Dinner with Changs

Oh, dinner was ok.

It's what I observed during dinner that I want to talk about here.

First, the background:

We were in this 15 seater restuarant. Seats were arranged side by side bar counter style. It was a relatively popular restuarant, so the queue can get pretty long. Changs and I waited about 45 mins to get seats ourselves.

So this group of 4(2 couples) were waiting in line when 2 seats opened up. The gentlemen urged the ladies to take their seats first as the couple eating next to the empty seats appeared to be finishing up. The proprietor of the store(obviously more experienced in these matters) advised against it as they frown on...nay....absolutely hate people who change seats as it screws up their order procederes.

Being smart independent youngsters, the ladies took their seat anyway. Then, disaster struck. Across the room from the girls, another couple vacated their seats. The two guys had no choice but to occupy those seats. 5 mins later, the seats next to the girls emptied, and the guys naturally requested for a change of seats. They were surprised to be told they could not change their seats.

Why did I find this scenario interesting? Well, it illustrates perfectly why some people act like perfect morons and some come across as inflexible assholes. Let's look at it from the customer's point of view first:

1) two seats are open. They have already waited an hour outside the store. Obviously they are reluctant to wait longer for a 4 seater to open up.
2)ladies first(which was downright silly btw). There's being polite, and then there's just poor planning. The girls sat down first
3)The guys got a seat far removed from their female companions
4)A seat opens up next to the girls.
5)Logic dictates that it's natural the guys should be allowed to sit next to the girls, right?


BUT from the store's POV:
1) two seats are open. They want to be effecient. It is not effecient for them to sit 2 people who will obviously not be eating at optimal speed if they have to wait for their companions to get a seat. They prefer an isolated couple to get the two seats, and warn the party of 4 that they may get split up
2)party of 4 appears to weigh the merits and decide to split anyway
3)everyone's eventually seated. Crisis averted
4)Guys ask for change of seats.
5)Store obviously refuses, seeing as they have ALREADY warned the guys this would happen and they took the risk anyway.

Viewing the situation on both sides, it's obvious that the store was right not to reseat them. If you're still wondering why the store was right, you need to think about this again.(hint: people need to be made to pay the price if they choose to take risks)

But we face these situations on a daily basis in a different form. I guess my point here is to try to look at a situation from the other party's side more often.

For eg, how often have you concluded that decisions made by your superior made absolutely no sense and was totally ineffecient? Most of the time, it's because you're standing on a different level and can't see all the balls in the air. Your boss may choose to keep you in the air longer than neccessary simply because he needs time to catch the other balls. He's ineffecient only from your viewpoint. That doesn't mean he's incompetent. He just has other stuff to consider.

Another example would be the government. I've lately been reading alot of complaints about government policies. People have been huge on sarcasm when it comes to counter-intuitive policy making. It would help alot of these people actually stopped to think from the gov's perspective once in a while.