People working on laptops in cafes 😡

CariadAgain

Graphite

You are twisting my words. I mean its first come first served.

OP was miffed because all the comfy seats were taken. How would she have felt about a book group, a knitting group etc meeting for a couple of hours and taking up the sofas. Why pick on working people?

My money as a paying customer who happens to be working is just as good as anybody else's whether I chose to work, yak on a phone, chat to others, read a book, hold a meeting, interview somebody for a job or all the other myriad things which go on.

This all sound sounds like bitterness towards people who work flexibly and may feel isolated at home.

Beware the curse of chronic resentment and living in the past.

I think you're overlooking good manners dictated that if someone looks a bit more frail etc then the laptop person sitting on a comfortable chair offers the other one (couple in this case) that comfortable chair and sits on one of the barstools instead and uses those little tables that come with them.

Quite!

Well sad, CariadAgain

Common courtesy.
However, old, disabled people can bd such a nuisance when important younger people are busy working in a public place.

rafichagran

Graphite No one is saying your custom is worth less. I saw the manager of one coffee shop asking people on Lap tops to leave. They had sat at the tables for ages and bought only a drink. Other people with food and drink were waiting for the table.
Some cafes have started to put a time limit on it due to piss takers.

No one is saying your custom is worth less.

No but it’s certainly implied. Apparently acceptable for the book groups and knitting groups and mums with babies to sit for a couple of hours but not someone who happens to be working on a laptop. I don’t see the difference. We are all paying customers.

Please can someone explain why, if I chose to sit working for two hours over a coffee (and often lunch) how that is any different to people talking about a book or knitting for two hours? Honestly? How is it different? I don’t understand the hostility shown towards people who work.

If one goes out to a restaurant in the evening, it’s common to find work colleagues having dinner and discussing business. They are working, eating and drinking at the same time. Should they also have to give up their tables?

I understand that OP is caring for a disabled husband and that life can be difficult but people are not mind-readers. And because customers are working, talking about a book or knitting, they may be unaware of someone else’s unhappiness or dissatisfaction.

The illogical arguments here are baffling. A couple rock up at a coffee shop. There are no free sofas. They leave after a short time not even stopping to drink their tea. And anybody with laptop is meant to feel immense guilt.

The library near to us allows schools children to bring food and drink in. There is no limit on the noise and it has put me off going. I did mention it to them and they said they invited the children to use the computers and to bring in food if necessary. Well it is all the blooming time and they are not all doing school work all the time.
We visited a cafe recently and 4 of the tables had people doing work on the laptops. Not one of them bought another drink or anything to each while we were there. Just one cuppa that lasted them probably all day!

We visited a cafe recently and 4 of the tables had people doing work on the laptops. Not one of them bought another drink or anything to each while we were there.
These people are Very Important, Purplepixie, unlike us old has-beens who no longer work.

Cossy

Library’s don’t allow food or drink. The cafe will encourage them to buy at least drinks.

I do understand your annoyance though.

You drop in the coffee shop of your choice and find it's turned into an episode of The Office. And there's a dead ringer for David Brent turning an entire table into a workspace, yakking away on his phone and making a tepid coffee last for an age.

Stay. At. Home. And. Work. There.

mae13 😂

Graphite I am neither being illogical or unhappy because I couldn’t plonk my backside down on a sofa. If you bothered to read my posts I tried to make cogent arguments against people with lap tops spending too long hogging seats and tables, and was at pains to mention that another cafe do limit the time people can work in their cafe.
I really don’t understand why you would decide to get personal about this and make unfair assumptions about me, have seen this happen on other threads where posters - not just you Graphite - decide to make up a story about an OP and twist everything to fit that narrative. I respect your opinion and have not once had a go at anyone else on this thread personally.
I will simply say that I will agree to disagree and leave it at that.
Perhaps you should have the good grace to do the same.

Allira

Doodledog

Just preference I suppose. Cafes aren’t a public service- anyone can use them. Didn’t JK Rowling famously write Harry Potter in a cafe? Lots of writers enjoy the people-watching aspect of working in cafes.

