This is… extraordinary:
“I perched at my favourite seat at the bar and started to respond to all the emails that had arrived on the flight over,” she explains. “A waiter approached – a familiar face, but oddly hesitant on this occasion. He advised – with evident embarrassment – that I was no longer permitted to eat at my usual spot and that I must now sit down at a table.”
Essentially, they’re working on the assumption that single women sitting at the bar are hookers — or, at least, are treating their lone female customers as less important that making prostitution less obvious.
Sexist obliviousness is still sexism.