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Woman Arrives At Diner, Says “I’ll Sit Here” Gesturing To Table Occupied By Family Of 3
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Woman Arrives At Diner, Says “I’ll Sit Here” Gesturing To Table Occupied By Family Of 3

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Restaurants of all sorts are great cross sections of humanity. Everyone has to eat – that means that you’re likely to meet some of these charming everyday people. Well, they’re charming most of the time. Until they’re not (what a plot twist, right?).

This is the backdrop for today’s story – a family of 3 was having a good time at a diner, when a woman came in, cut through the queue and literally demanded to have their table.

More info: Reddit

Although restaurant patrons are usually pretty normal, you do see a lot of bad apples crop up who want to be treated like Michelin Guide critics

Image credits: Syed Ahmad (not the actual photo) 

A mom took it to the Entitled People community to share a story of the attempted usurpation of her table at a diner

Image credits: u/babymonsters2

Image credits: Ketut Subiyanto (not the actual photo)

A woman decided not to wait for a table to free up but rather demand to be seated at their table while their toddler was still eating

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Image credits: u/babymonsters2

Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual photo) 

She wouldn’t let up, but her waitress managed to convince her to be put on the wait list while the kid finished her meal in 10 minutes

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Image credits: u/babymonsters2

Many weren’t happy with the poster, saying they were hogging the table, while they were really there for only under an hour

Waiting to get a table at any place usually sucks. I mean that – you have to stand around awkwardly while you’re really hungry and covertly stare daggers at currently eating patrons, hoping that your psychic barrage will make them abandon their table ASAP.

But barring that, you can’t really do anything about it, right? Even staring shouldn’t be overdone, especially when you’ve got no claim to the table.

Turns out you can do something about it! It just takes being entitled and super annoying to boot.

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I’m your regular, normal, down to earth guy – the humblest person I know, really. So imagining walking up to a table and saying “I’ll sit here, thanks” while pointing to the people sitting there just seems like an inter-galactic level of crazy.

If that wasn’t enough, when a waitress tried to politely snap that woman out of her maddened state, she simply refused to return to sanity. I’m being facetious, but waiting tables could probably be compared with being a roughneck on an oil drilling operation in terms of difficulty. The struggle of dealing with awful people on an almost-daily basis takes some very serious mental fortitude.

It’s even more wild that some people in the comments defended the madwoman. They flipped the story on the writer and her family, saying that she is the entitled one for taking one WHOLE hour to finish breakfast and calmly sip on their coffee.

This actually seems to stem from a cultural thing, with the Europeans emphasizing that eating at a restaurant is an experience, not just an opportunity to stuff your face as quickly as you possibly can and leave. It really depends on the establishment, but choosing what you want can take 10 minutes sometimes, then 10-20 to get the food, depending on the amount of clientele, so that’s 30 minutes for a meal, which isn’t a lot at all, if you want to sit down and relax at a nice place at all.

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Image credits: Roman Arkhipov (not the actual photo) 

Although it wasn’t a restaurant, I’ve had a very similar experience, but the person actually sat down next to me! In my youth (eons ago) I was sitting in the park with a friend, spending some of our limited afterschool time before we had to go our separate ways.

Up comes this senior citizen and plops down right next to us. I mean, it is a public park, but there were several benches to the left and right of us, which weren’t any more inconvenient than the one we had occupied. Us, being polite high schoolers, simply accepted this as a fact of life.

Within minutes, that woman was talking about every single detail of her life up to this point, putting a lot of emphasis on her nose whistling career. You heard that right – she used to musically whistle through her nose and apparently was quite popular for it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t whistle at that point anymore, because of a nose cartilage operation, but did give us a regular lip-whistling performance, which wasn’t bad, really.

When we were sufficiently rattled by this jarring display of overbearing self-confidence, she went “there’s another bench over there, if you’d like” to us. I would have said something smart and snappy to her at that point, but I was a 17 y.o. teen, so I have to comfort myself with imagining comebacks before sleep.

The poster’s story got over 7k likes and many of the hundreds of commenters shared their own stories of similar ilk, servers and patrons alike. There was a splinter group of people who did say that OP was the jerk here, but the overwhelming majority had a more tolerant take.

