People working on laptops in cafes 😡

It’s a coffee shop, they are mostly regulars, and order coffee & work mostly in their break etc, and just as entitled to use the coffee shop as you, in fact many their best customers.
Why should they move? Perhaps you should go to a M&S Cafe, Tea room or go to the coffee shop for your ‘cuppa tea’ at perhaps a less busy time.

Brings a whole new meaning to "outsourcing" - ie the number of employers that seem to be "outsourcing" their work accommodation needs to local cafes....

I wonder just how many of those on laptops are employees - rather than self-employed - and that is what is happening here?

My local Costa has many people working on laptops in the cafe , they usually are at a large table on their own and having watched a number of them they usually buy one small drink then drink their own water once that has been consumed .

This thread has madd me realise how lucky we are in our town. I think the laptop people go to Costa and Starbucks and leave the lovely independents to the rest of us. The one I use has sofas, armchairs, normal tables and chairs and lots of space for NCT groups, wheelchairs, Rollators.

I am sick of people sitting with their laptops in our local Cafe. They buy one coffee and sit their for ever while the likes of other people can't get a seat. I cant understand how these Cafe's allow it. They are losing money surely.

I have often been in cafes where people are on their laptops.
They usually sit there for a long time with just one cup of coffee and usually take up a whole table and the best seats.

I used to work as a librarian and I can assure you my library was never a silent place. It comprised one long room with no dividion of the public areas. There were a few tables at the back where the likes of students and people reading the papers used to gather. The main room was quite noisy and we also had childrens activities every week. I can remember one woman who was trying to study complaining about the noise the children were making. I told her the library is for everyone, including children, and advised her to avoid the 6-7 hour on a thursday night or use the reference library.

If people using laptops in cafés is a problem I wonder why so many have multiple electric sockets scattered around? It certainly wasn't the norm years ago. I'd think those cafés that don't welcome laptop users could solve the problem quite easily by removing free wifi and electric sockets. Nobody needs wifi if they're just drinking coffee or eating lunch. Then those establishments that welcome people who will be engaging with electronic devices could advertise themselves as such along with the free wifi and electrical outlets.

Yes ask them in the chairs you wish to use to move on. 💐

I think that I would have asked the management to ask for a sofa for you and your husband. Only fair in my mind. They sit there all day using the electricity and the sofas and only drinking a coffee doesn’t seem right to me. The coffee shop not making much surely? If management won’t help then I probably would move them on myself.

When did cafes become offices? My local Costa is full of people working on their plugged in computers , presumably using Costa's electricity.
And they have the cheek to look askance at children crying or making a noise ... this is not a work place, it's a cafe!
They frequently buy a coffee first off and think that's their ticket for hours.
Don't know why Costa allows it, this office crowd stops me and I'm sure others from going in.
Worse, some people use the space for meetings, you can see and hear that clearly.
Costa, cafes are not offices!
Deal with this!

I'm sorry you're unhappy.

They should put a message on these tables saying that laptop users are requested not to take up these tables for long periods and to consider other customers by using the two person tables instead.

Nannan2

Book groups,knitting groups,mum& baby groups etc can all be organised with church halls or librarys etc so no need to sit in cafés.

People can make coffee in their kitchens, so no need to sit in cafes.

What happened to live and let live?

Seapebble

‘To the OP - no way would I walk out on a drink I'd just purchased! If too shy to ask, you could have asked a staff member to help out.’

I wouldn’t ordinarily do this but my DH was very uncomfortable on the seat and becoming agitated. Unfortunately a member of staff would probs not understand the problem until I explained it and by then my DH could have become even more upset. Cognitive impairment is hard to deal with when you know what it is like but would be even harder for a young member of staff who probably doesn’t know.
The easiest and probably the only thing to do is to diffuse the situation by leaving.
I suppose I could have asked a person on their lap top to budge up and may well do this another day.

I'm firm if I've deliberately picked a seat on a train that is one of those sets of 4 with a table in the middle and a person opposite has their stuff going as far over the table as my side. It gently but firmly gets pushed back to the halfway point on the table and no-one yet has had the nerve to push it back into my half yet....

Sounds like tabletop hogging is one of the issues laptoppers create and people do need to literally "push back" - gently but firmly and take their share of the tabletop space. If they get glared or tutted at = proves the point about the character (or otherwise) of the laptopper if they can't seem to see what percentage of the space is theirs and what isnt.

CariadAgain

Whatabout - say for instance cafe-owners smiling/indicating counter to buy coffee when laptop people come in and then selling them a voucher (for immediate use) for a 2 hour timeslot (ie between the hours of 9am and 12 noon). That voucher costing £10 say and entitling them to 2 drinks and - when the voucher expires their time expires.

