I know I'm adding to the conversation late, and that you're one of the conscientious single-people-in-a-booth, but one other issue that drives me nuts about this is that while it's possible to ask someone to share their booth when you go to Diesel just as an individual, it's not as easy when you go with friends. It's frustrating to go to Diesel as a group of 4 and have to try to convince someone alone in a booth to pack up their stuff and go share with another singleton so that you can sit in the same booth as your friends.

I'd prefer if there were some explicit ground rules laid out by Diesel about how they expect their customers to booth share, so that I wouldn't have to feel like I was the one being radical and putting someone out for suggesting that 4 people who just bought dinner have more right to a booth than one person writing a paper, even if that person was there first.

I don't plan social outings at Diesel anymore, because of this. I will attend someone else's outing there, and sometimes find myself there on my own, but I find that in general it's pretty inhospitable to any group larger than two, sometimes even larger than one, unless the group gets there early and stakes out space as it becomes available and stays camped out for the bulk of the night.

All that said, if I were a grad student I'd probably want to spread out in a booth on occasion myself. I just would keep a proactive eye out on the crowding, and try to indicate to people clearly looking for seating that I'm willing to accomodate them.

Really, the issue is that Davis could easily accomodate another entire cafe the size of Diesel, entirely composed of single-occupancy desks.