Café etiquette: Is it rude to ask to sit at a table with strangers?

Q: I was waiting for a take-away coffee at my local cafe following a two-kilometre morning walk. A couple sat at a table with a spare chair. Feeling exhausted, I asked if I could sit on the spare chair while waiting for my coffee. They gave me a horrified look. Was I wrong to ask? R.C., Kirribilli, NSW

A: Kirribilli is a posh, flashy suburb where the Prime Minister and Governor-General and lots of celebrities have homes, so your local cafe was probably packed with posh, flashy, celebrity types (with one of the lesser-successful Hemsworth brothers working as a barista and the least-successful Hemsworth brother as a dish-hand).

Kirribilli is also a famously hilly suburb, so I’m guessing you would’ve been pretty dishevelled and sweaty after your two-kilometre morning walk – and when you asked this couple if you could sit on their spare chair, you may have been puffing heavily, blowing hot, fetid air onto their truffle-butter buckwheat porridge.

So because Kirribilli is very flashy and you may have been vaguely rancid, I can understand why this couple looked horrified when you asked to sit down at their table, especially if they were having an intimate, romantic breakfast together or they were Anthony Albanese and the head of ASIO discussing top-secret terror-threats over flat whites and a shakshuka.

For this reason, I’ve penned a little cafe-poem that may be helpful if something like this ever happens again: A chair that is spare is there to be shared/ But don’t sit down there on the chair with the pair/ Lift that chair in the air and move it elsewhere/ Coz that pair may be having a torrid affair/ Or deep in discussions on cyber-warfare/ If the chair is too heavy, give up in despair/ If the chair’s bolted down, ask the staff for hardware.

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