I don't think you'll get the opportunity to consider your options at Kuma's--the last time i was there I saw a rather intimidating gentleman police the bar seats pretty carefully to ensure that people weren't blocking seats from those who wanted them

I guess I also don't get why moving would matter in restaurants like Kuma's--you give up the idea of a quiet comfortable meal at a place that crowded when you walk in the door (or when you decided to go there in the first place). Fussing about your meal being interrupted by people asking you to move (or giving you the evil eye until you move-oh come on, we've all done it ) seems pretty pointless when they're hovering 3 deep behind you...it's usually uncomfortable either way. And if you care about that, Kuma's is not going to be an enjoyable experience for you.

I used to travel extensively, often ate alone in the bar of nicer restaurants and had this down to a science. If I felt like being sociable, I sat in the middle and kept my eyes open for when I might need to move to accomodate others (not a bad way to meet people as Happy Stomach mentioned if you are so inclined!) If I didn't, I opted for an end seat and eliminated the problem. If the bar was so crowded that I couldn't snag an end seat and I didn't feel like being bothered by anyone, I headed for my room with carryout--problem solved This works in hometowns too.

I've never minded moving, even if I have all my "stuff" in front of me--although no one's ever let me in the middle of a meal. Likewise, I've never thought twice about asking someone (politely) to move down, but wouldn't dream of doing it (or letting them) if they were mid-meal. Since OP was still awaiting the delivery of her food, I don't see why this would be disruptive, especially since usually the bartender is happy to assist and you don't end up having to do much other than lift buttocks and reposition them a few inches to your left or right. And if you score a drink of gratitude for your trouble, all the better!

HI,

I remember my one or two visits to Edgebrook Diner, people were asked by the waitress to move and people did. It's a small diner with less than 20 seats. It happened there were two people wanting to eat together and two seats several people apart. People shifted to allow those two to sit together. I thought it was fun watching all those people shift seats while taking their breakfast with them. Not one person complained.

In general, I tend to move in a spirit of cooperation.

Regards,

If the question is, would you or should you move if someone asks you, most people are going to say yes you should, unless it's a huge hassle. They might not like it, but they'll feel they should move rather than appear churlish.

If the question is, should you put someone else in that position, then I think no in some cases, like if they are already eating a full meal off a tablecloth. Or if you are a large group coming in at peak hours and expecting to sit together, you should not so much expect people to move. And if you don't act nice or you try to crowd or rush people, all bets are off. (I had a guy come up behind me just as I started drinking a margarita the size of my head, at a bar that was crammed to capacity, and hang over me and eventually ask if that drink was going to be my last. I still sort of regret not saying, you know what, I believe I will have another one. And take my own sweet time about it.)

It seems like in etiquette questions, discussion always seems to gravitate towards what the reaction to something should be rather than whether it's OK to create that situation in the first place. I guess it's logical enough if the person asking the question has had the situation imposed on them; all they can really control is their own reaction to it. But the answer to that part of the question is almost always a no-brainer: if someone makes a request, grant it if it's not going to killl you.

bibi rose wrote:It seems like in etiquette questions, discussion always seems to gravitate towards what the reaction to something should be rather than whether it's OK to create that situation in the first place.

This is a good point. There seems to be some inverse analysis here on this thread where the askers seem to think it's not that big of a deal for the person they're asking to move, and to me, the inquiry begins with whether it's okay to impose yourself in the first place by asking; after all, the person you're asking to move did nothing to you but have the bad luck of showing up earlier and having a seat available.

boudreaulicious wrote:I guess I also don't get why moving would matter in restaurants like Kuma's--you give up the idea of a quiet comfortable meal at a place that crowded when you walk in the door (or when you decided to go there in the first place). Fussing about your meal being interrupted by people asking you to move (or giving you the evil eye until you move-oh come on, we've all done it ) seems pretty pointless when they're hovering 3 deep behind you...it's usually uncomfortable either way. And if you care about that, Kuma's is not going to be an enjoyable experience for you.