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Share your own stories of annoying diner customers in the comments section below!

The comments shared their own stories of encountering rude clients at restaurants and agreed with the poster’s view

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lisa6060 avatar
Wanderwoman
Community Member
8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We were about to leave our outside table at a cafe, just waiting for husband to come back from the toilet, when a couple just pulled out the chairs next to us. Whatever, rude but I won't makke a scene. He then started smoking and blowing the smoke right into the stroller of my 2 month old. We opted to have another coffee for a looong time, after kicking them from our table. F***Ing a******s

karenphilpott avatar
Karen Philpott
Community Member
8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We went out with friends, a couple, and we booked at our favourite restaurant. Turns out it was a busy night that. We were given a table for 6, so we got there first and after a few minutes our friends came in. We were looking at the menu's and talking about how busy it was when an older couple came in hoping for a table. Of course there's no tables available so they walked out the door. We looked at each other and asked each other if we should ask them to join us. D got up quickly asked the waiter if we could add to our table, yes, then shot out the door. Well, it turns out they're old friends of my uncle. So strangely odd things happen, and there's definitely a 2° of separation in NZ, between people here.

russelllarsen avatar
Hokuloa
Community Member
8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Impatient patrons in restaurants drive me up a wall. Sadly, it is a *very* common trait of US citizens. Unless it’s fast food, chill the f**k out and let people enjoy their experience. If you are in such a bloody hurry, go get takeout!

kathrynbaylis avatar
Kathryn Baylis
Community Member
8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I’m American, and have no problem waiting my turn if a restaurant is packed and I didn’t reserve a table ahead of time. No one is going to die of starvation waiting an extra 10-15 minutes to get seated. Just occupy your time until your name is called. If there’s a bar, order a drink while you wait (but don’t go getting all sloppy drunk, ffs). One thing forgotten here is that the bigger your party is the longer you’ll wait for a table large enough, or two tables than can be pushed together, to open up. Two people are one thing, as smaller tables will open up faster. Large parties, on the other hand, should definitely make reservations ahead of time. It’s just common courtesy, something too many people have forgotten, or never learned, anymore.

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lisa6060 avatar
Wanderwoman
Community Member
8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We were about to leave our outside table at a cafe, just waiting for husband to come back from the toilet, when a couple just pulled out the chairs next to us. Whatever, rude but I won't makke a scene. He then started smoking and blowing the smoke right into the stroller of my 2 month old. We opted to have another coffee for a looong time, after kicking them from our table. F***Ing a******s

karenphilpott avatar
Karen Philpott
Community Member
8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We went out with friends, a couple, and we booked at our favourite restaurant. Turns out it was a busy night that. We were given a table for 6, so we got there first and after a few minutes our friends came in. We were looking at the menu's and talking about how busy it was when an older couple came in hoping for a table. Of course there's no tables available so they walked out the door. We looked at each other and asked each other if we should ask them to join us. D got up quickly asked the waiter if we could add to our table, yes, then shot out the door. Well, it turns out they're old friends of my uncle. So strangely odd things happen, and there's definitely a 2° of separation in NZ, between people here.

russelllarsen avatar
Hokuloa
Community Member
8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Impatient patrons in restaurants drive me up a wall. Sadly, it is a *very* common trait of US citizens. Unless it’s fast food, chill the f**k out and let people enjoy their experience. If you are in such a bloody hurry, go get takeout!

kathrynbaylis avatar
Kathryn Baylis
Community Member
8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I’m American, and have no problem waiting my turn if a restaurant is packed and I didn’t reserve a table ahead of time. No one is going to die of starvation waiting an extra 10-15 minutes to get seated. Just occupy your time until your name is called. If there’s a bar, order a drink while you wait (but don’t go getting all sloppy drunk, ffs). One thing forgotten here is that the bigger your party is the longer you’ll wait for a table large enough, or two tables than can be pushed together, to open up. Two people are one thing, as smaller tables will open up faster. Large parties, on the other hand, should definitely make reservations ahead of time. It’s just common courtesy, something too many people have forgotten, or never learned, anymore.

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