The latest case study: a woman at a doctor's office who reportedly demanded to be seen early because she had a 10:30 business meeting, then emerged into the crowded waiting room, kicked off her shoes, sat criss-cross applesauce on the couch, and proceeded to conduct a full virtual meeting for twenty minutes. When confronted, she looked at the person like they were the rude one.

Of course she did.

This isn't an isolated incident. It's a pattern. Dogs on restaurant tables. Speakerphone calls on Muni. Full-volume TikTok scrolling at the gym. Zoom meetings blasting from coffee shop corners. We've quietly surrendered every shared space to whoever has the least self-awareness.

As one SF resident put it: "I'll only join a Zoom from a public place if I'm just listening and my camera is off." That's called having manners. It's apparently a dying art.

Now, look — we're not unsympathetic to the grind. Remote work has blurred every boundary between professional and personal life, and some bosses make it nearly impossible to take a few hours off for a medical appointment. One local noted that a former boss demanded PTO requests a month in advance for routine doctor visits, even when there was literally nothing to do at work. That's its own kind of dysfunction. The modern workplace has created monsters, and sometimes those monsters end up barefoot in your allergist's waiting room.

But here's the thing: your work-life balance crisis is not a license to colonize shared spaces. The doctor's office isn't a WeWork. The bus isn't your phone booth. And a restaurant isn't your dog's personal dining room.

What's most troubling isn't even the behavior itself — it's the fact that nobody pushes back. Not the staff, not the other patients, nobody. We've become so conflict-averse, so trained to mind our own business, that we've effectively ceded all public norms to the most shameless person in the room.

This is what happens when a city loses its social contract. Not through policy or legislation, but through a thousand tiny surrenders. Every time we shrug and put in our AirPods instead of saying something, Main Character Syndrome wins.

Another local had the right idea: "If she's loud in public on a work Zoom, then everyone around her is now part of the Zoom. Start offering her advice or counter points."

Honestly? That might be the only cure.