- I need to buy/consume something every X minutes
- have to overhear irrelevant stupid/mundane conversations
- people have a habit of bringing their dogs everywhere now and I'm not even going to get into how disruptive that is
- deal with the passive-aggressiveness of the employees when you spend a couple of hours there
Whenever I work from home and I need a 'public' place in order to separate home and work, I go to the local library for which I pay taxes. It's probably the only place I can walk in, not be expected to buy anything and just enjoy the silence. Other times when the weather is nice I just go the park or on a bench on the public trail and use my phone as a hotspot.
The bagel/coffee/sandwich/donut shops are businesses where people should walk in, buy something, have a date/meeting/chat and then leave. I'm probably a weirdo but again, I never got this working from a coffee shop thing.
This is an old tradition.
Cafes, bars, tea houses, etc have served as social hubs and placed to read or work on documents (now computers) for literally thousands of years, everywhere on the planet. There's simply a social need for a space like that, because it's a more efficient usage of space to have people work on a revolving basis in a shared space than everyone have a private space of their own or not be able to work.
It's only with the modern invention of corporate coffee shops that misvalue social fabric that we see the churn happening. (PS -- those corporate stores are wrong about the short term boost from churn improving their long term fortunes, at least from what I've heard from the big ones.)
I also find it interesting you approve of one "office-like" usage -- having a chat or meeting -- but disapprove of another -- working on documents.
You still can see coffee spots as social places in developing countries.
you also seem to be looking at things negatively. here's an alternate view:
- you don't have to buy something on a timer.
- - get to know the owners/workers, and they'll enjoy your visits, no matter how long. most of the cafes i visit love it when i bring my dog for instance.
- - if a cafe is (nearly) empty, you sitting there provides natural marketing for the cafe in the form of social proof (no one likes being the only person in a business). i usually leave when i notice it getting full so others can enjoy it too, but if it's half empty, i have no qualms staying for a while without the pressure of buying something on a timer.
- stupid conversations are easy to tune out; interesting ones are the hard ones. at the very least, it feeds the superiority complex nicely.
- dogs are bundles of joy and love, and make (most) people happy.
- again, get to know and show interest in the owners/workers and develop rapport with them. they may even give you free stuff.
I'm at the point where I would pay extra for businesses and facilities that didn't allow animals. The service animal law is also being used fraudulently by so many people, I just assume it unless I can see the person is blind.
keeping dogs away from human eating areas reduces your chances of disease by a negligible amount. you would be much better off requiring everyone to wash their hands and/or disinfect their phones upon entering.
Citation needed
in any case, the primary transmission concerns are poop and mucus membrane contact. so again, the main thing you need to do is wash your hands with soap (and don't play with poop or make out with the dog).
and that point was not so much "different strokes for different folks", but "different strokes for the same folks", as we each embody multiple perspectives and our conscious brain can choose among them (a lesson i keep learning over and over).
However, there are other shops that actively cultivate the kind of culture you mention. Starbucks is probably the most prominent. It's something that Starbucks deliberately promoted since inception.
You seem already aware that it's nice to have a 3rd place besides home and work. But once it's a coffee shop you don't get it?
Exactly. Let me explain an example. I ran into an old friend once close to a Tully's a couple of years back and went in to get some coffee and catch up. Unfortunately there was no place for us to sit down at a table because all the tables were taken by single individuals working on their laptops. One of them was actually in a conf call. So we skipped that and went to have brunch at a full blown restaurant.
Also, assuming you're willing to drive a couple minutes out of your way, there's usually a slightly less busy Starbucks with tables available.
Maybe there's a business opportunity here for either a new kind of chain with a different brand identity... a non-music coffee shop or something. I know a place near UC Davis where it's actually disallowed to be studying there. No laptops on the tables. But it isn't a chain.
Or an opportunity for something between a WeWork and a Starbucks, a Costco of coffee shops, maybe with a membership fee on top of the cost of drinks.
Quite often I get to eavesdrop on interesting conversations. Typically people launching new business ventures of various kinds.
Some cafés that genuinely want your business make plugs available to the customers, some will even go as far as to put in plugs with USB adapters as well because they are making it clear: I want you to be here. Other places have no special extra plugs (just what you'd expect for a room that size) and that's fine, but some places have intentionally NO plugs and that's not an accident, that's by design.
Same thing with the wifi policy. I don't care if you have wifi, or don't have wifi, but if you aggressively block ~50% of all sites, seemingly at random, or have a time limit on usage…the message it clear, you only have Wifi so you can say "we have wifi" but you don't really mean it.
I only hope to patronize places that are welcoming, even if I'm not relying on those facilities that day. Those are the kinds of places I want to stay in business.
