This troper gets an SSS on this, nowadays

This troper started out with this, but in the end ended up sitting by all the other EatingLunchAlone kids. One was a Russian transfer student with a hate of America and an extremely heavy accent, two were developmentally disabled girls who managed to pull of TotallyRadical, one was a quiet Pentacostalist Christian artist, one was my not too social but otherwise normal HeterosexualLifePartner (sort of...we're both girls and I'm not heterosexual), and then me, an antisocial socially awkward weird math genius. We were a weird group. It was plesant, when the TotallyRadical girls weren't tossing around gossip and "look here, girlfweend". When that happened I missed the good old days of sitting alone, lol.

This trope fits me to a "T". I sat alone at lunch partly because I couldn't handle the socializing, and partly because I viewed lunch, like recess, as a quiet time to relax and reflect on the little things in life amid the constant troubles of school and homework. Of course, my middle school and high school teachers did everything they could to keep me company.

Ditto here. I can't remember the last time I willingly ate lunch with someone else.

Funny that this troper remembers perfectly well the petrifying anxiousness everytime she realised there was no one to sit with during lunch, and how she felt like everyone was looking at her and judging. What's funny about it? That a few years later I finally made friends and suddenly felt very bothered by their constant attention. I also remember well the feeling of relief when I could get rid of them during lunch or recess or whatever, and the disappointment when someone else decided to 'help me' by making me company.

Your situation is a lot like mine! I didn't make friends at my new school for 2 years, and when I finally did I soon found myself annoyed by them and their shallowness. I also attempt to avoid them at lunch (I'm doing it right now actually, they're all sitting outside gossping while I'm in the library writing these words.) I wonder why I even bother hanging round with them anyway because we have little in common.

At work, this troper closes his office door and eats lunch alone at his computer while reading TV Tropes.

Seconded. I'm a teacher, sitting alone at lunch in my otherwise-empty classroom doing exactly this. I am the only man in the math department. The 8 other teachers are fine women one-on-one, but put them all together...No thank you.

TruthInTelevision, as this troper can attest.

Seconded. I know your pain. You have my axe...

Subvered; some people will actually try to eat alone, sometimes to look cool, sometimes because they don't like classmates, awkward in social situations, or other reasons.

This troper is of the latter, part of it is because some people's eating habits are ''disgusting'' to watch.

This troper eats alone because there are more tables then students, and you get more tray/leg room.

Subverted and played straight with this troper. The first day of highschool this troper didn't know anyone. Subverted later when a girl at my table pissed me off.

This troper makes it a rule to never go to an occupied lunch table. It's not that I don't like people or lunching with them, its just that I'm a leader and not a follower, so if they want to eat lunch with me, I'm going to be in charge.

TruthInTelevision, yes, for this troper, but not necessarily due to explicit ostracism. What's wrong with enjoying the taste of food rather than the conversation (usually banal) of others?

Also, this Troper. Sure, other people are fine as classmates, but being around them in all their social problems and banal discussions really pisses me off.

Eating is this troper's alone time. She ate lunch alone at school most of the time, and now eats dinner alone at the university dining hall, just because she doesn't like being around people while she eats.

This troper chooses to eat alone most of the time. I don't have any specific aversion to my classmates (I hardly know most of them); I just follow a get-in-eat-get-out approach to mealtimes.

This troper, since his friends are all starving college students, ends up eating alone quite frequently by virtue of being willing to spend money going out to lunch while they arent.

This troper ended up eating alone almost all the way through school, due to an inability to make friends. This was remedied in the last two years of school by finally finding people in his own age group who wanted to hang out with him.

Same here. I ate lunch alone up until my sophomore year in high school.

This troper does it all the time. He's not antisocial, he just thinks most of the other people he talks to are annoying.

I was with you in high school now I eat alone because eating in my room at university is much more comfortable.

This troper was this in middle school. Except that kids would sit with me so the (small) grade wouldn't look bad for leaving me alone, and then proceed to ignore me. So it was sort of the same thing.

