The topic: rude behavior in public dining
There is nothing quite as exquisitely frustrating as having one’s commentary misrepresented elsewhere by a sloppy blogger, and then watching the nasty comments pile up by posters who never bother to read the original post. That is what is happening to Ethics Alarms, and thus me, over at an otherwise virtuous site called Etiquette Hell.
The site, or blog, or forum, or whatever the hell it is commented on the Starbucks post, with the inept headline: “Hogging all the tables in a crowded establishment.” That’s not what the post was about. That is a misrepresentation. The post was specifically about coffee shops that provide free wi-fi, and how customers abuse the privilege and benefit by camping out with their laptops for unreasonable amounts of time, forcing patrons who need to use the tables for the primary purpose they exist to provide—allowing someone to eat and drink comfortably—to go elsewhere, or to stand.
I argued, correctly, that patrons need to confront this conduct by pulling up a chair to tables occupied by laptop-using squatters who no longer have food or beverages. I did not say that customers should try to forcibly eject the cheap, selfish, table hogs, but only 1) rob them of sole use of the space, which they have no ethical right to occupy when paying customers are looking for places to sit, and 2) sit down at a table rather than consent to their misconduct and facilitate it by ignoring it.
So what is the response of the forum? This, from “Teambhakta”:
“I think that’s rude to tell someone “You have to move / share this table. I know you’re hogging it for no reason.” The person already at the table may be waiting for someone in their party to bring the food to the table. Or there might have been a problem with their order and the manager said “Please wait at your table while we fix it. I’ll bring your corrected order over in a few minutes.”
What?? ONE: I don’t tell people they have to move. They are welcome to share the table while I use it. TWO: They do have to share it, or leave it, if they want to be fair and considerate, which is to say, ethical. If they don’t, it is not rude to tell they are wrong. Etiquette does not mean “being a weenie.” If we want etiquette in our culture, we have to be willing to enforce it. The rude party is the one using up a table while I am balancing a briefcase, a coat and large cup of steaming coffee while standing. THREE: I specifically referenced the circumstance where one person is obviously working at the table, not waiting for a party. If the individual says, truthfully, “I am waiting for my friend,” then I say, “I’m sorry, my mistake.” FOUR: There are no waiters at Starbucks, which is not a restaurant. Read the post before you call me rude. Learn something about etiquette before you become a regular poster on an etiquette forum.
Then there’s this, from “Sharnita”:
“Seriously? As a single person it is kinda hard to sit at the table meant for one person because restaurants don’t have them. Would you join three people who had a table with a fourth side or is it only single people who are rude for not completely filling up a table? “
Seriously? Has “Sharnita” ever been in a Starbucks? Apparently not: most of the little round tables can handle two people at most. Since she mentions it, though: in airport food courts there are tables of varying sizes, and if a single person, where there are no free tables, tries to hold down a table for four (usually by piling stuff on one or more chairs) and has no food with her while I have a full meal and no place to eat it, I am sitting down at her table. (Note to “Sharnita”: a food court isn’t a restaurant either. You need to get out more.) The tables are not for socializing or lounging, they are for eating.
When I did this about a month ago, the indignant, non-eating, foodless woman squatting at the large table for four protested, “I am waiting for my family to bring food!” I replied, “Fine. When and if they arrive, I’ll leave.” She huffed and walked away, later returning with food. Oddly, no family ever appeared! Would I join a table with three people at it who were just lounging and talking when I had a tray of food and no place to sit? Not at a restaurant. I have done that at a food court, however. They are the ones being inconsiderate and rude. I’m just reminding them.
This is Golden Rule territory, all the way. The posters at the etiquette forum are severely handicapped by their unfamiliarity with the concept.
Yet another commenter’s explanation of why my solution is rude says this:
“I can understand the writer’s frustration, but his approach is rude. And if Starbucks wanted those tables cleared, they’ve have a system for doing so.”
Oh, I see…because Starbucks foolishly allows its customers to abuse their policies, it is rude for anyone else to confront the boors! Well, that is nonsense. All policies and rules have loopholes, and the more unethical the individual, the better he is at exploiting them. The rest of us have the duty of making the miscreants back down, or selfishness and callousness always prevails.
No wonder these people live in “etiquette hell”! They are pushovers who use rationalizations to avoid doing their duty of confrontation.