I don't presume to speak for Mhays, but what I think she means about Kuma's is not that it's a casual place and you won't have a comfortable meal there, but that the ebb and flow of customers at the bar is so swift, that ostensibly, if you show up and take the one available stool in the middle of the bar, if the customers to your left leave, you may be asked to move to accommodate a group of 4, then when the customers to your right leave, you may be asked again to move to accommodate another group. I've actually had this happen to me (not at Kuma's). It sucks.

As it turns out, this issue is multi-layered; but it has broader implications for solo diners. In Europe, dining solo is not a big deal and you can take up a table for as long as you want and nobody bats an eye. Here, that is discouraged, and some restaurants will even tell you right out that if you're dining alone, they prefer you to sit at the bar. However, if you're eating alone at the bar, you're at the mercy of the askers. What do you have to do to have an undisturbed meal these days? Travel in packs?

In one of Amanda Hesser's books several years ago, she advocated dining alone. She says that dining alone allows you to eat undisturbed; you become almost invisible (except to staff), and nobody bothers you so you can throughly read the menu, focus entirely on your meal, and contemplate the flavors. Today, it seems that Hesser will have to add a warning that solo dining may bring on awkward requests from latecoming askers who want you to shift around every 20 minutes or so to suit the chair configuration at the bar.

Here, that is discouraged, and some restaurants will even tell you right out that if you're dining alone, they prefer you to sit at the bar. However, if you're eating alone at the bar, you're at the mercy of the askers. What do you have to do to have an undisturbed meal these days? Travel in packs?

This is why I tend to pick Japanese restaurants when I dine alone. I always sit at the sushi bar & I have never been asked to move my seat - and the staff make sure you're undisturbed to enjoy your meal.

I've no issue moving if the request is polite & there's an obvious need, but I've noticed a trend to snotty requests from packs of men. One I had recently that I found unreasonable was a request to move when there were ample seats at the other end of the bar. Turns out the guys were a bit the worse for wear & wanted to hit on the women a seat or two down from me. The barman got rid of them.

Athena wrote:

Here, that is discouraged, and some restaurants will even tell you right out that if you're dining alone, they prefer you to sit at the bar. However, if you're eating alone at the bar, you're at the mercy of the askers. What do you have to do to have an undisturbed meal these days? Travel in packs?

This is why I tend to pick Japanese restaurants when I dine alone. I always sit at the sushi bar & I have never been asked to move my seat - and the staff make sure you're undisturbed to enjoy your meal.

I've no issue moving if the request is polite & there's an obvious need, but I've noticed a trend to snotty requests from packs of men. One I had recently that I found unreasonable was a request to move when there were ample seats at the other end of the bar. Turns out the guys were a bit the worse for wear & wanted to hit on the women a seat or two down from me. The barman got rid of them.

Yeah, that's another thing. You're eating at a bar. You've got your drunks and everything else that goes along with that. In restaurants where space is tight, sometimes management has decided to use the bar for overflow dining and has not left enough room for people who want to use the bar for drinking. And they'll have people who should really be at a table, because of the size of their group, all trying to sit together at the bar. Even aside from that, if you're in a bar you tend to make bar assumptions, like that it should not be so hard for people to scoot over. It's a messy situation because they have not defined what the space is really being used for.

bibi rose wrote:Yeah, that's another thing. You're eating at a bar. You've got your drunks and everything else that goes along with that. In restaurants where space is tight, sometimes management has decided to use the bar for overflow dining and has not left enough room for people who want to use the bar for drinking. And they'll have people who should really be at a table, because of the size of their group, all trying to sit together at the bar. Even aside from that, if you're in a bar you tend to make bar assumptions, like that it should not be so hard for people to scoot over. It's a messy situation because they have not defined what the space is really being used for.

Nicely said.

aschie30 wrote:after all, the person you're asking to move did nothing to you but have the bad luck of showing up earlier and having a seat available.