This Troper has embodied this trope since eighth grade. None of my friends had the same lunch time as me, so I started skipping lunch. I made a stealth game out of avoiding the teachers so I could find an open computer lab abandoned by a class that was out to lunch. In ninth grade, (high school where I live) I snuck out onto the patio and ate with no one for lunch. According to the school rules, the patio is supposed to be for seniors only. I was a brave little freshman, but eventually the seniors' teasing became too much. I tried eating on a staircase for a few weeks, and I got caught (but not in trouble!) because this spot left me unexposed. I started to feel uncomfortable with the obviousness of my spot, so I started eating with my mentor/counselor (and several kids who either had issues or mental problems) on the days that she was there. I ate underneath a different staircase accompanied by about 10 crude penis doodles and some bad poetry on the walls in the days that she wasn't there. I bring my sharpie and add my own graffiti from time to time. This counselor/staircase pattern has been brought with me into tenth grade.

This troper somewhat subverts the trope because he chooses to sit alone, he has never been able to have a healthy relationship (ok a lie but mostly true) thus sits alone because he feels self-conscious whenever he eats around other people.

This troper was the same way. I eventually got used to it, but I'm still cautious whenever I eat messy foods like nachos.

This troper went through this in elementary school and not by choice, and that plus some really intense bullying means that she still has a complex about eating by herself and will sometimes border on panic attacks. Yeah, KidsAreCruel.

For me, it's the opposite. I border on panic attacks when I'm forced to eat in crowded areas, unless it's overcrowded with my friends. I can't stand the lunchroom or busy restaurants. I just can't stand eating when there is a large group of anonymous people talking loudly.

This troper eats lunch alone as he likes, whenever he can, to have it at different times than his friends. He eats at the university restaurant, which is open from 11:00 to 13:30.

This troper eats his lunch alone whenever he can. He believes it is rude to sit on an already occupied table.

This troper, because she has Avoidant Personality Disorder and would be too busy worrying what her companions thought of her food choices, her attire, the way she sits...

Happens to this troper on days when none of his friends class schedules match up with his. The number of days per week varies with each semester.

Subverted in Da_Nuke's university, where eating lunch alone is perfectly normal and nobody thinks much of it -- it just means your friends are not in college at the moment.

This troper eats alone because of a bad experience where someone I was sitting with ate my pizza, after I put it down after a couple of bites. And I really wanted to finish the pizza.

Subverted in this troper's case, when he chose to sit at an empty table for much of his senior year, but had it taken over by people who insisted on talking to him. I'd call it an UnwantedHarem, but...hoarf.

This troper. Most of the time he likes to eat alone (stems from bullying problem), but if other people are not a prick, then sometimes he joins with others.

This troper (and I've seen this happen to others), when choosing to eat lunch alone, was often accosted by other well-meaning students, total strangers, insisting that she join 'their table' and that no one should have to eat lunch all by themselves. Declining the invitation (however politely, and it varied) provoked utter shock from the inviters. I think highschoolers base a good portion of their actual social behavior on tropes from fiction, even more than the rest of us; I'm sure there's a wiki page on it here somewhere, the reverse of {{Truth in Television}}. Anyone know what it is?

RealityIsUnrealistic.

This troper always preferred to eat alone. It never really worked before college because people would come and sit by me, and it's not like I would ever say "go away, I want to eat alone". It works in college only because he's found that if you eat at awkward times (like right when dinner starts) there's nobody else there and so nobody will bother you. Also in high school senior year the senior dining room was so small eating alone wasn't really an option, but it was still better to eat there if you didn't want to be annoyed by idiots.

This Troper sees lunch as a valid reason to read and eat in peace (yes, she doesn't choose to sit alone because of bullying - though that is something she goes through - but because she wants to ''read''), and she most-always tries to sit alone. But someone in middle school got the great idea to make assigned seats, as well as the even BETTER idea to say, "Oh, look at {{Magnezone}} [real name removed]. She must be so lonely sitting by herself, despite the fact that she looks perfectly happy and is reading a book! Oh, but wait, she never got an opportunity to pick a seat at lunch because she broke her leg on the second day of school! Let's put her at the same table with the loner girl who can't control her urges to scream like a banshee! Oh, goody, maybe they can ''improve each other's social standing!!'' ...What? She doesn't like noise? Well, nobody told me ''that''! Pity we can't change the seating arrangements, eh?" None of this is exaggeration.

