Don’t just pull up a chair

“Excuse me,” she said a little aggressively. “Are you guys going to be long?” I was confused, as although it’s not an unreasonable question – even if a little forward – to ask in a packed coffee shop, in this case, we were the only occupants of an otherwise empty restaurant.

I was quite certain that it wasn’t her business how long we would still be.

At first, given the frequency of the occurrence in my life, I assumed that it was me she was approaching. But I was mistaken. She made a very clear beeline for my companion.

I was meeting a friend for a quick coffee. As much as we try, we very rarely get a chance to meet. He is under immense pressure, works in a particularly difficult profession, with too infrequent moments of reprieve.

Although I would hardly have it any other way, I too have more commitments than is healthy and few gaps in my day. And so, when we both found that our day had gifted us the same 30 minutes to exhale, we grabbed the opportunity to do so.

She found us 15 minutes into our 30-minute coffee.

The break was proving to be exactly what we both needed – until the “Excuse me!”

“Umm, probably 15 minutes,” said my friend, stammering slightly and caught off guard. “Sorry” he added, “Do I know you?” “No,” she replied confidently, “But I need to speak to you. I’ll sit here and wait until you’re done.” And she did. She sat at the next table, and waited for us to finish so that she could have her word.

It was the end of our reprieve. Just like that, the stress was back, the world had returned, and our 30 minutes had become 15 minutes. We tried to ignore her, and when that didn’t work, attempted to figure if we knew the intruder and what she could have wanted. It took a few minutes for me to accept that our coffee was over, and that I might as well leave him to this woman.

It turned out that she had good reason to speak to him, and he was able to address an issue that she was concerned about. Given that it was ahead of Rosh Hashanah, we figured that maybe it was even a good thing that she had been given an opportunity to do this.

At the same time, because more than one thing can be true, we felt irritated by the fact that she hadn’t given a moment of thought to others. She could have asked for his number, or looked it up and called his office, and she could have made an appointment. Instead, she chose to seize an opportunity at our expense.

The incident is objectively not a big one. No-one was hurt or died. And it didn’t have a financial impact. But sometimes it’s through these non-stories, perhaps because we don’t get distracted by the grand consequences, that we’re able to learn the biggest lessons.

This was about boundaries, about respecting spaces, and about our ability to recognise that there are people in our peripheral vision.

I often consider what the correct etiquette is when running into someone we know at a coffee shop. Do we wave and mouth, “Hi” from a distance? Do we walk over to the table and have a quick chat, or is it best to ignore them completely? I’m certain there’s no perfect rule and that it depends on the relationship. What I do know, especially ahead of Rosh Hashanah, is that even if someone is placed in front of us, it doesn’t mean we’ve been invited to pull up a chair.