THEY are a common sight in crowded hawker centres: a pack of tissues plonked down at an empty spot which practically screams 'Find another seat!'

Full Story

Way to go SMU!

Isn't it amazing that it is mostly women who will do it, and sadly Singaporean women.

Seriously, I hope the students have tried working in the cbd district for a few months before they do this particular act. Try having only a very packed one hour or less lunch time, which includes finding a rare seat in the super crowded hawkers, long queues for food everywhere which doesn't leave much time to eat at the end. It's just simply not feasible to have somebody wait at the table because there's simply no time to wait.

The para "The students are hoping to encourage patrons to tell others that the seat is occupied, rather than have diners face the tissues. " is odd...something wrong with it

it should be

"The students are hoping to encourage patrons to tell others that the seat is NOT occupied, rather than have diners face the tissues. "

Hopefully there will be fewer people who keep a table empty for ten minutes, when a meal does not take more than five minutes to finish.

if the patrons are already seated at the table, isn't it already occupied ?

what is the newswriter trying to say ?

Mr Kumar said his group was not against reserving seats at food centres. Rather, they wanted to encourage people to find a more gracious method.

It would be better if they could suggest an alternative suggestion first before telling people not to use tissue packs?

if a patron is at the food centre by him/herself, how to secure a seat before going to get the food ? get the food first and walk around with food and drink and look for a seat ? bumped by some eye-less people and spill all over ?

i have seen people who bought food first, put it on the table and go get a drink...and when he is back, the birds are having a feast on his plate of food

also, there are others who finish the food first, go to get a drink, and the seat is occupied by someone else when he is back...

HINT : enterprising people should start a "seat reservation service" for the patrons, say for a 50 cents charge, to hold the seat until the person is back from buying food

but then this enterprising people will be illegalised, just like the valet parking service at holland v carpark

sigh ! this is singapore, this cannot that cannot

laymanbrothers, the group is called "tissue parody". what they are trying to do by using tissue packets is to create a parody i.e. there is a tissue packet there, but no one has "choped" this taken. whereas the norm is when people see a tissue packet, it means the table is taken.

the group just feels that it is better for 1 person from a lunch group to stay behind to show the table is taken rather than using tissues/umbrellas to ask people to try another table