Too much for Singapore’s ‘chope’ culture? 35 water bottles reserve 16 hawker seats in Singapore, owner vanishes

SINGAPORE: A very interesting yet disappointing experience happened when a netizen came across a bunch of tables being ‘choped’ by 35 water bottles at Punggol Coast Hawker Centre, and after a few minutes of waiting for the people who ‘reserved’ the seats, nobody showed up. 

On Reddit, the netizen took a picture of the incident and claimed: “The lunch crowd was starting to arrive but nobody showed up to claim these bottled.” 

With this, netizens expressed their thoughts and opinions in the comments section. One comment explained that there are no legal consequences for removing items used to chope seats. 

“Police also won’t entertain you if you complained, yes I’ve tried before, no legal consequences because of the absurd amount involved to do so,” the comment claimed. 

For some, they assumed that a company employees reserved the seats and remarked: “This is fine if the 20ish employees are actively queuing for food at the moment. It is not fine if the seats are ‘pre-booked’ for whatever event. Please shame this cheapskate company and report them to hawker management and MP.” 

One more netizen declared that companies should book a proper restaurant instead if they want to reserved such number of seats. 

A netizen also gave the benefit of the doubt and suspected that it is a marketing campaign since no one reclaimed the space. 

“Could be marketing campaign gone wrong? and they actually wanted to give away free samples, and people thought the packed water is use to chope the seat,” the comment concluded. 

The culture of ‘choping’ 

In Singapore, the practice of ‘choping’ or ‘seat hogging’ is common and is mostly done by many. This is to secure a seat in crowded places by placing items such as tissue packs, shopping bags, umbrellas, and phose cases on top of the table. These items serve as a temporary markers that the seats have been taken. 

While reserving seats this way may be acceptable for some, there should be limits to respect other people’s space and time.