People working on laptops in cafes 😡

Fallingstar

Thanks Tuliptree and AGAA4, will post again, but will have to think hard about what I say because some posters seem to see me as someone I am not. Maybe that is their problem but it isn’t a nice feeling to see myself described in a way that nobody who knows me would recognise.
Anyway it is what it is.

I think the problem here was some posters were tone deaf as to what you really wanted/ needed. The music behind the words. Some threads clearly require some kindness, sympathy and understanding. This was one of them imo. Suggestions like booking or asking people to move, fine. Explaining wfh and economics of running a coffee bar - not so fine.

Just to add, I haven't noticed many people working on laptops in coffee shops around here although I don't frequent them often.

Perhaps I should get out more - or not?

Fallingstar

Jeez am fairly new to this site and is something else to see how posters get stuck into a poster and then just carry on getting stuck in.
Am sorry I posted the blooming thing now.

It seems to happen more and more now.

A pile-on. Very unkind.

Thanks Tuliptree and AGAA4, will post again, but will have to think hard about what I say because some posters seem to see me as someone I am not. Maybe that is their problem but it isn’t a nice feeling to see myself described in a way that nobody who knows me would recognise.
Anyway it is what it is.

Fallingstar please don't stop posting. Your posts are valued. You have got us talking about cafes!

People will always have opposing views but if anyone has been personal and upset you then that's not acceptable.
Sorry your thread has made you feel like this 💐

At a macro level - and I think it might be an idea for cafes to amend their practice slightly of handing number cards to people waiting for something to be served to them (eg table no 19 is waiting for their lunch) and hand people number cards appropriate to the time they bought their refreshments. If it's just a cup of coffee and bought at, say, 10 am = they could hand them a card to put on the table that is, say, "10 - 1". That would indicate "bought at 10am - is one item (ie a cup of coffee)" and then decide their own applicable time rationing - ie whether someone still sitting there/and nothing extra bought was allowed to be there come the time they were handing out cards saying "11-1" (ie one item bought at 11am).

That could be one way of dealing with this - ie staff could see that someone was still sitting there with a laptop at....say.....12 noon...but the card on their table said "10-1" and the cafe was too busy by then to allow for someone monopolising a table as "work from home office - but done in the cafe" iyswim.

I get the point re office jobs sometimes don't allow a desk that is "just yours" these days and will maybe not allow a worker in to work at their own desk (ie because someone else is using it instead - and there are no spare desks they can claim instead). I was an office worker prior to retirement and that malarkey started up somewhat in my time and I remember having to figure out tactics to deal with the matter when they got to a stage where there was one desk short for everyone and no-one would let me indicate a desk was "mine" any longer - and, funnily enough, I was the only person they were playing that game with!!!! Not funny to have to wait for someone to resign from their job before I could go grab a desk and make it very visibly "MINE - do not touch!" and make it plain "There are enough desks now - so you can't deny one of them is just mine again" to the employer. I also can see that some people literally don't have enough space in their home for them to live in and treat as their home AND also let their employer make a grab for it by expecting them to treat a bit of their precious space in THEIR home as rent-free workspace for the employer to use.

There needs to be a way forward on this - but it does have to be one that honours the fact that a cafe is first and foremost a cafe (and not a workspace). Customers get to use a cafe as a cafe first and foremost and office workers have "2nd dibs" to use any tables as "workspace to save their employers money on providing desks in an office as they should".

Fallingstar

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 wouldn’t upbraid you. I understand how important it is to have places you can go to that work for you when you have additional requirements. In my small market town we have plenty of coffee bars but many I can’t safely access. People who don’t have these limitations generally don’t understand how disappointing what happened to you was. I hope you can come up with a solution - of the suggestions made, I think booking is a good one.

Doodledog

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.

Thanks for that.
But I really will think twice and then twice again before posting.
X

Jeez am fairly new to this site and is something else to see how posters get stuck into a poster and then just carry on getting stuck in.
Am sorry I posted the blooming thing now.

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.

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.

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 🤷‍♀️

* hot desking! Stupid auto correct!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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......

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

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 😂

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...

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.