Vous asseoir à ma table...

I'm in a local sandwich shop. It's after I've ordered my food but before it has arrived, and I'm sitting at a table reading Don Quixote while awaiting my sandwich. The table I'm at is the closest to the cash register where one orders, and has 4 individual seats at it--3 of which are empty.

I am in the midst of reading my book, looking down at it, when I hear a nearby chair move. I look up to find that a woman has sat down at the table I'm at--my table--across from me--not directly across, but across and over. She has not said hello, nor does she even talk or acknowledge I'm there. I presume she has chosen the seat as it's the closest to the register, and the group she's come in with (what looks like her 3 daughters and a granddaughter) are at the register ordering. The daughters also order for her.

Now, there is another table equally close to the register as the one "we" are now sitting at, that no one is at. It is piled high with recently delivered Frito-Lay boxes, making eating at it impossible (and likewise seeing around it). But, like the table I'm at, there are empty chairs at it--4 actually: one more than mine. As my interloper's silence continues, I wonder why she has not chosen one of those chairs, if all she wants to do is sit (and not stand while ordering). Why the social order/protocol breech of sitting at a table where someone is that you don't know? Particularly when all the other tables in the place are empty?

The strangeness continues as one of the daughters and the granddaughter sit down at the table behind me. This is further compounded when the first part of their (to-go) order arrives, and the other two daughters take seats at the table behind me, leaving grandma with me and in our silence.

The situation continues until the other half of their order arrives, and they leave... with grandma getting up without so much as a goodbye and with her leaving the chair pushed out from the table where she had moved it to sit down.


Allez venez Milord
Vous asseoir à ma table