Neither social distance nor pressures without limits. Who is there?

The other day, walking alone in a restaurant that I frequent, I chose a table that seemed to me to have the right distance from the one next to it, occupied by two businessmen.

After about ten minutes another customer arrived who asked for a table for two and refused to take one that was in a passing position.

The restaurateur promptly took that table and slipped it between mine and that of the two businessmen, choosing to benefit the latter by equipping them with an extension that increased the distance between them and the new customers.

Result: the “offending” table was one meter from theirs and twenty centimeters from mine. All this without even asking me what I thought. How would you have reacted? I got up and explained to the landlady that there were no longer the safety conditions for me to stay.

In the meantime, several questions have arisen.

• First: was it possible that I was treated worse because I was alone and a woman? In addition to another woman?
• Second: is it ever admissible that, under the rules still in force, we must claim their respect by passing through the precise point on duty?
• Third, and more important: how many of you are ready to cancel the “social distance”?

I leave the reflection to you on the first two questions. To the third I answer that certain rules introduced to avoid contagion today seem to me to all intents and purposes norms of good education and well-being. To be saved.

I’m certainly not talking about the ban on gathering tout court. But the idea that everyone can enjoy a public space without having to share it stuck to someone else seems to me an achievement of civilization.

PS At the restaurant, the owner changed her mind and placed the two customers elsewhere. But first he completely eliminated the distance between my table and the empty one. So it appeared that I was occupying a table of four by myself. A small pillory for a big pain in the ass.

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