Not necessarily. As headcase pointed out upthread, there's an issue where an individual diner is splitting up a contiguous block of seats, which (at least in my opinion) is itself inconsiderate. If I walk up to a bar by myself and there are three seats in a row, I'm not going to take the middle seat, as I'm now making the seats on either side of me unusable to a party of 2.

-Dan

(All of the guys out there will know this as the Gentlemen's Accord on Urinal Selection)

dansch wrote:

aschie30 wrote:after all, the person you're asking to move did nothing to you but have the bad luck of showing up earlier and having a seat available.

Not necessarily. As headcase pointed out upthread, there's an issue where an individual diner is splitting up a contiguous block of seats, which (at least in my opinion) is itself inconsiderate. If I walk up to a bar by myself and there are three seats in a row, I'm not going to take the middle seat, as I'm now making the seats on either side of me unusable to a party of 2.

A lot of times, that's not the case. You get the one empty seat, then people around you leave. Now, the diners have to pull out a crystal ball and predict who will come in after them and intuit what seats they might want?

aschie30 wrote:

dansch wrote:

aschie30 wrote:after all, the person you're asking to move did nothing to you but have the bad luck of showing up earlier and having a seat available.

Not necessarily. As headcase pointed out upthread, there's an issue where an individual diner is splitting up a contiguous block of seats, which (at least in my opinion) is itself inconsiderate. If I walk up to a bar by myself and there are three seats in a row, I'm not going to take the middle seat, as I'm now making the seats on either side of me unusable to a party of 2.

A lot of times, that's not the case. You get the one empty seat, then people around you leave.

I wasn't trying to suggest that this was always the case, just bringing up that sometimes it is, and so the assertion that "the person you're asking to move did nothing to you", isn't always the case either.

aschie30 wrote:Now, the diners have to pull out a crystal ball and predict who will come in after them and intuit what seats they might want?

Nope. They should just be receptive to reasonable and polite requests to scooch, should they end up in a spot where they're breaking up a block of seats.

-Dan

I always take preemptive measures when dining solo at a bar:

Take the leftmost or rightmost available seat

Keep moving left or right as soon as it is available, depending on how busy it is, even when there's no one giving me that "look"

The less I'm a potential pain in the ass for someone else, the better I feel about myself and the more I enjoy the food. Win-win.

aschie30 wrote:Would you go up to a table of 2 sitting at a 4-top and and ask them to move mid-meal to accommodate your party of 4?

Count me old-fashioned; it's almost never okay to interrupt people who are eating. And it's almost never okay for a man to ask a woman to move so he can sit down.

I actually saw something like this happen less than two weeks ago…a party of three was seated (by the hostess) at a table for six. At the time they were seated, there were no 4-tops available, although there was a table that accommodated 3 because it was pushed against a wall in a high-traffic area near the kitchen entrance. Obviously an undesirable table. When a party of 6 came in, the group of three was asked to move to the 3-top. They had drinks and may have had a shared appetizer at this point. They did move without putting up a protest. I recall thinking that I would have been ticked off myself.

I just can't imagine a situation where I'm sitting with a friend and there is a single seat on both sides of us, and then I refuse to move when a couple who wants to dine asks us to. If I'm paying even slight attention, I will have moved before they even had the opportunity to ask. If I missed it because I was engrossed in conversation or a hot dog or something, then I will move apologetically once the situation is brought to my attention.

dansch wrote:(All of the guys out there will know this as the Gentlemen's Accord on Urinal Selection)

Found it:

RAB wrote:

dansch wrote:(All of the guys out there will know this as the Gentlemen's Accord on Urinal Selection)

Found it:

So Dan, would you politely ask the guy 7 rows from the bottom to "scootch" mid-stream so that you don't have to stand next to anyone?

kanin wrote:The less I'm a potential pain in the ass for someone else, the better I feel about myself and the more I enjoy the food. Win-win.

exactly!!

nr706 wrote:I agree that you're under no social obligation to move. Sometimes it's nice to do someone else a favor and move if requested, but if you've established yourself in a seat, that doesn't mean that someone coming in later has a right to it. And I don't think gender has anything to with that.

