In additiion to GilaMonster's comments, and the database is configured as decribed.

Do the two tables in question have any indexes? If so statistics will be automatically created for them. If auto created statistics exist their name will start with "_WA_"

If you desire to check the auto_create and auto_update statistics setting execute:

SELECT is_auto_create_stats_on, is_auto_update_stats_on

FROM sys.databases WHERE Name = 'xx''--replace the xx with the name of the database

If these are set to ON then a value of 1 will be returned for each item

Does your user have SSMS?

If yes then have them select each table and then select statistics -- if stats exist their names will be shown.

To learn when the stats have been last updated double click on the statistics name, then in the drop down double click on "Properties" , in the next window select "Details" (single click) - this will display the last time the stats were updated and further information - a lot of information.

SQL in general attempts to create statistics even for the simpliest of tables and queries. For example:

SET ANSI_NULLS ON

GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

GO

SET ANSI_PADDING ON

GO

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[NonExisting](

[ABC] [varchar](10) NULL

) ON [PRIMARY]

GO

INSERT INTO dbo.NonExisting

SELECT 'BBB' UNION ALL

SELECT 'ouch' UNION ALL

SELECT 'mymy'

-- now execute

SELECT ABC FROM dbo.NonExisting

Check and you will see that a statistic was created on my machine it was named "-WA_sys-00000001_18EBB532"