This troper spent a lot of time eating lunch alone when she attended her new school in tenth grade. Just saying - social nobodies do exist.

While I generally eat lunch with other people, once or twice a month I'll eat alone, usually because there's no one else free at the time, but sometimes because I'm a snob.

This troper at alone for years. Since she discovered the internet and anime however, she has befriended the geeks and eats with them. :D

This troper eats alone pretty much every day. And occasionally reads TVTropes while doing so.

This troper is generally a loner, and prefers to eat alone - and, admittedly, loves to eat without the distraction (or judgement of eating habits).

This troper ate alone for a while when she got turned into a ThirdWheel.

This troper often eats alone, purely out of preference.

This troper made a promise to himself when he started college, he would never eat alone. He managed to go through college eating always with his friends (or eating a snack to avoid being alone in the cafeteria) but in Law School he has been forced to eat alone only three times.

This troper did a program where she took college classes in high school, so she knew almost no one at the university and usually ate alone. Then when when she went to college "for real," she still ate meals alone in the dorms. She's never particularly minded. If you bring a book with you, it looks less pathetic (at least, that's what she hopes).

I have two de facto best friends in class whom I absolutely love, and vice versa. Halfway through the third semester of our second high school year, however, I developed this habit of eating lunch in the stairwell instead of in the cafeteria with them; it might have been because they had become part of a group I was not a part of, which made sitting with them rather awkward. It was okay, though; my place meant my LoveInterest would pass by me.

This troper never really noticed the negative implications of eating lunch alone before he discovered the trope. Thanks for making me feel even more insecure about myself, TV Tropes.

I did this regularly since 8th grade (prior to that I went to a school with assigned tables for lunch). It was mostly because all my friends had a different lunch period than me (and the ones that didn't usually skipped lunch). As with many others here, I had the people who'd come over to give me company, but since I don't really talk much (something only people who knew me were aware of) it probably seemed like I was being anti-social. Now that I'm in college I don't even eat at school (which is good because I don't know if anyone I know even attends the same school... or any school in a few cases).

I eat alone most of the time simply because I don't like the people around me. At one point, I sat down at some random table, and a guy came up to me and chatted with me for a bit. Then I realized the table I was sitting at was completely devoid of any other students besides me. Now I go to a school that is severely overcrowded, so this kinda scared me a bit.

This troper actually prefers to eat alone (except when the eating itself is a social event like a family reunion or a dinner date): he is pretty utilitarian by nature, and as eating takes time from actually being productive, he tries to minimize the time required. Eating and talking can't be done concurrently (as both involves the same organ), eating with someone lengthens the eating process, thus detracts more time from actually doing something.

If it's possible to do without offending somebody (parties come to mind), I eat alone whenever I can. First, I'd rather recuperate from socializing and focus on the food. Second, the noises of other people eating drive me up walls.

Slightly odd relationship with this trope. I usually ate with my friends during high school unless scheduling made that impossible. Then, I could choose to eat with some really nice acquaintances or have a quiet lunch--occasionally with other people coming over to join me anyway. It rarely felt uncomfortable. When college came my dorm happened to be situated ridiculously far from the good dining hall, so I usually just made myself a sandwich or something out of laziness.

This unknown troper always prefers to eat alone. Gets really annoying when someone sees me sitting alone and therefore I ''must'' be sad and lonely, and try to strike up conversations which generally end rather awkwardly. I mostly do it out of a (mostly irrational) dislike for most people in my class.

This troper used to eat alone for practical reasons. His classmates steal food from him. Now, he eats with the EasilyAmused classmates to snark, and make them choke. Other than that, he still sees no need to join in.