Perhaps it saves putting the heat on at home.

I'm taking my crocheting next time.

Yes, there will be that, too. My knitting group meets in a pub on a weekday morning. There are few (if any) other customers and we all buy a drink, so there is some profit for the owners, and the barmaid is there anyway, stocking shelves and so on, so no extra overheads.

Another group I'm in meets weekly in a local cafe, who are very hospitable with us. We stay for a couple of hours, and all (usually about 15 of us) buy at least one drink. Some stay behind for lunch, and most buy refills, with or without cake. There may have been odd times when 'drop-in' customers have felt pushed out, but on the whole we will bring in more profit than loss, I'm sure.

My daughter got made redundant a year ago and whilst job hunting and honing her CV , she often went into a local coffee shop to work on her laptop for a change of scenery. She always bought coffee and a sandwich. However this is in London , where you’re spoilt for choice with coffee shops.

I find it really annoying when one prtdon on a laptop hogs a table for four for several hours...stringing out the water or coffee. It's obvs a brnefit for them: free heating and a place to work from. I can only imagine that the cafes aren't losing money from it.
I would like to see the practice of all chairs being available so that tables are shared. I know it's not v British but i reckon it would turn a lot of loneliness - and selfishness -on its head.

Franski

I find it really annoying when one prtdon on a laptop hogs a table for four for several hours...stringing out the water or coffee. It's obvs a brnefit for them: free heating and a place to work from. I can only imagine that the cafes aren't losing money from it.
I would like to see the practice of all chairs being available so that tables are shared. I know it's not v British but i reckon it would turn a lot of loneliness - and selfishness -on its head.

That is how I take it personally. First of all find an empty table with no-one else at it (yep I'm British....).

But if that's the place one wants to be in and the empty seats are scattered around - eg two at one table and one at another etc then find the best empty seat, politely ask if other person/people at table mind. They should mind their manners and say they don't mind. Job done.

Though one of the most recent lunches out I had in the event was back in Totnes (I know I know = Hippy Central) and a woman joined me at the communal length table thingie I was at and we were getting on well by the end of lunch and I could feel a social invite ready to emerge from her if I'd actually lived in Totnes (rather than just being a visitor occasionally when I get the chance). She was expressing regret I didnt live there and I was thinking "Yep...I'd take up a social invite I could feel hovering in the air if I had lived there". Cue for we shared a pleasant lunch together anyway ...c'est la vie...

So I think that's the thing - yep...British enough to head for empty tables etc first - but otherwise = you never know...you might land up having a pleasant unexpected social encounter.

Yep...I'm (probably very obviously) southern English and spent most of my life in southern England - but that doesnt mean one has to be all reserved and backward in coming forward all the time...

And there's a dead ringer for David Brent turning an entire table into a workspace, yakking away on his phone and making a tepid coffee last for an age.
I have a vision of David Brent performing his version of Flashdance 😂

They do it in Whetherspoons. Sit all afternoon with their pcs. You only have buy one coffee, then you can keep refilling your cup.

Ladyleftfieldlover

I’m assuming those people with laptops are ordering coffee and tea every now and again !

But they don't. One measly coffee that they make last for a hundred years......

mae13

Ladyleftfieldlover

I’m assuming those people with laptops are ordering coffee and tea every now and again !

But they don't. One measly coffee that they make last for a hundred years......

One could make out a case for a "price per hour" to "rent" a table. There's a happy medium between a couple of restaurants I've been in over the years where you feel a bit "hurried out" once you've eaten a meal there - as they have another booking right after you for your table!!!!! Errr....whole point of a meal out in a restaurant being = to have a relaxing social occasion and some people are slow eaters and/or are having a chat with their companion (that would be me then on both counts....).

