest in OP’s no doubt jolly company. They just want to eat their sandwich at a table, and there is a table, and they know the social norm is to share a big table if there’s one of you. It’s fine to not want to share but the accepted social norm there is to wait for a tiny table, or stay home and stew, not cause a build-up of people behind you by saving seats for 5 Mr Nobodies.

It's about time these lazy journalists went and did some real journalism. There's lots of news that the public would welcome a bit of investigative journalism around. But no, they're clearly not capable of that, hence resorting to lifting a discussion off Mumsnet and call it news. Utterly pathetic low quality journalism. Print that, Daily Wail. And then go and learn about what journalism actually should be.

Sometimes the journos start the threads themselves.

Well clearly not it's not the social norm to go and invade someone else's table. Because if it was, everyone would be agreeing with you. But they're not.