Did you buy that latte 2 hours ago? Think about leaving the coffee shop
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
"People like public space. Just as they like to work in a coffee shop on a laptop surrounded by others, they want to hang out with friends, to people-watch, flirt, take part in the rituals of public life.
In the suburbs, the 20th-century answer to the need for “public” space was the mall. The first were in the US in the 1950s, conceived as public places with kindergartens, medical centres and community facilities alongside the shops. Within a few years, only the shopping was left.
Malls have come a long way since. “Malls without walls”, whole shopping districts, resemble parts of the city, with real streets and brick and stone façades, and transpire to be privately owned. Liverpool One is an example. Cash-strapped municipalities cannot compete and people throng to these places. Users, once citizens, are rebranded as consumers."
From http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/7/stop-treating-c...
"The consumer-citizen pops up all over the place, like a cardboard stand-in for democratic citizens who have no other political concerns beyond self-interested consumption .. the public is hung out to dry with effectively no defense or recourse since our political rights have evaporated into market choices."
In general, there's no/fewer public drinking fountains, fewer public restrooms, shrinking number of places that doesn't involve soup-Nazi consumerism and ever less spaces for homeless and the elderly to not be bothered. It's a not-so-subtle form of hate directed at anyone unable or unwilling to be extorted on a regular basis. Folks are going to get their power and heat/air-conditioning somehow, but there's big trouble in store for any shop owner that retaliates against customers... because they will inevitably find ways to ruin the business. Starbucks is immensely profitable and doesn't have to resort to passive-aggressive hate and discrimination games.
http://www.citylab.com/design/2015/03/shopping-malls-arent-a...
"The dead or dying mall is a real phenomenon. But all you have to do is invert these figures to get the bigger picture, which looks very different. If 20 percent of malls are in trouble, then 80 percent are still healthy. If 3.4 percent of malls are dying, then 96.6 percent of them aren't. (When the New York Times ran an otherwise nuanced front-page story on struggling malls in January, the accompanying graphic had a top line of 20 percent, wrongly suggesting that a rash of dead malls was a pandemic.)"
A funny relevant anecdote. Yesterday, I was at home trying to work, and I could not focus, so I walked to a nearby coffeeshop. Apparently, a group was filming something in half of the shop, so another section with most of the seats was closed off, as well as outside seating in front of it. Naturally, the remaining seats were full.
So, I randomly asked a person if I could share a seat with her. I didn't make small talk, I just sat and read. After twenty minutes or so, she got up to leave. After a while of reading, I saw a number of people come in and be told they might have to take to-go since the place was full. I was more than willing to share a seat at my table, and a number of other tables had open seats, but no one approached me, or anyone else for that matter...
So, I got up, and purchased a slice of cake to-go. A gentleman who was waiting for a chair thanked me and took my place.
Now, on the way home, there is a chocolate shop which has a couple of seats as well. I decided to peer inside, and guess who I see in the window? The lady who's table I took, apparently. :/
I guess I can't fault other people for not being as comfortable about sharing "personal space" as I am, but especially in that sort of situation, it hurts more than it helps.
When it is full, frequently it happens that if there is two people on one set of 6, the other 4 places are empty (does not matter where the two people are).
Except when the staff bother separating the tables by a inch or two, then all tables get used, it is a really curious effect.
If there's a point where a significant portion of a community become knowledge workers, then it would be advantageous for local coffee shops to adapt to a co-working atmosphere. It wouldn't surprise me if a chain such as Starbucks did something like this in the future.
When I was working remotely and in-between jobs, I regularly squatted and rotated through coffee shops in town. What sucked about this though was several things: buying food/coffee out of guilt because it seemed like the right thing to do, constantly packing-up and unpacking your gear when going to the restroom, holding your bladder in as long as possible because it's an annoying and expensive context-switch to tend to one's biological functions, and uncomfortable seating which isn't meant for prolonged use.
Coffee shops in college towns will mostly be immune to this because it's simply how students live and work. Au Coquelet and People's Coffee in Berkeley come to mind. Talk about laptop brigades! The Berkeley Public Library wasn't so bad either, and they had free Wifi.
Nowadays, co-working spaces seem to be popping up everywhere now. Even where I'm at now in Lancaster, PA, which isn't exactly a tech hotbed, there are already 3 co-working spaces. I'm at the point now where coffee shop squatting is just too much of a hassle and would rather pay to have a quiet working environment that forces productivity, provides a solid Internet connection, offers decent amenities, and offers controlled access so I don't have to worry about getting my laptop stolen when stepping away from the desk.
What is pricing like?
Pardon my ignorance, but why isn't "working from home" an option? I WFH myself (current $job is 100% remote) and I bounce between my super comfy couch and a standing desk all day. Bonus, I get to make my own coffee, eat whatever/whenever I want, and I never have to worry about the social stigma of 'squatting' some coffeeshop-owner's turf. :-)
Wife gets to socialize, kids get to learn and interact with other kids. You get a peaceful space to work. Everyone profits =)
That's my experience anyways, I have a wife and 2 year old and have been working from home for about 8 years.
Although that person is using your internet with a $4 coffee, they're occupying space after everybody "is gone"(9am-11am and 1pm-4pm), contributing with their physical presence.
A newcomer, that may end up becoming a long-term customer, would feel more biased towards places with more customers( or the idea of).
So, although it might seem financially reasonable to kick them out, I doubt it's the best answer.
