Danke schoen!

with the man on the bench. I know that you're technically in a temple

They can have a peculiar life in Chinese temples in Southeast Asia. Elderly temple caretakers are often there and they can do many things there.

I guess, many Chinese temples are tiny museums with supernatural artifacts. Mostly empty, people pray rarely but, on some dates, there is a crowd there. So temple caretakers can cook something small in these "museums", wash and dry clothes, work, keep pets, etc - just a few meters away from the altars. Dashing Dominique, for example, peed on the floor in front of me. (They will clean, of course). In Asia, people live in more crowded houses and rooms so... if someone brings a sewing machine into a temple to do some sewing work along with caring about the temple... why not? (I saw that in a Chinese temple in Thailand).

For me this world is a mystery, I even don't understand how religion works in Chinese communities; every religion entwines another. Probably, if Europeans, Western and Eastern, didn't invent the concept of heresy, it was this way in Europe too. Just a guess.