I agree. Under no circumstances should you interrupt your meal unless someone really needs to sit; i.e. in the case of aschie30 giving her seat to the old lady on the train. I might move if the asker was with a date/friend and a) the only two seats were those on either side of me, b) the asker was being really nice, and c) I hadn't been served. But Cinny's Mom sounds like people are demanding, even during meals and during conversations with her companions, and this is incredibly rude. Call me an asshole. As for that heckling jerk, I would have stayed in my seat out of spite. Basically, my motto is: if I'm mid-chew, then screw you. Print that on a t-shirt!

aschie30 wrote:

bibi rose wrote:It seems like in etiquette questions, discussion always seems to gravitate towards what the reaction to something should be rather than whether it's OK to create that situation in the first place.

This is a good point. There seems to be some inverse analysis here on this thread where the askers seem to think it's not that big of a deal for the person they're asking to move, and to me, the inquiry begins with whether it's okay to impose yourself in the first place by asking; after all, the person you're asking to move did nothing to you but have the bad luck of showing up earlier and having a seat available.

My own approach to "whether it's OK to ask" is based (as are so many situations in life) on an assumption of the reciprocity of the golden rule. In other words, since I apply the golden rule in life (doing for others what I hope they'd do for me), I go into situations assuming that others will be just as happy to apply it for my benefit. I know people won't always do that but it takes me aback when they don't, because it's so not how I would behave in their place; on some basic level we want the good we do for others to come back to us, even if as grownups we know better than to believe it always will. In this case, absolutely knowing (like Kenny) that were I in the position of the sitter I would happily move if asked (and would volunteer to move even without being asked, if I saw the need forming), I feel it's within-bounds for me as the stander to ask. Asking rudely (or acting "entitled") is, of course, another story. I totally understand the resistance that forms in response to such rudeness.

I dont ask people to move.
If I notice I can allow other folks to sit by moving down a chair i will.
If I am asked to move down a chair or two to make room for folks I do.

aschie30 wrote:So Dan, would you politely ask the guy 7 rows from the bottom to "scootch" mid-stream so that you don't have to stand next to anyone?

I love that you scoured the chart to find an example that would support your side of the discussion. (Even if you did include a smiley.) Awesome.

And to Cinny's Mom: Thanks for starting the first good discussion in quite a while. (Excepting, of course, This Thread Sucks.) LTH needed this.
--Rich

aschie30 wrote:

RAB wrote:

dansch wrote:(All of the guys out there will know this as the Gentlemen's Accord on Urinal Selection)

Found it:

So Dan, would you politely ask the guy 7 rows from the bottom to "scootch" mid-stream so that you don't have to stand next to anyone?

Trick question: just asking would be improper under Article I, Section (c).

JeffB wrote:Trick question: just asking would be improper under Article I, Section (c).

Yeah, that chart clearly misses a critical rule: No talking to strangers.

eatchicago wrote:

JeffB wrote:Trick question: just asking would be improper under Article I, Section (c).

Yeah, that chart clearly misses a critical rule: No talking to strangers.

No, it's right there in the middle of the top row: No Chatting

eli wrote:

eatchicago wrote:

JeffB wrote:Trick question: just asking would be improper under Article I, Section (c).

Yeah, that chart clearly misses a critical rule: No talking to strangers.

No, it's right there in the middle of the top row: No Chatting

I should post this in the chick's bathroom. People like to talk between stalls mid-stream.

jimswside wrote:I dont ask people to move.
If I notice I can allow other folks to sit by moving down a chair i will.
If I am asked to move down a chair or two to make room for folks I do.

