Don't Save Me a Seat

I'm not a table saver.  When I go into a self-service restaurant I evaluate the situation before deciding if I want to stay or not.  If there are more people in line than there are available tables, I don't stay.  I don't want to get my food and then end up milling around with my tray until someone leaves.  In fact, sometimes even if there are more available tables than current customers, I still don't stay.  I build in the cushion for the table savers that might come in behind me, messing up the entire ratio of customers to empty tables. 

Table savers.  I'm not one.  And, if you go to a restaurant with me, you can't be one either.  Well, you can be, but then we won't eat together.  Either I won't sit with you at the table you've saved, or I'll have already left for another restaurant.  Table savers make me crazy.  I don't understand how anyone can think that this practice is okay. 

If you were at the butcher and you heard someone order the last two pork chops would you pipe up and say, "I know you were here first, but I'm standing right here by them in the case and that's what I was going to buy."  I don't think you would.  It makes sense that someone else was in line first and they get first dibs on the last two pork chops, right?  First come, first served.  So, why should you get first dibs on a table?  Or, how 'bout merging at the last minute when you had a warning for two miles of the lane reduction.  Instead, you stay in the fast lane and think you have a right to cut in front of all of the people who merged respectfully.  Maybe it's more like that.  But at least that could happen accidently and you might feel a little embarrassed by it if it did.

Some friends actually try to rationalize with me and say that if I don't save a table, someone else will and then I won't have one.  Precisely.  And as much as I don't want to be the one left without a table, even more I don't want to be the one responsible for the guy behind me being left without a table.  I can't think of any reason this should be acceptable.  And I don't know how anyone can sit there feeling okay staring at me in the aisle balancing my tray.   Fortunately, these days, they can bury their heads in their cell phones and pretend not to notice.

I'm not sure why I hate this so much more than anyone I've ever asked about it.   I thought that maybe it was because my parents used to make me do it when I was a kid at Mr. Fable's, Home of the Famous Beefburg. (Why was it called a 'beefburg' instead of a 'beefburger'?)  But when I thought about it a little more, I remembered that I actually hated saving the table then, too.  So, this is at least ONE instance where a childhood experience can't be blamed for irrational adult behavior.  There I'd sit, all alone (with the exception of a pile of extra coats) in a giant booth, waiting for the rest of the family to show up.  I had to do it then.  I won't do it now. 

Table savers don't sit well with me.