Isn't that called "loitering"?

So I was in a coffee shop this morning having a cup of coffee (yes, I do a lot of that), and there was a young Asian couple sitting beside me. The were talking and ... not having coffee. They were also ... not drinking anything else. They were also ... not eating anything. They were just sitting and talking.

So, is it just me, or isn't that called "loitering"?

This couple were there before I got there. I sat down and drank my coffee and read my magazine and got increasingly curious about when they were going to leave.

I remember working with people who couldn't even think about sitting down and enjoying their coffee, it was always something they grabbed and ran with. They were exhausting people who spent much of their lives convincing the world that they were desperately important and needed to run about and stick their noses into everything or nothing would ever get done. As if.

There was a lull in the couple's conversation. It was not in English, so I have no idea what they were talking about. I figured they were about to leave. They stayed sitting and apparently thought of something else to talk about.

I've worked with people who figured all the coffee shop was a stage, and they were on fire with their animated conversation. Entertaining, but spillage can be a problem here.

The couple's conversation was not very animated. I'm sure he was considering leaving, but she didn't seem to have any desire to go.

From what I could tell, everyone else in the coffee shop who had sat down before me was gone now, and I had just finished my coffee, so I got up to leave. But, really, I was still curious about the couple, so I hit the washroom before leaving. On my way out ... they were still there.

There are a lot of homeless people in downtown Vancouver. This couple was obviously not among them. The homeless people would probably love to have a comfy warm chair to sit in for hours and just talk without having to purchase coffee for the privilege. They would undoubtably be thrown out of the coffee shop for illegal loitering if they tried this. So why didn't this couple get thrown out? I'm not about to jump on a soap box and rail at social injustices, but shouldn't that couple have at least considered that what they were doing was not socially acceptable, if not a wee bit illegal?