This troper often eats alone at high school. But I have good reasons:

If I have something productive I must do during lunch period. So I either eat quickly or eat while walking towards the classroom.

My ''friend'' I often eat lunch with often has {{Ax Crazy}} or {{Manipulative Bastard}} moments. If I don't want to stay with him, I usually use the same excuse above (I always use that advantage if I truly have to).

Sometimes I don't want to use either excuse because I'm {{Surrounded by Idiots}} often. I'm practically {{The Drifter}} during lunch, talking with others for a minute as I circle the grounds.

This Troper prefers to eat alone because A) she doesn't like to talk and fells awkward being the only to not to contribute to a conversation, B) she's a naturally a slow eater and if she does talk to people she wont get her lunch finished, and C) she would much rather read/finish homework/doodle/etc. if she has free time after eating, anyway.

One of the above tropers mentioned avoiding people at lunch because of their disgusting eating habits. This troper avoids people at lunch because her table manners are bad, she knows it, and she doesn't want to gross anyone out.

This troper started eating lunch alone in high school, when she would always head up to the library when she was done and thus didn't want to leave someone ''else'' alone. Now that she's in college... well, she just doesn't like other people much and would rather be somewhere the campus wireless reaches.

What always works for me is to pick a seat somewhere in a corner, pull out a book, and then completely ignore everything around you. I can have a whole table full of people around me, but I will still get the feeling that I am completely alone if I have a book.

I'm like this. I love people and I love to talk, don't get me wrong. But at lunch I just kind of want to sit and read by myself. I'm not antisocial but I do like some alone time. In 7th grade, I was quickly alienated from all of my friends because I read so much and it made me feel miserable. Now I tend to force myself to sit down next to ''someone'' and attempt to socialize, even though most of the time it's me sitting next to a friend and making boring, trivial conversation (which I've always hated) or maybe even no conversation at all.

This troper was like that by choice in elementary, middle, and high school. Now, in university, he tends to take his meals at odd hours, if at all.

This Troper doesn't like eating lunch with people. Really. I would much rather spend this time enjoying my meal and not hear a word and THEN I join the others. People often don't understand that this troper NEEDS some alone time every now and then. Being an only child has a lot to do with it I think.

This troper prefers doing this, since she usually reads while eating and prefers the solitude to the general screaming, gossiping chaos that is the lunch table. Of course, when things get too dull, she just drags herself to said table and basks in the chaos.

This troper is an expert in this, particularly because many times his classmates/seniors/freshmen take too long to decide to have lunch... or don't do it entirely. Due to this, he has eaten in every building on the university. And there were times where there was a table of known people, but he still ate alone because he felt his presence would be unnecessary.

This troper, due to his grab bag of psychoses, is a bit funny when it comes to eating. To him, eating is a bit like going to the bathroom, only in reverse. I know it sounds stupid but eating is a thing you do in private, like sleeping, brushing teeth, etc. I'm sure my shrink knows why that is.

This troper prefers doing this, even as an adult. Maybe it's because I'd much rather be by myself and do my own thing...?

This Tropette can honestly say that this trope is a FateWorseThanDeath in middle school.

I have friends, I swear. They're just not in the same lunch period as me. . . Though I have taken to eating with a small group of acquaintances, let's just say I'm a fast eater. I also read or do homework while eating, so those few people are little more than LonersAreFreaks repellent. If the library allowed food, that would be another story.

This troper always eats lunch alone because she goes to a different school than her other friends. Some other students usually come to her table, but she pays no attention to them because she likes the time to relax herself.

This troper moved the last quarter of sophomore year to a new school (the school I moved from was also a new school) and sat alone at a table, eating and reading. I sat alone in English, and a girl promptly asked me if I wanted to sit with the girl and her friends. Surprised, I said no. She kept asking, eventually I caved, and then one day - voila! Friends of hers came over and pulled me over to their table. (I made other friends, ones I actually new, and sat with them most of the time). The thing is, the reason I didn't try to sit with new people/make friends was because I missed my old friends and didn't want anymore. Obviously, it didn't go as planned.