The kinds of places with limited internet and no plugs are the kinds of places that I don't want to be in business tomorrow, so I had better make sure not to give them a penny today.
I had a good chat once with a guy who runs a small coffee roastery and number of fancy third-wave coffee shops in a posh university town. One of the most popular coffee shops in town went completely bankrupt and he ended up taking it over. The first thing he did was turn off the WiFi; to hear him tell it, revenue doubled or tripled overnight as soon as he did. Turns out actually having available seats can drive sales, and having a giant store in a high-rent area full of people who buy one $4 coffee and sit there for five hours isn't profitable. At the time, he was in the process of renovating half of the space to be formal paid coworking.
(I personally think there's room for middle ground. My favorite local coffee shop only allows laptops in a dedicated section, which has ample power but also higher-density seating than the normal area. When it's warm enough to sit outside, they allow laptops outside during the week but not on weekends. Another favorite coffee shop just turns the WiFi off on weekends.)
The problem with that café is their hours miss both the before-work rush, and the after-work rush, with them closing shop at 6pm. You have to be _open_ to take money.
There is also the trouble that most of the people who will be around at close of business likely came in an hour or two earlier, so you are essentially paying someone to monitor the cafe without bringing in any new revenue.
And it's not just them, I see a lot of local businesses in this area struggling, but the problem is they aren't open to take my money at reasonable times. There's another café even closer to me that is trying to make it, but they are closed 2 days a week and it's not the weekend, I'm not sure which days they are, so it's hard to check it out. It's just baffling to me - you pay rent 24/7, you have bills every month, and staff … but if you want to take money (generate income) you have to be open. If you want to make the most money, shouldn't you try to have your doors open the most amount of time you can?
The dumbest thing in my mind is that they are open for like 4 hours on Saturday (7am - 11am).
I think the problem with that particular coffee shop though is that they lady who owns it also runs a catering / event hosting business, so the needs of the coffee shop come last.
One where I live has a "no laptops at mealtimes" sign. If you get out a laptop, they ask you to leave. If you come during a quiet period, get out a laptop, and are still using it when reaches a mealtime, they ask you to put it away.
To be fair they do really good food, it's always packed at mealtimes, and they explain their policy is because they want to make a place where people appreciate food and conversation.
I like them and wouldn't want them to shut down.
Another place doesn't have a sign. I sat down and ordered a proper meal. Then I got my laptop out. I needed to work for the next couple of hours. Table space wasn't a problem, and it wasn't an especially posh place.
After I'd been working for 20 minutes, a waiter came over to tell me I'd have to put the laptop away. After a rather awkward conversation we agreed I could cancel my already ordered (and presumably partly cooked) meal, because I'd have to go and find another restaurant.
I won't mind so much if that one is replaced.
I applaud it.
It’s actually a fairly nice model. If you want to work in someone’s commercial space, paying for it is entirely reasonable.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2014/jan/08/pay-per-minut...
London: https://london.ziferblat.net/
Manchester: https://www.ziferblat.co.uk/
8p/min = £4.80 per hour. Bearing in mind I'd pay £5 for coffee and a cake in many places that seems reasonable.
UK: many public access spaces have places to sit and public wifi (e.g. central reference library, University buildings, some City Council buildings &c)
These are not generally the kind of places where you would bring a laptop.
Some places do, and you have all the reasons in the world to favor these places as they match your needs, but it seems kind of silly expecting that every place should cater to every type of customer.
But who wants to spend any time or money at all in a café that's designed to be hostile to customers?
Coffee shops will never have enough seating anyway for the amount of coffee they sell.
When I go into frequently-empty places I find that the staff, who should have all the time in the world to help, are actually more distant, because they're so used to filling up their time chatting together or doing other stuff that when a customer actually does show up it's like some unforeseen situation they didn't plan for.
http://johnlawrenceaspden.blogspot.com/2018/09/do-right-thin...
Another commenter here said this was because US servers depended on tips, while tipping is not done in European restaurants. Maybe so; overall I like the European method much better.
I'm just wondering if that would protect your ears, do as much harm, or double it.
But the basic answer to your question is, no, it doesn't double the sound energy.
To the extent the headphones are successful at creating an inverse sound to cancel incoming sound, that will reduce the sound energy reaching the inner ears. The sound and its "mirror" don't add up to increase energy, rather, the energy reaching the ears is reduced where waves cancel.
(The same thing happens in, say, optical interference patterns, and coastal waves. All the energy which seems to mysteriously disappear where waves cancel is, in fact, accounted for by increasing at the places the same waves interfere contructively. In the case of headphones, it's going to be rather more subtly accounted for either elsewhere in the spatial pattern around and on the speaker, and/or by the speaker acting as a net energy absorber.)