And their website is unethical, too. The least a site can do if it is going to provoke criticism of a misrepresentation of another author’s post is to ensure that the writer has a chance to respond and clarify. But “Etiquette Hell” has one of the most aggravating mandatory guest registration procedures I’ve ever encountered, including exacting password requirements that are tougher than my bank’s, and the most impenetrable “copy the letters” security device imaginable, which required me to request EIGHT combinations before I found one I could read. Yet after all that, the site told me that my registration was “awaiting approval,” so I could not even register a comment until, well, who knows?
Now that’s rude.
UPDATE: After I had written this post, my “approval” from Etiquette Hell arrived. Too late, E.H.; sorry.
Go to Hell.
Ethics Alarms 
Barely related: CAPTCHA, that “copy the letters” security thing, can be infuriating, but it serves a purpose: it stops spambots from running rampant. I am one of the sysops of a wiki run by some friends. My main duty was deleting spam automatically created by these robots. For months, every day, I would check to see if more spam had appeared. It was like dealing with mildew.
At the time, there WAS a CAPTCHA for creating an account (which clearly had failed), and if you posted a page with an external link (as spambots would), it asked you to solve an arithmetic problem (83 – 12 = ?). This did nothing to dissuade the spambots, but frustrated any humans immensely.
Our solution was to make a CAPTCHA that related to the information on the wiki. (As in, a wiki specializing in Seinfeld would ask about Superman or something). Spam stopped dead and has never returned.
CAPTCHA is irritating, but the alternative is an Internet world somehow even MORE permeated with spam than before.
I have no problem with it, if it isn’t unreasonably hard to read. The one on EH is unbelievable,. Try it. You’ll hate it.
(checks)
Yow. That’s a bad one. Got it on my second try, probably through sheer luck. I hope it’s at least effective.
I’ve checked over 45,000 pieces of spam since this blogt started less than two years ago, so you all don’t have to go through that here. I’m not sympathetic.
Jack, I want to publicly apologize to you. I linked to your blog post last night because I thought the topic was an interesting intersection of ethics and etiquette. When I posted, I thought the discussion would be along the lines of a)monopolizing space for the free amenities as opposed to the product is rude to other customers and b)was your approach the best way to achieve your goal.
In my post, I had a quick line that something like free internet inevitably results in squatters, and quoted what you suggested saying to people. I asked how others might go about it, and when I went to sleep last night the discussion was going pretty civilly. (I admitted that I wasn’t sure what I would do in a situation such as your airport food court where I don’t really know what the real deal is. Some days I’m a weenie, other days I have a spine of titanium.) I don’t know if anyone skewered you because when I woke up the post had been removed by the moderators. They intensely dislike causing inter-internet drama and I’m sorry for the annoyance and any headaches it caused you.
And I’m very sorry for the misrepresentation in the title. It was an inept attempt to give a quick snapshot of the topic. Clearly…very inept.
But look at the brightside! I gave you some fodder for another blog post!
-Marlene/madhatter
Dear Marlene: I didn’t think there was anything wrong with your post to the forum, Marlene, and you are very nice to apologize—but it’s not necessary. The title was a little vague out of context, but I would have expected, as you did, commenter to actually read the full post before accusing me of being rude. What really annoyed me was that site made it so difficult for me to respond there, and then told me that I had to wait. I don’t have time to wait. I wrote the EH post while angry, which is foolish, and I usually avoid that. But I hold an etiquette site to a higher standard.
They removed the post because it caused controversy? A legitimate issue involving balancing rights and privileges, the core of what manners are all about, is deleted because of criticism? That’s disgraceful, and I no longer feel even slightly bad for nailing the site. It is a weenie site. That proves it.
You’re too good for it.
Like I said, anything controversial happened after I went to bed, so I didn’t see any comment you posted there or anyone’s response to you, but I imagine it wasn’t exactly pretty because threads are hardly ever completely deleted.
I may have actually broken a rule of the forum, stating that one should not link to other sites or forums in such a way that encourages arguments between forums. And when you went on EHell…just how angry WAS your post? Part of the EHell philosophy is that inter-interweb flame wars never lead to anything good, just lots of trolls and people misbehaving. As that site only works when people are on their best behavior, I can see why removing the thread was the most expedient option.
Anyway, I think part of the disconnect is each site deals very specifically with one issue; it’s why some people reading your blog have difficulty swallowing it because it’s just about the ethics. EHell is just about the etiquette, so while both places want to eradicate table squatters, we may want to do it through different means.