Played straight, then inverted, then played straight again by this troper. Up until sophomore year in high school, I sat alone (or at best, with two other fellow social pariahs) for various reasons. Sophomore year, I hung out with a half dozen other people to play Magic in the cafeteria, which (as I discovered later) made me one of the "cool kids". Now, as an adult in the military, I usually am sitting alone because the only chance I get to read is while I'm eating!

Played straight here. I normally eat alone in school, even forfeiting dinner at home with my parents to enjoy a burger by myself on a lonely walk home from school. I keep myself company with quality tunes, so its not too bad.

This troper regularly ate lunch alone through middle school and the first year or so of high school. Worse, though, is eating at a table where you DON'T know the people even vaguely well, simply because there aren't enough tables in the lunch room to be able to eat alone. Oh god, attempting to avoid eye contact and eat lunch... PAINFULLY AWKWARD.

Do I ever know it. Lunch tables must be insanely expensive - there were times where groups of people had to split up because there weren't enough tables to accomodate them. So, of course, if you ended up in a different lunch block than your friends (which I always inevitably did), you either had to go up to someone you talked to maybe once in your life and awkwardly ask to sit there, or sit at the end of a mostly-full table of strangers (or, on REALLY bad days, people who you already didn't get along with). Not to mention that actually eating lunch as a girl (which I am) was consider taboo and instantly made you one of the 'fat girls', which I really wasn't. Last year, my junior year, was considerably better - at first, I had my own table. Then, once my StalkerWithACrush came into the picture, I sat with a group of people I'd kind of grown apart from and didn't talk to anybody. THEN, I somehow ended up in the underclassmen lunch, and due to knowing NONE of them, I sat in the hallway, which is technically against school rules (as is going to the library or anywhere else during lunch time, so the awkwardness is unavoidable AND the lunchroom is extra crowded), but managed to talk my way out of it when teachers tried to reprimand me. Hopefully senior year won't suck QUITE as bad as the rest, but with one of my only friends having graduated, and the other having switched schools, I've gone from 'maybe I'll have the same lunch as ONE of them this year' to 'I have no friends to even sit by', so the prospect's not looking good.

I'm a college student, and even though I have friends, I usually eat lunch alone. I actually prefer to eat quickly and go find something else to do. Sitting with someone when I'm eating is just distracting. But I still feel rather pathetic when I'm sitting alone and everyone else in the lunchroom is sitting with friends. I usually notice guys eating lunch by themselves much more often than girls (I'm a girl).

This troper thought it was horrible to eat alone the few times she did in middle school and the beginning of highschool, then she got used to it. She don't like eating alone it's just that her classmates usually ignores her and sits at other tables if she sits down first and if she sits down at the same table they'll leave when finished and not wait. She sometimes meet up with middle school friends but since lunch time is varied she eats alone several times a week. She did not even go to the over the day class trip to the capital since she can't eat alone outside.

This Troper seems to have gone through every incarnation of this trope. In elementary school I was occasionally ditched by my friend (yes, ''singular''), then I moved to a new school where I didn't make friends for ages, sat alone and read while teachers tried to make me sit with others to cure my lonerism, made some friends who were okay but not that interesting so I occasionally went and sat elsewhere, moved back to my first school and now have assimilated myself into a fantastic mob of people who provide lunchtime entertainment better than most of the stuff on TV.

How super-awkward is it when you're the first person at the table and all you can think about is "My friends are coming soon! I swear, I'm not actually a loner. I'm just eeeeaarly. Wait, why do I care about them judging me? I don't care about opinions, they can think whatever they like! ... hurry up friends..."

This troper waits until he could get home from school (food on the table by 4p) for lunch. No wonder why I surf TVTropes during lunch hour.

I ate lunch by myself for years and I know how much it sucks so today when I saw a kid from my Metals class by himself I thought about going over to invite him to eat with me, but in the end I was too much of a coward to do so...Plus I couldn't think if it would be weird for a senior girl to ask a freshman boy to eat with her.

