Claiming Public Spaces: From Coffee Shop Stand Offs To Illegal Pylons

I am a coffee shop rat. I work a lot of the time everywhere on my laptop. I can often be found in a coffee shop anywhere around any city I'm visiting or here in Vancouver, doing very serious work but looking like I'm not doing very serious work because I'm usually drinking an iced Americano and gazing off into the ceiling. 

As someone who has frequented many coffee shops, I'm aware of what I think is the proper etiquette for working or sitting in a coffee shop. I think I'm a respectful coffee shop frequenter. I don't do Zoom meetings and keep any calls short (and speakerphone? never). I don't stay for too long on just one purchase. I've been to coffee shops where someone is obviously hunkered down for hours studying. I spend at least $10 at a cafe for every two hours that I'm there. Sometimes, I will even buy something else, even if it's a juice to go or a stale looking muffin because, in a way, I'm renting the space. 

This week's blog is actually about several situations related to public spaces from coffee shop etiquette, more broadly, waiting and space saving etiquette. 

Spoiler alert, my husband and I always laugh when we see a pylon on the street because there have been a couple of times we know people fake claimed a spot with a pylon with no authority.

Coffee Shop Rules

I had ordered my drink, and when it was ready, I took it. As I turned around, I saw somebody leaving a booth, and hooray. I love a booth when we go out to a restaurant or a bar. I like padded seating; it feels like I'm sitting in a little enclave. The next time I get a new place and have a kitchen or some eating nook that I get to design, I will make it a small booth. 

Anyway, this was the only seat available in the cafe. So I sat at it, and I put the coffee down. As I started to take out my laptop, an angry old woman came walking from outside and stormed over to me.

She put her bag on the table and said, "I was waiting for this table." 

Me: "You were waiting for this table?"  

Her: "Yes, I was sitting outside waiting for this table. I had been waiting for 10 minutes.”

Me: "Is that the system of waiting for a table, just waiting outside, not even close to the table or looking directly at it?"

Her: "Well, I was here first, and I was waiting outside." 

I did not like the way she was talking to me, which reminded me all too much of how many old women have spoken to me in similar situations. 

I said: "Well, I don't believe those are the rules."

I didn't move and this lady left in a huff. 

Then, in the booth in front of me, a man turned around just slightly—and by slightly– about a 15% rotation, and said, "Yes, it does. It does work like that!" and then turned right back around.

It was the most passive-aggressive I've ever seen someone act, even for Vancouver. He wanted to side with this woman and believed firmly that she should’ve gotten the booth, but not enough to turn around so that I could actually see his profile. In response to his passive-aggressive comment, I said, "I don't believe those are the rules. Would you like to have an actual conversation and turn around completely?" The man didn’t respond and kept working. 

If there was a woman who had been waiting a long time and was in a wheelchair or a walker, and she asked me nicely, "Oh, excuse me, this is very difficult for me. I have nowhere to sit. I have a knee problem, and I'm too cold from arthritis, and I can't sit outside. Would you mind? I've been waiting here. I know that you came here first. There's no such system as I am making up where I can wait outside a café for a table that's inside when I want it to be mine. I'm sorry, but would you give it to me?" 

I might have said yes if she didn't talk to me so condescendingly. She was so entitled to this table by making up a fucking rule. 

Also, I saw her complain to the barista behind the counter and said, “Oh, this is my table.”

The barista, however, was not having it. She actually rolled her eyes, which made me wonder if there had been a previous incident with this old lady  as if she owned the place. There is no reservation at cafes.

Anyway, the old lady left. 

I'm not even saying that this was entirely disruptive to me, but it's just kind of one of those situations where it's like, what the fuck is this? I don't know what the official rules are, probably because there aren't any official rules! 

If I arrive at a cafe and there is no seating available, I'll stand there awkwardly. Maybe some people are unwilling to hover by and look around because that's doing work, actively scanning. So when someone looks like they're leaving, you go over, and you lurk there until they pack up and leave. If they make eye contact, they might say, “Oh, would you like to sit there?” In which case, I'd respond, “Oh, of course I'll sit there.”

Very rarely have I been, "Do you think you could let me know when you're leaving?" Maybe I've done that once, and I’m not comfortable with doing it again.