You’re commenting on the only post I wrote, and it was here, not there. I gave up trying to post at EH last night after the third time I had to try a password, the 8th attempt to copy their nearly unreadable letters, and THEN being told that my registration was complete but had to be “approved” before I could log on and comment in a discussion of my own post.
After I wrote the above, EH’s “Welcome” e-mail arrived, and got this response from me:
“Sorry; too late. Your site is too hard to register for, and I should not have to wait for “approval” to make a comment, especially when I personally am being misrepresented on the site and criticized as a result. I wrote my response on my own blog, which is easy to comment on. Then your approval came in.
“Your system stinks. I don’t know what makes it so valuable that you have to require more security than my bank, and at this point, I don’t care.”
Though I haven’t consulted Rep. Bachmann, etiquette doesn’t mean submissiveness.
Ah, I misunderstood you. I thought you were referring to something that happened with you on the forum. This just isn’t my day for basic reading comprehension. Is there a sheepishness emoticon?
Anyway, I stand by their screening measures. It does help weed out trolls, or the lazy ones at least. It could be the subject of a future blog post: Do strict security measures foster or hinder open and civil communication, or should members police themselves.
(PS: The “etiquette doesn’t mean submissiveness” thing is practically a mantra on EHell. It sucks you got a snapshot where people may be unnecessarily passive.)
Well, it they had just let me participate in the discussion, it would have all been clarified.
Believe me, I’m all for screening, but the system they have is just too many layers to be welcoming or user friendly. I don’t weed out trolls…sometimes they are useful to make an example of. If they get out of line, it’s easy enough to ban hem.
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Sorry for the late response, but I only recently learned…the hard way…of the behind-the-scenes manipulation of “moderation” of EH blog topics combined with a forum policy of ‘available yet don’t expect an answer’ policy. This is unseen by members under the admin’s umbrella of favor, so they truly don’t know a thing about it – until they start to disagree with the admin’s point of view. When my blog posts ceased to clear the mod, I sent a pm to the admin – and received no response. I took it public on the forum (out of sheer frustration), and was banned. Not surprisingly, the forum policies were then updated to emphasize that those who make issues public would be banned, that the admin/mods are open and available to private discussions. The very next sentence states they are busy people so don’t expect a reply. My take on it–I am on forums MUCH larger than EH and with far healthier activity, and I have always received a timely response to private communication. And..disagreement is not perceived as a personal affront. EH’s policies and administration undermine its otherwise interesting qualities.
E Hell is a dictatorship, not a democracy. A lot of the posters seem nice. The mods–I Godwin.
I was flamed–rudely. angrily flamed, by ehell mod. What was weirdest was not her abrupt cutoff of my query, it was her snotty disbelief that I had enjoyed lurking for years. Wish I had had saved the flame; she truly doubted that I had lurked for a few years before participating.
And I thought Canadians were nice.
The problem is that there are a lot of blogs run by people unequipped for it. It’s hard. Her response to being criticized by me was to dox me. She’s over her head. She still may be nice.
Wait, are you saying Ehell admins doxed you because of this post?
Why yes, she did.
WOW. She accused me of trying to do that to her during the mass banning. The kicker is, I hadn’t even visited the site in years. Apparently though, I was some kind of Leader of the Revolution. That woman is sick. I WISH I knew how to Dox…
No you don’t. It’s a lousy thing to do.
No, I don’t. not really. But sometimes, it’s nice to have a little revenge daydream when I spot something that reminds me of her. 🙂
hmm, well. That’s not even what I thought it was now that I’ve looked it up. I thought it was something that just took a site offline for a couple hours. That’s crazy that she did that.
Wow! That’s awful! An etiquette blog doxing someone…how can they in any way think that’s right or justified?
(I was looking up EHell today and found this…)
I sympathise. EHell is a self serving website and forum full of self righteous sycophants. They allow members to treat each other with nastiness and spite but when a member challenges this they are banned. Of course they have the right to manage their members however they see fit but if you’re expecting fair treatment and accurate recounting of events look elsewhere.
Funny I just came across this… I used to follow the EHell site when the (much nicer and much more civilized) Miss Manners board on MSN.com got taken down. I was amazed to find that for an etiquette board, the mods on EHell are the absolute most rude, most ignorant witches I’ve ever come across. How one can run a forum on manners and etiquette with having absolutely no knowledge and no practice of the subject is beyond me. I left, and mercifully so.
I miss E Hell when it just had groups of stories, not the blog-comment thing it is now. You can go into the archives and waste hours being horrified-much more fun and less judgmental.