So if I came in there at night after work I considered it basically paying for internet, and getting a free coffee or pastry alongside it. Seemed perfectly fair.
I also find it amusing that Starbucks gives you free refills on brewed/ice coffee, provided you go enough to get their "gold" status (usually, 30 store visits a year).
They don't care if you camp there and keep getting free refills on coffee. They just care that you do it often.
Put another way - it's like that one client who paid you $50 to install a WordPress plugin 6 months ago who calls you weekly to troubleshoot their printer problems.
There's a very simple thing you can do which will keep any cafe owner happy. Every 25-30 minutes, have a glance around and check for vacant tables. If there are fewer than two tables available (or maybe one in smaller cafes) it's time to move on. The only exception being if you have just sat down, in which case, finish your food and beverage and leave.
Here's a great way to discourage campers: no outlets, not even 1.
If someone has covered up or hidden the outlets, to me that's a very clear sign that they don't want me there (atleast for that reason), and as such I would feel really guilty for using them. I suppose that's slightly different in a food court though, it's a bit more public than a coffee shop.
[1] I use Turbo Boost Switcher to stop the cpu running hot and gfxCardStatus to stick to integrated graphics. This seems to give me nearly 2h extra. I don't need speed for compiles or anything like that.
On the other hand, it would also look similar to how Abercrombie & Fitch refuses to make clothes in large sizes, in order to prevent fat people from shopping in their stores.
[0] At least in my experience. I'm not sure what it is about coffeeshops. Their decor is just conducive to working, much more than the local library, at least.
Sadly though many libraries, especially rural and regional ones just can't afford that.
I know this is HN, but is it necessary to shoehorn computer references into situations where it's not needed?
The problem is definitely not the store. The problem is that people are trained by starbucks to treat all cafes like this. His cafe, instantly to me, suggests that it's NOT okay to camp out with my laptop all day there.
Edit: this part of the article stood out -
>“A croissant and a coffee to support a local business are a lot cheaper than a co-working membership.”
Yep. I wonder if it's a lack of co-working spaces or pricing to "what the market will bear".
I need a cross between a hackerspace and a co-working space.
They weren't as common and were harder to spot but back when I worked in an independent bookstore pre-broadband era, there was always a subset of the customer base that would use the bookstore and it's cafe as their home.
Basically, if you've ever worked in retail you know that certain subtle signals give the hint to the majority of customers of your intentions without saying a word. Changing lighting for instance is huge.
However, there will always be a certain subgroup of people that have a sort mentality, based on maybe mammal instinct, that if you mark a small amount of territory in a public space, it belongs to you to and you can therefore use it in any way you like for however long you like until someone challenges you for the territory and wins. This type of person, when armed with a laptop and cell phone, becomes a particularly obnoxious problem when they're a coffee shop nomad. Moms with strollers often fall into the same category, but it's a social minefield raising the issue in public.
Anyhow this is why coffee shop owners, no matter how hard they try, will not be able to remove a small malignant group of knowledge working nomads without a daily fight. The rest of us get the owner's hints, but the "It's My Territory" people will always find a way to give the Average Joe Laptop Worker a bad name...
At lunch or dinner time, when it gets busy, I usually leave so the cafe doesn't lose on customers ordering something substantial, or I order something bigger myself.
When I frequent the same place often I also try to make sure to get to know the staff, and help them out a bit by at the very least bringing my dirty stuff to the counter if I'm one of the few customers there. They seem to really like the occasional chat when it's quiet, and it has all kinds of perks (including just the interpersonal quality).
I don't really understand why so many people don't employ a similar approach. I mean, it's not that it surprises me: here in the West at least people seem to really relish the 'consumer/employee' approach where somehow a 'transaction' replaces any human connection.
But I still don't understand it, as part of the fun of being outside of the house, and life in general, is interacting with other humans, rather than roles (cashiers, waiters, etc.). I often go to the slightly pricier Turkish supermarket in my neighbourhood instead of the supermarket precisely because I get to have a nice chat with a guy I sort of know, and observe a slice of life in this colorful immigrant/poor neighbourhood.
One should figure out a more efficient way of handling short term leases than that coffee mug that proxies as something that is almost but not quite totally unlike a lease agreement.
Take my credit card and charge me on how much time I have been there, hand out blinking timers...whatever works.
So not interacting with someone else and just being immersed in oneself is okay because they are not aware of their surrounds except for when they glance up.
Before gadgets, you'd have to bring friends with you or meet friends (who would also buy things). But now you can buy some nominal item and excuse yourself for as long a you wish --at least in mind. And some people feel entitled to the space. The Starbucks of the world can carry that deadweight, but not so much independent shops.
It basically says to the customer "Want to continue working here? Buy another coffee."
This of course doesn't address those that show up with their personal hotspots, but I feel like that is still the minority of coffee shop campers.
Removing wall outlets is another deterrent. You can only keep working as long as you have juice. That said, battery life for mobile devices is getting longer, so this tactic isn't always effective.
I have definitely been that customer.
You have deliberately made the space comfortable for long stays. Now figure out how to get the users to pay the rent!
My local library is open 10-2 some days!
the bathrooms, at least in sf, are fucking cesspools. I mean a literal fucking piss moat around the toilet.
When discussions with customers occur frequently maybe it's time to review how your business is communicating with customers. What can be done to prevent misunderstandings regarding using laptops/hogging tables? etc.
If a coffee shop owner gets a bad reputation among teleworkers doing this, then that just means less for the coffee shop owner, getting him exactly the objective he wanted.