[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by JesseK

A fundamental issue with this topic is brought up in the first story that gives us context:

The OP wanted to save a seat.

Ignore any perceived contradiction, perceived double standards or perceived hypocrisy. This situation brings up the point that people want to sit together, and should be allowed to sit together.

How many saved seats it too many? 1 seat? 12 seats? 48 seats for the 54-person team?

Additionally - if an empty seat is 'fair game' at any point in time, it becomes a real powder keg of a situation anytime someone gets up to use the restroom, eat, check the robot etc.

If you enforce the letter of the rule to its most literal interpretation, anytime someone gets up (for whatever reason), a pack of people can be waiting, claim a seat and quote the rule. I'm not saying people and teams don't take advantage of this, but at the same time I'm failing to see how many of the proposed solutions aside from straight up assigned seats will address the issue. I also can't quite wrap my head around how assigned seats would work with the variability in team size and how that too wouldn't lead to chunks of empty seats in premium locations that people would subsequently want to sit in...

-Brando