Choosing somewhere to sit

When sitting, be it in a cafe, restaurant, lecture, you must try to get an extra seat if you want to appear French. This way, your bag and coat may sit next to you. I haven’t yet worked out why this is so important. It is possibly so you have all the important things closer to hand, rather than having to bend down to pick your bag off the floor, or it could be a natural reaction dating back to the days when people smoked indoors, and so the floor was covered in cigarette ash. Who’d want to put their bag/coat on that? I must stress that at this point, these are only speculations.

Because most spare seats will be occupied by coats or bags (as explained above), especially in the university restaurant, it is perfectly acceptable to ask someone to move their things so that you can sit down. This is not at all considered rude, in the same way that it shouldn’t be considered rude when the cashier starts scanning the next customer’s items while you’re still putting yours away at the supermarket. It’s not rude, it’s just what’s ‘done’.