Maintaining personal space: A new rule

I was doing my weeklong clinical update in a major regional hospital. The cafeteria was always packed during lunch breaks. I tried to have lunch after the rush hour, to avoid the congestion but, still, the café was fairly busy. There I learnt a new rule about interpersonal boundaries.

In general, people (mostly urban population) maintain an invisible personal space around them, which they expect others to stay out of. The distance that people keep from one another depends upon the relationship they have with the other person in an interaction, or the context of its occurrence. When we are in crowds, this personal space shrinks, and when we are in a more spacious environment, our alarm bells ring if someone who has no particular reason to do so gets too close to us.

Applying this rule in the hospital café (where everybody shares tables as in a Hong Kong fast-food restaurant), I would expect that, at a table for four, when only one seat is taken by me, the next person would come and sit diagonally opposite from where I am (Fig. 1), thus maximizing personal space.

To my surprise, someone came to sit right beside me, leaving the two seats on the opposite side of the table empty (Fig 2). Initially, I thought this was entirely random, but it happened to me more than once, so it had to mean something, and that got me thinking.

Interpersonal rules that I have learnt in the past dictate that, when I sit down diagonally opposite someone, I should ask whether the seat is taken. Even if, because of intense competition for space during lunch, I do not ask, I should look the person in the eye, nod and/or smile. By sitting right next to me, however, the person does not need to look at me or acknowledge my existence.

I find this both interesting and alarming. Have we become that alienated from one another?

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.