Munday on Monday: Open seating

No seating chart is formalized;

No printed plan exists,

Yet when an interloper sits

How easily we’re miffed.

By custom — habit — usage trend,

By rights that seat is mine;

So if another dares to sit,

Have I no cause to whine?

Politeness bars my speaking up;

My glare will have to do,

Conveying thus the message stern:

You’re sitting in my pew!

This story was originally published October 16, 2016 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Munday on Monday: Open seating."