baggage
Today at lunch a guy drops off an expensive DSLR to hold a table while he orders. Singaporeans, more than any other group I've ever encountered, love holding tables. With bags, backpacks, children, aunties, even packs of tissue (the three for a dollar kind). The DSLR was a new one. Even though Singapore is supposedly safe (But low crime doesn't mean no crime! the warning signs say) you don't usually see something so obviously expensive just sitting out. A laptop bag, likely containing the laptop, yes. A laptop just sitting on the table while the owner goes off to order? Not so common.
Eating is one of Singapore's two national pastimes (the other is shopping) and competition for tables can be intense at some of the more popular eateries. So I get why people hold tables, and I sometimes play that game myself.
But it bothers me from an efficiency standpoint. At a popular place during peak hours upwards of 20% of the tables are being held by someone or something but otherwise not in use by people eating. It's one of those situations that benefits any given decision maker when they choose to hold a table but is a collective detriment to everybody, resulting in longer waits for tables, slower turnover, reduced capacity, and ultimately lower sales for the proprietors. There must be some kind of psychology behind those kinds of decisions (game theory?) where the "best" individual choice is the worst collective choice. Similar to something like fossil fuel consumption. Most people probably agree that reducing global fuel use would be a net benefit (cleaner air, potentially less climate change, reduced prices, more livable cities, etc). But individually few people make the real hard choices to significantly reduce their consumption. It's a hard problem to solve.
I'll probably still hold a table the next time I'm at a busy place.
Nobody took the DSLR in case you were worried.
Eating is one of Singapore's two national pastimes (the other is shopping) and competition for tables can be intense at some of the more popular eateries. So I get why people hold tables, and I sometimes play that game myself.
But it bothers me from an efficiency standpoint. At a popular place during peak hours upwards of 20% of the tables are being held by someone or something but otherwise not in use by people eating. It's one of those situations that benefits any given decision maker when they choose to hold a table but is a collective detriment to everybody, resulting in longer waits for tables, slower turnover, reduced capacity, and ultimately lower sales for the proprietors. There must be some kind of psychology behind those kinds of decisions (game theory?) where the "best" individual choice is the worst collective choice. Similar to something like fossil fuel consumption. Most people probably agree that reducing global fuel use would be a net benefit (cleaner air, potentially less climate change, reduced prices, more livable cities, etc). But individually few people make the real hard choices to significantly reduce their consumption. It's a hard problem to solve.
I'll probably still hold a table the next time I'm at a busy place.
Nobody took the DSLR in case you were worried.