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No power plugs (I think most effective) & time limited Wifi. A cafe is not a coworking space although when beeing in USA or more specifically in SF I have the feeling people think it's the same.
Laptop users aren't seen very often in general though (and TBH with how noisy the shops are i doubt they'll ever be), although i live near a university and there is a coffee shop nearby with nice flat tables looking at the street and i often see students with laptops there. Also years ago, at my first gamedev job (although before i joined) on a startup, the team didn't had offices for a few months and the programming team mostly worked from laptops at the roof of a coffee shop :-P (and AFAIK generally all meetings with the entire team and everything were held in various coffee shops around the city).
Of course all that means that there are tons of coffee shops everywhere and i remember when i lived abroad, my landlord - who visited Greece - telling me how strange he found that there were so many coffee shops.
Personally i considered visiting a nearby coffee shop with my laptop a few times (there are 5 shops just 100m range, two right outside of my place), but i always change my mind because of the noise... and because i don't like working from a laptop :-P.
So is this about sales or about the vibe of having a coffee place where people hang out and chat? I'd be happy to pay some money to work for longer than one drink at a cafe, but I don't really want to drink 5 coffees to work for a day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your $3 coffee doesn't entitle you to sit there for an hour though. If I was running a cafe, I'd expect that you'd be leaving within 5 to 10 minutes of finishing your coffee. The very few times I've worked in a coffee shop, I've done that myself. It's not a coworking space.
> Your $3 coffee doesn't entitle you to sit there for an hour though Read up on the history of cafes. This is what they historically were—places for people to be, not grab and go. If a coffee shop owner wants grab and go customers, they’re a glorified vending machine. (The article notes a conversation-versus-quiet dynamic that I can better empathise with.)
How common is it for people to do actual, regular, serious work at coffee shops and the like? I've tried a couple of times and I always feel like such a pretentious wanker when I pull out a laptop and start working on stuff, like I'm somehow broadcasting "oh look at me, I work remotely, aren't I special?"
Determine your actions based on the imaginary judgement of completely random strangers is going to serverely limit the way you live your life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your $3 coffee doesn't entitle you to sit there for an hour though. If I was running a cafe, I'd expect that you'd be leaving within 5 to 10 minutes of finishing your coffee. The very few times I've worked in a coffee shop, I've done that myself. It's not a coworking space.
The $3 coffee most certainly does entitle you to sit there for an hour. That's the whole point of getting a coffee in a coffee shop. And if you told me to leave after 5 to 10 minutes, I'd tell you to call the cops and make me. With that kind of attitude, however, your coffee shop won't be in business long, so it shouldn't really be a problem that you treat people with so much disrespect.
Presumably the owner would actually have asked your mother or whichever other adult is with you, though.
I wonder how often places will change up their music as a way to shift things. The example I'm thinking of is Philz in Sunnyvale. Starting some time around the new year, every time I've been there they've been playing much harder & louder music. When I'm at a place, I prefer to be there without headphones, to show that I'm not completely disconnecting from the outside world. But with some of the music that's been pla…
This is the trend across cafes in my city in Romania. It is not clear to me what the motivation is: the staff just say that they have been instructed to keep the music playing at all times and at a constant volume. Is it to discourage people from staying long? Or do the owners believe that you need to have loud dance music playing at all times in order to attract people? It’s just sad that we are losing the Central European tradition of cafes as quiet, intellectual places where one could stay for a long time with a book or pen and paper.
This article feels is one of the very few cases where i read something online and totally feels weird to me due to where i am from. In Greece coffee shops are really mainly places to hang out and staying for hours on a single coffee is pretty much normal and expected. There is a huge "coffee culture" here. Me and my friends would go for a coffee at 6pm (or later 7pm, due to jobs) and often leave at 11pm or sometimes…
Isn't that so in the US? I mean, the guys from Friends practically lived in that Central Perk coffee house.
How common is it for people to do actual, regular, serious work at coffee shops and the like? I've tried a couple of times and I always feel like such a pretentious wanker when I pull out a laptop and start working on stuff, like I'm somehow broadcasting "oh look at me, I work remotely, aren't I special?"
This though can be turned around easily: that the one feeling that way is self-centered and believes unknown people in a cafe care about what he "broadcasts" when he uses his laptop. What makes he believe he is special enough to warrant attention for having a laptop out? Who even cares about what they do? (short of ritual sacrifice).
How common is it for people to do actual, regular, serious work at coffee shops and the like? I've tried a couple of times and I always feel like such a pretentious wanker when I pull out a laptop and start working on stuff, like I'm somehow broadcasting "oh look at me, I work remotely, aren't I special?"