3/14/2011
Chris
You might be familiar with my dislike for 'same siders'. People that sit on the same side of the booth for no apparent reason. There are a couple of exceptions that I'm cool with, check my previous post for details.
We recently came across a new phenomenon we'll call 'leaners'. We went to a local place called Taps for dinner and it was pretty busy. It's a cool little place with around 30 beers on tap and decent food, etc. and there's always a decent crowd when we've been there.
We waited about 10 minutes and got seated at a high top table in the bar area. All was good, but about a minute after we were seated a group of about 10 people came in. It's a real small place without a lot of room to just hang out unless you are at the bar.
So we order up an appetizer and blamo, 3 of the 10 people are basically standing AT our table. One guy has his elbow leaning on our table facing the bar while the two women are facing him/us. How awkward is that? I can tell you from experience, VERY awkward. It was noisy and festive and we didn't want to rock the boat, so we didn't say anything. Didn't want to come off as the party poopers. Luckily a few spots at the bar opened up about 5 minutes later and the group of 10 migrated over to that area, but it didn't stop there.
Two biker dudes came in after and had their arm on the chair next to me, which wasn't as big a deal, but still. We found it very odd that someone would think that is ok to do. I get that we were at tables closest to the bar but?!? The two empty chairs at our table were closest to the bar as well, but I still don't think that is an open invitation to hang out at our table and invade our personal space while we're having dinner.
We decided to just laugh about it and said this will make a good blog post. Unfortunately it wasn't all that bright and the pictures we tried to take didn't turn out. We couldn't be obvious and take a picture with a flash of said 'leaners', but I think you get the picture....What do you think? Have you ever experienced complete strangers leaning on your table, hand on a chair, anything like that at a local watering hole or restaurant? Would you think that was ok?
