Visit any packed food court or kopitiam in Singapore during lunch hour and you will be met with empty tables strewn with personal belongings – an indication it has been ‘choped’.
Yes, it is quite the odd national habit that has been grudgingly accepted whether you agree or not.
But Australian TikToker Chloe Baradinski has taken to the platform to ask her followers, “Guys, who is in the wrong here?” before describing an exchange she had with someone at a food court in Sydney.
According to Chloe, after getting her lunch — a bowl of laksa — she decided to sit at a table with a lone notepad on it.
“Maybe someone’s just left it,” she explained and assumed that the person would return to collect it once they realised they had lost it.
Well, someone did return but he was holding a plate of food. He then admonished her for sitting at his ‘choped’ table.
“Reserve the table? At a food court?” questioned Chloe in disbelief before declaring, “I’m sorry, but you can’t reserve tables.”
Chloe says he pushed back on how he had placed his notepad on the table to go order his food and even challenged her asking, “Are these your rules?”
To which Chloe replied to him with his own question.
“He was like a 50-year-old man who was so rude, so, so rude to me,” she shared and said even after offering him a seat, he went, “I don’t want to sit with you.”
After saying he would then need to find a new table, Chloe hammered on her belief that one “can’t reserve a table at a food court when its like 12:30 [pm] on Tuesday — peak lunchtime.
Her video has since garnered more than 585K views and more than a thousand comments, many seemingly agreeing with her stance.
A number of Singaporeans were also spotted in the comments with many explaining, “It’s the norm here in Singapore!”, with some recommending a trip to our little red dot to experience it.
“Very common in Singapore, it’s called ‘chope’,” wrote an online user who went on to describe the various items, like tissue paper and phones, that are commonly used.
One even hilariously quoted Chow Yun Fat’s character from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End saying, “Captain Sao Feng would say, “Welcome to Singapore”.