On the other hand - how much "time" have you "bought" for your cup of coffee? I'm not someone that will hurry my way through a cup of coffee and I may/may not have gone in with a friend and so we're chatting if so. But I'd say the £4 say one has paid for one's cup of coffee "rents" that one chair at the table for, say, up to an hour and then the "rent" expires and it's time to either buy something else to have there and pay some more "rent" or leave and your seat is then available to "rent" to someone else and they pay for theirs in turn. Not forgetting you haven't "rented" the whole table - you have rented only one seat and appropriate percentage of the table with it. If someone else needs to have a seat at the table = it's not yours and they are entitled to do so (as long as they've followed that British "rule" of looking for an empty table first - rather than they fancy yours more and are planning on mentally pushing you out so they can take it over).

Laugh for the day - "How can you tell a British person that was 'brung up proper like'?" = because they are mentally calculating what is their fair share of available resources in any context (so they don't take either more or less than that).

In some busy restaurants they give a time limit for the table. The one I go to regularly gives two and a half hours.
If cafes find people lingering for too long over one drink then they could implement something similar.

While I understand the disappointment when you can't get a seat in a chosen venue, and I've certainly been there, I don't understand how you know that the person with the laptop has been there hours, or all day with 'one cup of coffee'.
Could this be yet another urban myth that has embedded itself as fact? Of course some may have been there for quite a while, goodness I stumbled upon somebody being interviewed for a job once in Starbucks, but this blanket condemnation? Unless they were very distinctly dressed I don't think I'd 'recognise' if it was the same people at a table when I passed by two hours later, but then maybe I'm just not very observant.
In the OP's situation I think using the approach of joining someone at a table with comfortable seats or asking if they would give up their a seat for a short while would be the best option, and I think very few would refuse.

I volunteer in a café once a week. Tomorrow infact. I shall keep a lookout for the laptop lingerers.
There is certainly one rather annoying person who sits, at one of only 2 tables with windows, for ages. She starts with a coffee at 10.30 and is still there when I leave at 1pm but has usually ordered soup.
We offer free WiFi and a modicum of warmth so perhaps it's just that and the buzz of seeing other people so offsets loneliness and makes it look as though you are busy.

I can understand that.

Rosie51 I was just about to post similar.

Unless you personally are in the cafe/tea room for many hours how do you know how long other people are there and what they have had to eat or drink🤷‍♀️

When we have had builders and decorators here for months at a time I would take myself down to our local independent coffee shop with my Kindle and/or iPad

I always sat on the comfy seat whether that be inside or out if the weather permitted. I would say to the owner please let me know if you need the table (which never arose)

I was usually there for 2 - 3 hours, I would have two lattes and a toasted sandwich (salad sandwich if hot and I was outside).

All eateries would rather have a sole person on a table than a vacant table, makes the place look busy and popular.

JenniferEccles

It’s what’s called working from home these days, except workers aren’t at home, they are sitting for hours in coffee shops causing problems with seating as described here.

They often sit at a table for four with a coat on one chair, bag or laptop case on another.

I also don’t know how they concentrate on work in busy cafes.

Some of actually find the “buzz” of a cafe easier to work with than deathly silence.

A change of scene is good for the brain.

Before you clever clogs suggest going back to the office, what’s happened with a ton of “hybrid” workers is that many offices spaces have reduced desks etc now so there’s not enough room to seat all workers. Often a desk has to be “booked” in advance or worse still hot dealing with a first come, first served basis.

I enjoyed WFH, for an awful lot more work done and occasionally worked out of other locations, by choice.

* hot desking! Stupid auto correct!

Fallingstar

I completely understand that some people might prefer to work in a nice cafe but in this case they should sit at a single table, not take up a table with four easy chairs round it, we could have sat with someone sitting like this, but the table was taken up by the laptop and my DH can upset a cup of tea in the best of circumstances so perching it on the edge of a table is not going to work.

Sorry but if they have coffee or tea as well, they have as much right to the sofas as you do. They arrived first 🤷‍♀️

All the comments unbraiding me for my original post have already been made in no uncertain terms.
Thanks for all your replies but I get it. OK.

I don't think anyone is upbraiding you, so much as disagreeing with the 'cafe police' who want everyone to conform to their view of what cafes are 'for'.

A few of us have disagreed with that, but made a point of saying that we understand your disappointment at not getting a suitable seat, particularly given your husband's disability. Please don't feel 'got at' - I don't think it's like that at all.