First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

Karen says:

A couple of years ago, I took myself to a fairly upscale restaurant for dinner here on the Upper East Side of NYC. There were a number of tables available, but they sat me at what was undoubtably the worst seat in the house, immediately adjacent to the open door of a sort of service/utility closet where, I kid you not, there was a bucket and dirty mop, cleaning products, etc. I decided to “have some fun” with it, so rather than complain I simply accepted the table and ordered a drink. I then took out my phone and snapped a photo of my “view” of the closet, which I then posted to Instagram and Twitter (I have over 1,200 followers on the latter dating back to when I used to have a book blog), naming the restaurant and noting in my caption that this is the sort of seat unaccompanied women get. I proceeded to peruse the menu, order my meal, and then settled back to wait. I began getting sympathetic responses on my social media posts, “retweets,” etc. Sure enough, about 15 minutes later, just as the waiter was arriving with my food, along came the hostess and the manager, falling all over themselves, bowing and scraping, offering to move me to a different table, comp my meal and would I please take down the post. I declined to do so, finished my meal, paid, left, and never returned. I like to think of it as one of my finer moments.