Great Western Coffee Shop

Melksham to Evesham on Thursday. Advance tickets both way, so reserved seats. How did the reservation system work?  I was booked on seven main network trains.
1. Local train without reservations
2. System turned off
3. All Green showing
4. Switch on but my seat showing "available"
5. Paper tags (but my seat taken by a shopping bag!)
6. Correct
7. I had no reservation - used an IET only because local train cancelled

I did note that reservations seemed to be clumped - especially on train no. 5 (Worcesterhire Parkway to Cheltenham Spa) - all towards one end of the carriage I was in.  I do wonder if this is the best in terms of helping us social distance as much as possible.

Perfect storm of system failures and things going wrong, or something carefully set up by GWR and XC for me, knowing the trains I was on and wanting to help me make an interesting post?

Reservations only work when not really needed.
Half length train, reservations usually automatically voided.
Very busy train, reserved seat liable to be taken by someone else who declines to move. Staff unlikely to help.

Isnt social distancing finished now?

Cross Country Turbostars are the worst case. A couple of weeks ago a was traveling from Pershore to Preston on an E Ticket on my phone that gave me a reservation on the 08:14 Turbostar from Worcestershire Parkway to New street. Of course there was no paper label as I had only bought the ticket 10 minutes before boarding the train.

Also the whole of the area at the standard class end of the train between the doors and the cab is labled not to be used. This achives nothing as the Guard uses the back cab and would be no closer to passengers between the cab and the first set of doors than he is when passing through the rest of the train.

Formally, yes - but there is still a recommendation to choose quieter service (leaving customers to guess which those are going to be?) which suggests to me that allowing space remains a good idea.

I am no expert at the spreading of disease, but where there is a continuing strong recommendation to continue to wear face masks, especially in more crowded places, I would have thought that spreading out and keeping good space between people still makes sense.  Or did the virus and physics suddenly change on 19th July?   I have been, and will continue, to sit away from other people when on a bus or train where I can, and would like to see reservation and booking systems allocating seats to help make that happen.