You know, on reflection, this is a more accurate statement of what I'd do than my own post was. Thinking more about "would I ask," I think the thing I would do is put my wife on the one available barstool and stand behind her. It would quickly become apparent to any reasonably aware and sensitive person that by moving down he could make it possible for us to sit together (it certainly would be apparent to me, if I were in his place), and in my experience more often than not that person will move without being asked. If he's one of those people who won't, I'm fine standing (while I silently condemn him ).

RAB wrote:

aschie30 wrote:So Dan, would you politely ask the guy 7 rows from the bottom to "scootch" mid-stream so that you don't have to stand next to anyone?

I love that you scoured the chart to find an example that would support your side of the discussion. (Even if you did include a smiley.) Awesome.

You get all the credit, Rich, for attaching that awesome chart. It's fascinating, truly fascinating.

aschie30 wrote:

RAB wrote:

aschie30 wrote:So Dan, would you politely ask the guy 7 rows from the bottom to "scootch" mid-stream so that you don't have to stand next to anyone?

I love that you scoured the chart to find an example that would support your side of the discussion. (Even if you did include a smiley.) Awesome.

You get all the credit, Rich, for attaching that awesome chart. It's fascinating, truly fascinating.

Not only will the hysterical (and eerily wise) chart go up in the men's room at our company, once posted, it'll always remind me of this awesome thread.

=R=

riddlemay wrote:

jimswside wrote:I dont ask people to move.
If I notice I can allow other folks to sit by moving down a chair i will.
If I am asked to move down a chair or two to make room for folks I do.

You know, on reflection, this is a more accurate statement of what I'd do than my own post was. Thinking more about "would I ask," I think the thing I would do is put my wife on the one available barstool and stand behind her. It would quickly become apparent to any reasonably aware and sensitive person that by moving down he could make it possible for us to sit together (it certainly would be apparent to me, if I were in his place), and in my experience more often than not that person will move without being asked. If he's one of those people who won't, I'm fine standing (while I silently condemn him ).

You know, I think you might have been right the first time. Application of the Golden Rule might be the easiest way to sum up this whole "asked to move" situation. It can be used to govern one's behavior in either the role of the asker or askee.

Since I'd like someone to notice when their moving would allow my party to sit, I try to notice when I can help others. It's nice when I notice that a party would benefit by my scootching over a seat or two, but more often than not, I'm lost in a conversation or my thoughts (or my plate, or my thoughts about my plate) and I don't notice. I don't mind being politely asked to move in such a situation.

As riddlemay said, since I don't mind being politely asked, I see no reason not to politely ask someone else to move under the assumption that they will also apply the GR. If they're one of those how-dare-you-interrupt-my-meal folks, well, then I politely move on (by which I mean hover around, giving them the stink eye).

In any event, asking someone to move over requires one to assess the situation and use one's judgment. Perhaps this might account for OP's perceived gender bias. Women have been described as the "fairer" or "gentler" sex. Maybe some folks think that a woman dining alone would be less likely to make a fuss about scootching over?

Just please leave me alone in the men's room.
--Rich

RAB wrote:You know, I think you might have been right the first time.

OK, I'll go back to that!

RAB wrote:In any event, asking someone to move over requires one to assess the situation and use one's judgment. Perhaps this might account for OP's perceived gender bias. Women have been described as the "fairer" or "gentler" sex. Maybe some folks think that a woman dining alone would be less likely to make a fuss about scootching over?

Exactly! This is probably the reason I get asked to move 99% of the time if I am out by myself or out with another female friend. I don't even think most people realize this deeply ingrained behavior. As a result, I am doing a lot more moving around than most men. Also, I think solo diners have a tough time. It seems they are expected to play musical chairs and accommodate everyone else simply because they are solo and easier to move around.

In my OP, I noted that I often move for others without being asked. My problem is that lately, when I am asked, the "asking" has really become less of a request and more of a demand. Often, the askers are preparing to sit and elbow into my space before I even respond. IMHO, you are asking me for a favor and that should be reflected in a polite, apologetic tone. The asker does not get to decide for me whether or not I should think moving is a big deal. Nor should the asker be outraged if I decline his or her request.