It is also up to them what they do when they leave. It is burdensome for someone to have to turn and look for you to give you a heads-up that they're leaving. I believe they are welcome to do their thing. It is incumbent upon the person who wants the seat to wait and then claim it.

Had that old lady also been standing there looking at the table, I wouldn't have even taken the table, but she was outside. What kind of entitled old lady thinks that they can make a table to be theirs because they waited outside for it for any amount of time? 

Halloween Trick-or-Pylon

We have a tradition of spending Halloween night with our friends who live in a more residential area. For Halloween, we have dinner together then trick-or-treat together with our small child. 

We looked for parking in their area, and there was a spot on the road in a public area that had a pylon in it because the people who lived on the street didn’t want anyone to park there except themselves or their friends. So they thought they could reserve a public parking spot on the street with a pylon. It is not an official city by-law either.

Anyway, we had a small child and had somewhere to go. Halloween is our Christmas, especially for a family with a small child. So, I got out of the car and moved the pylon. I just put it in front of the car and left it there, completely intact, without any damage, and we parked there.

Coincidently, we watched the people in the home in front of the pylon look out of the window at us in horror. They didn't come out to argue with us because they didn't have an argument. You can't just leave a pylon in a spot because you want the spot. 

Parking Pylon Rage

When my husband and I visited Hawaii for the first time together (before we had our daughter), we went on a snorkelling group excursion (not scuba diving because that actually scares me). It's one of the only times in my life I unplugged and I thought about nothing else except being in the water. It’s okay to not be the best swimmer when you're snorkelling because you're staying afloat with the gear and among turtles and other sea creatures. 

We arrived just in time, but we would have been late if we couldn’t park our

rental car in the parking lot. I remember there were no parking spots available, except for one that was occupied, not with a car, but with a pylon. A pylon without any authority, not a big, powerful-looking pylon. It was a small little league kid's soccer pylon.

So, I instructed my husband to let me out as he was circling. I walked by the spot and picked up the pylon and then dropped it off somewhere else. Then my husband swooped in and parked in the spot. 

As we were travelling with the group, my husband suddenly remembered that he forgot  something in the car, so he went back to retrieve it. He told me that a man had asked, "Hey, wasn't there a pylon in this spot?" And my husband said, "Oh, I didn't touch a pylon. I don't know anything about a pylon." And then he left, and off we went on our snorkelling adventure. 

It didn't matter to us at all, but the fact that someone keyed it and had to release aggression is ridiculous. Of course, the spot was whoever’s pylon it was, except there wasn’t a sign. We always respect a sign or a threat to tow if someone actually owns a spot. If the pylon owner used actual words to communicate a threat to us to not park in their spot, we’d respect that because rental insurance does not cover towing–which was a pain.

This Isn't A Reserved Seat

When my husband and I took our child and a group of friends, we visited Legoland in California. This was a few years ago, and we decided to stay at one of the themed hotels, where the lobbies are filled with various activities and shows. 

So as our child was dancing with bubbles with some characters, my husband and I stayed back, and there were a few chairs. I sat in an empty chair with a table beside it, which was empty. And this lady, another mother, came back, and she said, "Oh, we were sitting there." She was trying to claim this chair and table, which had nothing on it. What she had was a hat on the table next to the other chair on the other side. She thought that meant that she had a claim to all of the tables and chairs in one of the coolest responses. 

By cool, I mean, super chill. And by "super chill," I don't mean that I have evolved or that I was super understanding. I was just fucking tired from a day out in Legoland. I just said, “No.” It was so uncharacteristic of me that my husband busted out laughing. 

I can say that I do that more often. Instead, I often match energy and I want to argue. I want to rationalize with a person because I truly want to understand where someone is coming from.But in this case, it was just too tiring and it was so incredibly ridiculous that she thought that she could even say that this was her chair. She didn't even need the chair. She sat in that other chair and no child came back and said, "Mama, what happened to our chair." 

Anyways, that is our experience with coffee shop booths, pylons, and chairs. It’s my overall experience with people who think they can claim a space when they cannot. We don't believe in it. We don't do that kind of thing because we believe it's unacceptable behaviour. 

People are greedy, and that's the heart of the story. Everyone in these situations were fucking greedy. She thought that she could sit in this booth because she was thinking about it with her brain from the outside. It is not acceptable at all.