Lunchtime (12 noon onwards) - they can buy another voucher for 1-2 hours and this time it costs £20 and includes lunch and a drink.

Afternoon (2pm onwards) = back to a £10 voucher that includes 2 drinks.

The vouchers would need the time of purchase written on them and then to be left on display on the table top - so staff could take a casual peek as they went past if they were wondering whether someone was going beyond their paid-for time.

Maybe that might be a way to tackle this - it would be like giving laptop users a space to rent (one seat and appropriate share of a table) for a very limited period of time and stop the "one cup only" malarkey and mean they couldnt stay all day. Unless they paid in vouchers of course - so a whole day would be £40 to them and that would include 4 cups of coffee and a lunch for them.

Does that sound like a way forward? The cafe-owner would get a fairer return on their investment for those that stayed on and those who actually plan on using a cafe as a cafe would have a better chance of doing so. There could, after all, be a safeguard in place of not allowing a morning laptopper to purchase a lunch voucher if there were cafe users wanting to come in specially for a lunch. If there was a party of four waiting for a table for lunch and a laptopper was at one of those seats - then they could have a "smile and I regret it's a no" if they wanted to buy a lunchtime voucher. But it could be sold to them if there was spare room available for them.

I agree with this and have said as much.
It would work I think.
Anyway am sure cafe managers/owners will address this in due course if their profits are affected which am sure they must be as a cafe owner on here outlined.

Nannan2

The only place they should sit working is at a proper Internet Café,which were invented for that kind of stuff.

Nannan - not many (any?) internet cafés any more - no need when most people walk around with t'internet in their pockets.
As to the solo laptoppers who hog a table for four...how can they do it? Conscience-wise I mean? They (old and young) do the same on tables for four in trains too. My response? "Excuse me" - proceed to sit down. In a café (just happened yesterday) if nowhere else, I say "mind if we sit?" They tut a bit and then shuffle up ungraciously - making a big thing of having to move all their stuff. One of the many independent cafés near me reserves three central tables as "no laptops please". It frees up spaces for people to just meet and chat. Nothing against people doing their work/research in cafés - have done it myself.
To the OP - no way would I walk out on a drink I'd just purchased! If too shy to ask, you could have asked a staff member to help out.

Many use their cells as Hotspot, not the wifi of the locations due to VPN restrictions

It is not all as easy or straight forward as it seems

I would imagine some of the larger chains have done a cost-analysis of lone people with laptops consuming an occasional coffee... Would be interesting to know the result?

Whatabout - say for instance cafe-owners smiling/indicating counter to buy coffee when laptop people come in and then selling them a voucher (for immediate use) for a 2 hour timeslot (ie between the hours of 9am and 12 noon). That voucher costing £10 say and entitling them to 2 drinks and - when the voucher expires their time expires.

Lunchtime (12 noon onwards) - they can buy another voucher for 1-2 hours and this time it costs £20 and includes lunch and a drink.

Afternoon (2pm onwards) = back to a £10 voucher that includes 2 drinks.

The vouchers would need the time of purchase written on them and then to be left on display on the table top - so staff could take a casual peek as they went past if they were wondering whether someone was going beyond their paid-for time.

Maybe that might be a way to tackle this - it would be like giving laptop users a space to rent (one seat and appropriate share of a table) for a very limited period of time and stop the "one cup only" malarkey and mean they couldnt stay all day. Unless they paid in vouchers of course - so a whole day would be £40 to them and that would include 4 cups of coffee and a lunch for them.

Does that sound like a way forward? The cafe-owner would get a fairer return on their investment for those that stayed on and those who actually plan on using a cafe as a cafe would have a better chance of doing so. There could, after all, be a safeguard in place of not allowing a morning laptopper to purchase a lunch voucher if there were cafe users wanting to come in specially for a lunch. If there was a party of four waiting for a table for lunch and a laptopper was at one of those seats - then they could have a "smile and I regret it's a no" if they wanted to buy a lunchtime voucher. But it could be sold to them if there was spare room available for them.

We have a local cafe which is the same, the laptopper not only occupy the sofas but also they sit at a table and occupy the whole table with paperwork, making it very difficult to find a table if you are more than one or two. They also, for most of the time, only ever buy one tea or coffee. i hope there are some cafe owners out there reading this thread.

Vegansrock- maybe they should all have a sign like that?.....

Susi42- yes that would happen often too in the city centre cafe Nero's- it seems to be a theme here where the Cafe Nero's staff dont care who fills the seats & stays for hours so long as they're buying coffees.Might be time to boycott those.(not in Nero's for a couple of years now we moved to a semi-rural area) Still visit an occasional Costa though.

The OP might know that in Dulwich Village there are several coffee shops, at least one of which has a “ no laptops” sign in the window.