Active noise-cancellers also have a passive component. The big squishy cups on mine (Bose QC-35). These of course reduce incoming sound energy too.
But it's more complicated than that. Ears have a sort of physical volume control of their own (using tiny muscles), which reacts to the sound level. As far as I'm aware, damage is more likely deeper in the ear, past that stage.
So anything which alters the ear's coarse volume response might produce a more complicated damage response than simply measuring incoming levels would suggest.
I apply that theory: I sometimes listen to music on the headphones, in high volume environments. This seems to mask out the environmental noise better, and my theory is this isn't just psychoacoustic masking, it's causing my ears to block out more sound physically, helping to protect them physically. When doing this I listen to music which has a consistent sound level, rather than, say, a podcast or something subtle like classical.
I've read that noise-cancellers produce a hiss which annoys some people. I can't say I've noticed much volume to the hiss, and I used to assume it was residual signal from the signal processing. But it may be that's intended to interact with the ear muscles too.
So, if it's quieter, you're ok.
If the device makes the outside world louder, then yes, you might want to turn it off. (This actually happens on my headphones when taking a call.)
Also, whatshisface is exactly correct.
The question is, why is everyone else using it as a library with snacks. As I said, it's always packed in the late evenings.
The neighbouring coffee shops are also packed until midnight.
Here are some ideas:
- Why not, it's nice to do.
- Some of us are happy to pay for it.
- Lots of people want an evening place, aka "third space", but don't care for bars, alcohol and shouting. They want to quietly sit and read late at night, socially around other people, with some talking some of the time, but not constantly.
- For many, home is not suitable for working, studying or relaxing. It depends a lot on the home.
- It helps to be around other people to focus and relax, and it's nice to have an ice cream and/or bagel and/or drink while doing it.
- There's no library nearby.
- There's a great library further away, but it's shut in the evenings. (Our libraries are often packed with people. Until they close, then everyone has to find somewhere else.)
- If you enjoy reading/writing around strangers being a bit fun and lively, you won't get that in a library. But a bar is too much. Maybe it doesn't work for you, but for me and many others, the buzz from people just being happy in the vicinity is quite helpful.
- No affordable co-working spaces. The few co-working spaces are either rent-per-month (too expensive if you don't use them a lot), or closed in the evening to daily renters. Anyway, the day rate (~$20/day) is too much if you're only out for a couple of hours, and don't have good money (most people I see around are not working in IT, btw).
- Not enough friendly communal spaces. (Btw, I've helped run one of these. It was really hard work!)
[aside rant] We have a very strange cafe culture in the UK compared to continental Europe: too many chains, too expensive, poor quality, takeaway coffee. The latest insult is chains not wanting to wash cups, so now we have to bring in re-usable cups. At least they're offering discounts, for now.
Here in Germany some places even give out reusable cups with deposit for to go (as an alternative to paper if you forgot your own travel mug)
I've not found the environment very conducive to getting much work done though. It's too noisy and there aren't enough desks. I've had more success with the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs [2] which charges in the same way as a coffee shop but feels more like a co-working space.
Because of this, one of the easiest ways to improve your odds of success, when you own a restaurant, is to lease LESS space than you need. Basically there's a lot of good reasons to make your customers wait in line:
1) You're not paying to rent the sidewalk in front of your restaurant
2) Having a few customers waiting out front is a great advertisement for your place.
Obviously, this isn't great for customers, but if you're a restaurateur it's awesome.
Out in Vegas, restaurants and clubs routinely pay people to wait out front to make their place seem "in-demand."
One day I noticed the music was much louder than usual, and asked the staff to turn it down. I figured it was a mistake because it was normally much quieter.
They told me this was the new company policy. To set the music uncomfortably loud to make people leave, after finishing their food or drink.
(Around the same time they also instigated a 30 minute time limit on Wifi if you bought something. Even though I was willing to keep buying, I couldn't get through a new tea every 30 minutes!)
Theory being it's more profitable to make your customers leave and make room for others, than to make a place people want to go to.
I haven't been back. Even with noise-cancelling headphones(∗), and earbuds under the headphones, it was too loud for me. And the wifi policy was really annoying.
Sadly, I've noticed ultra loud music seems to be the policy at a lot of places these days. I find Starbucks and Costa ok - but some of my friends won't go with me because they find the music there too loud as well.
(∗) I wear noise-cancellers at most places now. It probably makes me look unsocial or "hipster", but it's to protect my ears from the loud music just about everywhere insists on playing, and helps me concentrate when I'm working in a café. I enjoy talking with people if they want to.