Australian woman shocked by ‘chop-ing’ culture in Singapore when SG man ‘chops’ food court table even with notepad

SINGAPORE: An Australian, Chloe Baradinsky, asked her TikTok followers: “Who is wrong here? after standing his ground when a man yelled at him for taking the table he had reserved at a food court.

Although choosing your dining space is a norm in Singapore and elsewhere in the world, this is not necessarily the case.

TikTok user @chloebadinsky uploaded a video about her encounter with the man earlier this month, which has since gone viral, gaining nearly 600,000 votes.

@chloebaradinsky

Keep in mind that he stayed away from “his table” for 15 minutes to get food.

♬ original sound – Chloé

Ms Baradinsky said the incident happened during the “lunch rush hour” at the food court, when there were no free tables.

However, she saw a notepad on a table where no one was sitting, and she thought it had been left inadvertently by someone.

She sat there with her bowl of laksa and left the notepad where it was, because its owner might come back to collect it if and when he found it missing.

But while she was having her meal, a man in his fifties came back and “rudely” told her: “I reserved this table.” Shocked, she responded to him saying it was a food court, where people are not allowed to reserve tables.

The man then told him, “I put my notepad down here to go order my food, and now I’m back.” »

“Keep in mind he stayed away from ‘his table’ for 15 minutes to get food,” she wrote in the caption. When Ms. Baradinsky again told him that that’s not how things happen in a food court, he asked her, “Are those your rules?”

She then offered to share her table with the man, telling him that he could sit on the other side of the table. But he told him: “I don’t want to sit with you.

“I guess you need to find a new table then,” she replied. She also wrote in a comment on her video: “I now have a very nice lady sitting at my table because she needed a seat. »

Many people commenting on his post agreed that tables cannot be reserved in food courts in Australia. They praised her for standing her ground, answering her question that she was not wrong in this situation.

Many commenters also told him about the mug situation in Singapore, where it’s common to reserve a table even with just a few napkins.

“Very common in Singapore, we call ‘chope’ the table with tissue paper, a bottle of water, an umbrella, etc.,” wrote one.

“I live in Singapore and you’re right! That’s how we do it here. This is in no way about being rude, just the way people indicate they have booked a table and gone to buy their food,” another agreed.

“You have clearly never been to Singapore,” one user wrote.

Other commenters said this was also done in Japan and Norway, but some TikTok users said that if someone left something in the food courts where they live, the item would be gone by the time where he would return with his food. /TISG

Also read: Swiss woman says in SG, queuing, drinking, Singlish, calling people ‘uncles and aunts’ are ‘weird Singaporean habits’