Same troper as above, I learned something at graduation. My student body president Senior Year used to eat lunch alone like me in middle school coz he thought absolutely no one wanted him around. He's one of the most popular guys in school now. It was so heartwrenching to hear how much it hurt him. I sort of fell in love...

This troper eats lunch alone because she likes the silence- her school is full of very loud students, so there's no real silence, but at least at my spot, there's nobody else in close vicinity and I get to watch the birds. It's nice.

This troper surprisingly averted this trope all the way through high school, despite how little he has in the way of social skills. Played straight when he was in college though, but that's mostly because of everyone being on different schedules.

Me, all the time. Even when I started to make friends, I still prefer to eat alone and then go to them. I notice this especially when I'm waiting in a cafe, waiting for my mother to pick me up, sitting in a corner somewhere, buried in all the social interaction and trying to be completely inconspicuous (a blade in the crowd, if you will.)

Grognor eats lunch alone because he has no friends.

This Troper will occasionally move to another empty table halfway through the lunch period when she gets tired of listening to her ex-best friend babble stupidly (the lunchroom is pretty packed; every other table but the one empty table is full, so there's nowhere else to sit besides the empty table).

This troper sat alone in middle school. It wasn't the other students so much, as the desire to sit in an area where the birds couldn't crap on me again. I got bombed twice in three years and I don't know anyone else who was hit once.

Ever since elementary school I was like this for several reasons: I liked being by myself, all of the other seats I try to sit at was saved for another person, none of my friends had the same lunch as I did or I had no friends at the time. Partially subverted when I eat lunch in a classroom of one of my teachers. I will socialize with the other students in the room and sometimes the teacher after I'm done eating.

Eating school lunch food sucks arse. Literally, it's to the point that I don't eat school lunch food any more and now I eat at home (frozen stuff from the supermarket is way better than the rumoured surplus you find at school). I just happen to fit into this trope.

This troper tried so hard in school, but either there were no empty tables, or someone would come pester her. Ugh. Now, if she absolutely must eat in public, she usually hides behind a tree. Her mom used to take it up a notch by fleeing to the bathroom; this troper would have done the same, but the schools were very strict and would have given her a slew of detentions for cutting "class," bringing food into the bathroom, etc.

I've usually eaten alone since seventh grade, since none of my friends had lunch at the same time as me then. After a while, I started to eat alone by preference, since I've never talked much at lunch anyway. All I do is read and eat, really, and whenever some well-meaning people come up and try to start a conversation or make me sit at their table, it just ends up being awkward (I'm not the best conversationalist). I was a bit self-conscious about it at first, but it's mostly gone away now.

I didn't eat lunch alone in high school or middle school, because most of my friends had the same lunch period I did. Now that I'm in college, I've adopted the "get in, eat, get out" policy. I only share a table if someone comes up and asks if they can sit with me - and then only if there are no other empty tables.

For this troper's school, usually it's breakfast time, (we finish school a bit faster than international schools....) In this case, subverted, since I often look for classmates to sit with and they're pretty much okay with it. The lunch time during sophomore, however....

This troper used to eat alone because eating in front of other people made her nervous. It got so bad, she wouldn't go to the college cafeteria (sometimes she'd go, but only if it wasn't during the busiest hour). She'd either eat carrots or popcorn in her dorm room or skip the meal altogether. She's gotten better; now she can eat in front of people, but she still ends up eating alone in the cafeteria because her schedule is different from that of her friends and she likes to read and write while eating.

This troper eats by herself, but only because when she ''does'' eat with her friends she ends up doing a lot more talking than eating and always ends up hungry later because of it.

Variant: I eat lunch alone most of the time because I have a different lunch hour and a different preferred spot from my usual companions. It doesn't really bother me that much: I know I'll run into them some time in the day, when our schedules intersect.

This tropette and her friends always eat lunch together in an isolated but very pleasant corner. On days when they don't show up, I sit there alone and scarf my lunch, receiving misaimed sympathy from other kids. Oops. Hey, you're {{eating lunch alone}}? Helping Me}} Mind if I join you?