Who assigns seats this way?!?

I get that airlines want to sell ancillaries all the time. Really, I do. And I even understand that, from time to time, that sales tactic covers advance seat assignments in the “better” seats on a plane, something which causes passengers to pay extra to be sure they’ll sit together. But every time I’ve seen reports of that in the past it is based on the airline not making any free seats available to select. Last night I had a rather different experience booking a trip on Delta.

I booked a relatively simple open-jaw itinerary for two passengers and, as is typical for me, didn’t pay too much attention to seat selection during the booking process. I got the dates right and the fare close enough that I can handle it and I booked, allowing the system to auto-assign the seats for us. I then went back in to the reservation to make sure the seats were acceptable and found this:

For reasons I cannot fathom the Delta system assigned two passengers on the same PNR to seats nowhere close to each other. On the return flight it was similar.

Maybe it is because we both have “Aisle” as our seating preference, I considered. But then why not put us in one of the many pairs of aisle seats across from each other? It just doesn’t make any sense. Also, I don’t have my wife’s travel details saved in my Delta.com profile so that’s not really possible either.

And why did the first passenger get put further back in the plane.

All sorts of things wrong with this process. Fortunately it is an easy fix if you’re paying attention. But a completely bizarre situation to begin with.