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[Heliomance]

I keep seeing this on my dwarves. I have a legendary dining room with plenty of tables and chairs, and I never see anyone using them. But all the dwarves seem to complain that there aren't enough tables. I frequently see people going into my bookkeeper's (as yet unassigned) office and eating on the chair in there, where there is no table, but they won't use the dining room. What's going on?

[Shades]

Either
a) they can't path to the dinning room
b) the bookkeepers chair is closer

When eating food they path to a chair not a dining table and chair, they will then complain about the lack of table.

If your bookkeepers office is assigned to him they shouldn't be picking it though.

[Particleman]

Either
a) they can't path to the dinning room
b) the bookkeepers chair is closer

When eating food they path to a chair not a dining table and chair, they will then complain about the lack of table.

If your bookkeepers office is assigned to him they shouldn't be picking it though.

They SHOULDN'T but they will anyway because they're stupid. I've had trouble like that myself.

[Dorf3000]

I frequently see people going into my bookkeeper's (as yet unassigned) office and eating on the chair in there, where there is no table, but they won't use the dining room. What's going on?

Dorfs are stupid and eat on the nearest chair, or their owned one, not the nicest one in the fort.  I always build chairs for offices with a table next to it, just to avoid this situation.  Even if you assign the chair, that dwarf will eat there in preference to the dining hall.

[Thanshin]

I've never had a bookkeeper chair without a table in front of it.

Why whould you torture your bookkeper in such way? Does he get stronget by holding the book in one hand while he writes with the other?

[Fien]

I've never had a bookkeeper chair without a table in front of it.

Why would you torture your bookkeper in such way? Does he get strongest by holding the book in one hand while he writes with the other?

Considering that there's no paper and the book is likely made of stone.....yeah probably.

[Heliomance]

But the main food stockpile is directly above the dining room, and everyone congregates in the dining room when off duty. There are also 2x2 stockpiles of food and booze set to take from the main pile in the corners of the dining room.

As mentioned, the bookkeeper's office isn't assigned to him yet for fear of making the other nobles angry that he has such a good office and they don't. It is currently just the room that will be assigned to him once the nobles' quarters are finished.

[random51]

Make sure your layout doesn't have more than 1 chair adjacent to a table.

I think what happens there is that a dwarf sits down at one of the chairs, occupying the table in question, then another dwarf sits down at another chair at the table but can't use the table, causing the bad thought.

I ran into this a lot as I used to put 4 chairs around every table.

[Malibu Stacey]

Try freeing the Dining Hall & assigning it from a different table in the opposite corner. Might be some weird artifact caused by your room layout.

[SkyRender]

 The pathing in DF is daft.  Dwarves will decide where to go based on their current position.  This is in blatant disregard to what's closest to the first leg of their journey, and also in complete disregard to Z level difficulties.  So take this hypothetical situation: you have a Dwarf who happens to be 2 Z levels above and directly over your bookkeeper's office doing work, and he suddenly decides it's time for lunch.  Since the bookkeeper's chair is technically closest to him, he will literally trudge AAAALL the way to the food stockpile, grab lunch, and then walk AAAALL the way to the bookkeeper's chair to eat, because it was closest overall when he started.

 The solution is twofold: one, assign the chair to someone and put a table in front of it that's also assigned to that Dwarf; that way only that Dwarf will be likely to use it (and even if others do, there's still a table there).  Two, make sure your main dining hall only has ONE of the tables designated as a dining room; oddly enough, they'll have enough sense to realize that the rest of the tables and chairs are also part of the dining hall.  Dwarves get VERY confused when they find two dozen dining halls on top of one another, and will often decide that it's simpler to just sit in the stockpile and eat there (or to go eat in the bookkeeper's office).

[shadowform]

I've never had a bookkeeper chair without a table in front of it.

Why would you torture your bookkeper in such way? Does he get strongest by holding the book in one hand while he writes with the other?

Considering that there's no paper and the book is likely made of stone.....yeah probably.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a valid explanation for how dwarves get stronger while working a desk job.

[NW_Kohaku]

But the main food stockpile is directly above the dining room, and everyone congregates in the dining room when off duty. There are also 2x2 stockpiles of food and booze set to take from the main pile in the corners of the dining room.

As mentioned, the bookkeeper's office isn't assigned to him yet for fear of making the other nobles angry that he has such a good office and they don't. It is currently just the room that will be assigned to him once the nobles' quarters are finished.

Doesn't effin matter.  My dwarves will refuse to eat in the legendary dining room, and instead go down to the depths of my fortress to eat in the dungeons instead of eating where they should, even when it is on the other side of the fortress, the food stockpile IS IN THE DINING ROOM, and I have put traffic zones set to "restricted" all over the dungeons. 

Dwarves are not simply stupid, a stupid dwarf would randomly pick from any available dining room, they go out of their way to make themselves miserable, that is out-and-out pure self-destructive malevolance!  They are masochists!  They WANT to make themselves suffer, just so that they can spite you and your attempts to make them a nice place to live.

That said, the solution is to assign that room to your bookkeeper, get the room a desk, or else eliminate the chair entirely and make the bookkeeping office out of a spare 2x2 bedroom if it really IS nice.  If the nobles are going to whine about how much nicer a meager room is than theirs, it didn't hurt me when my baroness went homeless for 3 months while I set hers up.

Then again, she dined in a legendary jail cell that whole time, so that kept her happy.

[Asteranx]

If your giant dining room is in sunlight (as mine is), and the dwarf is cave adapted (as many of mine are for some reason... despite the previously described dining room), they may be biased against eating there.

Not sure if that's how it works, but that could be one explanation.

[Heliomance]

My fortress is above ground and constructed entirely of solid gold. Yes, all the rooms are that nice.

[NW_Kohaku]

My fortress is above ground and constructed entirely of solid gold. Yes, all the rooms are that nice.

...  I kind of want to see screenies of this.