War brews between cafés, remote workers as people use shops as offices
financialpost.com
financialpost.com
Anyway, I'm afraid that curbing internet won't be a complete solution since it's easy enough to tether off a phone or connect to an Xfinity hotspot.
A potential solution to this problem would be to make useable power outlets scarce. Some laptops can last a full day without a charge, but you'll find that most people will need to plug in at some point if they're working for extended periods of time. Not a perfect solution since it can be thwarted by external battery power banks.
So if the community can't get a table, they stop coming at all, and that's a bigger existential threat to the owners than just the money.
> The problem became so severe that the bar began to lose its regulars. Esten and his wife would bump into former customers around the neighbourhood and they told him that they could never get a seat at the bar because there were laptops everywhere, so they started going to other coffee shops instead.
> “That was breaking our hearts,” he said.
These people don't want to babysit tech workers. Even if it's financially sustainable to do, that's not what they opened a small coffee shop or bar to do.
Maybe I’m just a miserable misanthrope, but despite all the rhetoric I’ve never had a “community” experience at a coffee shop. In my experience it’s just cash for drinks and a place to sit. I’ve had much better experiences getting to know people in explicitly non-commercial settings (dog parks, playgrounds, classes, etc.)
If you’re buying one six-dollar latte and sticking around for a few hours, you’re abusing the cafe’s hospitality.
Low tables and lounge-style chairs are comfortable but they can't reach anywhere near the density of the standard arrangement.
That might be ok if you're a tiny shop that only really wants to do takeaway but to me, most coffee shops are a place to relax and have a conversation with someone. A chair that becomes uncomfortable after a few minutes is in direct contradiction to that purpose and indicates either hubris or ignorance on the part of the owner.
I like people watching and sometimes shoulder surfing. It’s a curiosity thing. If I can see someone doing work, I will sit somewhere where I can see what they’re doing. The other day, I was watching someone doing their invoicing. I could see the names addresses and emails of their customers, and how much they were being invoiced and the service they were being invoiced for. If I was trying to be a cyber criminal, I would have a decent amount of info just from that to be able to target some of those people. Perhaps even replicate the invoice, but change the bank account to a different account. I’m not saying that I would actually do that. But, if I can think that up, surely there are people who would also think that up, except act on it.
I don’t know why people think that cafés or other public spaces are good spaces to do work, because people can see what you’re doing. I’m constantly surprised by some of the kinds of work people will carry out in public too. It doesn’t seem a smart thing to do.
What really gets me is the people who’ll join video calls from a coffee shop. Not only is it going to reveal a ton of information to anyone nearby it’s just straight up anti-social, no one went to the coffee shop to hear about your quarterly sales goals, Bob.
... as the months went on, people figured out how to use keep-alive programs and our idle-user scripts started to fail. Busy signals got worse and worse, and of course, we lost customers.
When I think of the coffee shops, and people buying a cup of coffee, or a bagel, every now and then, I'm sure it must feel the same to the shop owners.
And in our modern world of seemingly infinite resources, I get that trying to remember dial up modems run by a few poor dudes in a literal garage is only going to garner the same sillouettes of billionaires out to dominate the economy; and so does the sleepy cafe owner trying to make rent manifest as John Buckingham Starbucks himself.
But this middle aged geezer has a nettled solidarity for these small business owners, who are without any apparent tool to save their business without deliberately summoning the modern marvel of public shaming on social media. I could never run a business.
But this article happened back in 2009, too. I remember it. I may have been part of the problem. It's a signal of an economy that is displacing and reallocating workspaces.
I used a library to work while travelling, to avoid overstaying my welcome in a café. It was fantastic.
I also use them at home, where they enable me to earn money and pay taxes, if that's such a big concern. Most students do, too.
Policy at the front: “Patrons get 1 hour of seating with each purchase”
You can also make the seating less comfortable to encourage people to move on, which is a classic technique. Or straight up just don’t have seating.
The problem with this is enforcement.
People have become antisocial and angrier, an effect of COVID isolation? I don't know.
But putting retail workers in the position of having to even ask people to leave is too uncomfortable and potentially even risky.
That's why some employees get paid a couple bucks an hour more to be a shift manager. You also don't need to directly confront people after 1 hour, you can be passive-aggressive with any customer bold enough to stick around for 4-5 hours. The policy isn't meant to be taken literally, it's more of a deterrent and a pretence for action.
Dealing with customers not leaving is just part of the work in retail. Somebody needs to be the person who draws the line and tell somebody to stop loitering and leave. Some people will literally live in the coffee shop if nobody stops them, never mind staying there for 8 hours not buying anything.
This is even if you’re paying continuously.
But at many of the coffee shops I go to I can use Xfinity, their city-wide solution for their customers.
Often times I don't even need to ask for the coffeeshop's wifi password since the Xfinity connection may be good enough.
Quite often it isn't, more often than not actually. But the main shop I go to near my apartment it's reliable.
The cost needs to be so low, it's accessible to everyone which is hard initially but once there is sufficient volume/space inventory then it's easier to encourage membership with prices less than $100/month.
People with small kids, schoolkids in the summer or after the kids are home from school but before work is over
People with small apartments in dense cities who need to get out of their space for their well being
The modern world can be very isolating by default, so you have to head out sometimes.
With where the economy is heading, we'll be co-working from kitchens very soon.
The coffee shops will wax lyrical of the days when they hated on tech bros who took up valuable real estate for hours.
Are you comparing store bought mocha to homemade?
My homemade mocha formula:
- 1 teaspoon of cocoa or cacao powder.
- 1 shot of Coffee from moka pot.
- 1 cup of cashew milk made at home by blending hot water, 15 or so cashews, a couple of dates blended in for sweetness.
In Europe no one bats an eye at you spending your entire day in cafe seating using the WiFi.
If you are running a coffee shop in an insanely expensive urban area slinging $2 coffees, you need a certain turnover of customers or you will just straight up go out of business. I have been hustling franchise owners walking around their resteraunts stalking people to make sure people didn't mill about for longer than TWENTY MINUTES. Didn't finish eating? Fuck you buy something else or finish eating on the sidewalk.
If you're in a suburban coffee shop with a cheaper lease sipping on a $9 iced coffee drink and a $7 pastry, and the place is dead, not only will the staff likely not care that you're sitting there, they might chat you up so stave off the boredom.