Communal Seating

[Lady Penelope]

I find I am extremely adverse to coffee shops and restaurants attempting to be 'trendy' and offering communal seating. These fill me with so much dread and anxiety that I refuse to eat there.

They have the warmth of a prison lunchroom (guessing) and the forced social awkwardness of a wedding where you are the plus one and don't know anyone.

They make no sense to me other than to squeeze in as many patrons as they can whilst saving on comfort and privacy. So from a trader's perspective, it might be appealing, but if people are uncomfortable and avoid your establishment, then it is counter productive.
However, my local ones are packed with people. Bursting at the seams full. I don't get it.

I also hate the "industrial look" with their hard, metal, uncomfortable chairs and fluro lighting...

Do they affect anyone else this strongly?

 

[JackSkellington]

Yep I hate it. I've been to a few restaurants where they do this. I would go back to the places but only if I get seated in regular booths (which they seem to have less and less of). I don't want to share seating with strangers, it's weird and uncomfortable. Plus them being so close has lead them to interrupting conversations I have with my wife sometimes. Blah...

I'm not sure if I've seen industrial look but sounds horrible.

 

[Full Steam]

I think a lot of it is fashion and attempt to be different (by following other people!)

Cafe's are in a very tough market place usually and they often seem to try gimics to succeed.

I would avoid if I were alone, but with 3 young kids, space is often not a problem, as it seems to magically create itself around the kids

I am always tense when any one is sat in my personal space, and I always find the table equidistant between other people.

 

[Lady Penelope]

Yep I hate it. I've been to a few restaurants where they do this. I would go back to the places but only if I get seated in regular booths (which they seem to have less and less of). I don't want to share seating with strangers, it's weird and uncomfortable. Plus them being so close has lead them to interrupting conversations I have with my wife sometimes. Blah...

I'm not sure if I've seen industrial look but sounds horrible.

Industrial interior design = uncomfortable.

 

[Judge]

Well...I don't know if I'm "extremely averse" to such a thing. Though I only frequent places where I can take my food home. Or eat in my car....somewhere else anyways.

Good grief. I had to google this to discover it is a growing trend. I'll stop here before I start posting expletives.

More Restaurants Are Asking Customers To Sit With Strangers

 

[JackSkellington]

I wouldn't sit on industrial at all. I need a comfortable seat- so I generally do booths wherever I go. I need the support for my back.

 

[Lady Penelope]

Glad I'm not the only one!!!

 

[kay]

Oh, no! It's a trend? (and one I may have not noticed since I tend to just go to the same few places, none of which are at all trendy) Yuk. Oh, well, all the more reason to get take-out and go to the park. Though I do actually like the industrial look.

 

[When In Rome]

One of the worst things is on buses. There can be seats around and behind and yet someone will try and sit next to you. Move your legs across the empty seat and they can still expect you to move. If I have to speak I will ask them is it really necessary? In any case there is so little room, people are practically sitting on you anyway, squeezed against someone's body with only clothes for separation, ewww.

 

[xudo]

Yeah I would avoid anywhere with communal seating. I don't even like to go places where the tables are relatively close when it's busy.

 

[fuzz]

I avoid using the communal seats if I can, but I will use them if it's unavoidable.

It's normally not that bad when I do, as it seems almost everyone avoids sitting next to / or opposite someone else if they can. I can even get a nice sense of gaining space when the other people leave.

I usually read emails or news on my phone if I'm in communal seating and it usually stops the closeness getting to much for me.

 

[Diagnosed2015]

Coming from 40 years in New England (USA), what you are describing sounds to me like something you'd see at a Lobster Pound or Seafood Restaurant.

Since my social anxiety leads me to avoid doing many things (including eating in a restaurant) alone, I have no problem with the seating of any kind -- as long as there is someone with me.

I would like to think I could get over the anxiety if seafood was involved, but I would just buy the lobster and cook it at home if I was that desperate.

 

[ZebraAutismo]

Yes I can't attend this people so much touching and forced soicalsion.

 

[ZebraAutismo]

Plus way would I pay for something schools have tried to force me to do.

 

[Stitch]

Good gravy people will sit that close together on purpose? ...if too many people are in the breakroom at lunch I start panicking (even if no one sits near me), forget ever choosing a communal seating arrangement.

 

[RiverSong]

Oh my gosh. I can't stand this kind of seating. I went to one restaurant like this with my boyfriend and his parents. It was in a trendy area. The place kind of had a hipster vibe to it, I guess. It wasn't industrial. But there were just big, long tables with the seats all close together.

I was like... WHAT IS THIS?? I mean, whose idea was it to squeeze in a bunch of strangers together at a table while serving them food? And people pay for this experience?

The whole thing just made me feel awkward. My boyfriend and his family were siting on one side of me and a group of strangers were on the other side of me.

I could hear every bit of the strangers' conversation, and I kept feeling weird that they would hear everything I would say to my boyfriend. So I wasn't comfortable talking. I didn't exactly know where to look because we were all seated so awkwardly. And on top of all that, the food wasn't great.

Never again, communal dining halls. You got me once but never again.

 

[WereBear]

My main issue with "industrial look" is how it makes the room so noisy.

 

[Mia]

However, my local ones are packed with people. Bursting at the seams full. I don't get it.
I also hate the "industrial look" with their hard, metal, uncomfortable chairs and fluro lighting...
Do they affect anyone else this strongly?

There's one I was at with friends the other day. It serves quite good coffee, which is a local oddity. Coffee in the area is more of a drip system, often they'll use the grounds twice Which makes the coffee essentially hot water which has been brewed with a brown crayon. At least that's what it tastes like.

The place is long wooden trestle tables running the length of the cafe. People right beside you listening to music on headphones, on their phones or laptops or talking. Students doing homework. Couples talking, heads bent closely together, business meetings near the pizza oven. A long open warehouse, food and drink prepared in the same space. Noise is constant, a constant cacophony of echo above and around your ears. Much like a school cafeteria.

Very much unlike the cafes left over from the sixties, small, quiet and intimate. Miss those, but most closed when the disco era began, from lack of clientele and funds. Wish that there was something in between those intimate places and a cafeteria like environment.

 

[WereBear]

There's one I was at with friends the other day. It serves quite good coffee, which is a local oddity. Coffee in the area is more of a drip system, often they'll use the grounds twice Which makes the coffee essentially hot water which has been brewed with a brown crayon. At least that's what it tastes like.

Oh, all the feels. I don't indulge in coffee very often, but when I do, I have a real coffeehouse, with an upstairs loft to sit at with my laptop. And the coffee is toe-curlingly good.

 

[toothless]

i avoid any places like that.
ive been to starbucks/neros/costa quite a few times before and ive had to dope myself up with lorazepam and keep my industrial strength ear defenders firmly locked down on my head to cope with the noise and overload in there,i only sit where theres no people nearby,and i try to sit outside but the staff im with moan saying its to cold.
i drink the coffee quick or take it with me if its a frappachino,i am absolutely wasted with overload when i get out, its the noise of everyone talking,the visual overload and youve got someone talking to you as well-youve got to manage them all, no thanks,i prefer getting decent coffee to use at home, marks and spencer does a good micro ground instant coffee, just in case any UKers are interested.