Which is what it boils down to me. This is a problem of Disney's making. For decades, people would claim tables without food. We were lucky to visit HKDL and TDL last year. Both places had multi-lingual signs indicating that people should claim seats before ordering. Old Disney understood that people in hot and humid Florida sometimes just need a place to sit and rest, and I'm pretty sure if you asked the old school Disney managers they would have said that absolutely, the tables are there for use by any guest in the park.
But modern Disney has spread-sheeted themselves into a park that doesn't have enough of anything. Not enough CMs working the restaurants so that even during crowded times, you can make it through the ordering, and pick up your food in such a short period of time, that there would barely be time for other guests to realize that a table was occupied but no food present (this was our experience in Japan, the massive amount of CMs working an area was eye-opening). They've allowed the walkways to get so crowded that they need to remove a majority of benches that are available for people simply to rest. They keep places like Tomorrowland Terrace closed, the quick service that used to be on Tom Sawyer Island. They head-shakingly designed New Fantasyland with a bunch of tables in an area far away (Storybook Circus) from the take-away restaurant (Gaston's Tavern). Disney seems more concerned about selling Dining Plans and then end up having to be "reactive" to the consequences of having a bunch of people who want to use it. They did the same thing with Fastpass+. Apparently, in the planning for FP, they were told that they needed to make capacity improvements before offering it. But instead they brought in FP+, saw the chaos that it created with Soarin and Toy Story Mania, and only then decided that, maybe, the initial recommendation was right, and got to work adding the third track and extra theaters.
But blame Disney, NO! Can't do that, nope, we have to turn it on other guests who are doing nothing more than act the way the rest of the world works.