Fed up with drinking coffee in other people’s offices.

Worse was someone who’d parked up with his dog, complete with dog blanket and dog bowl.

I can't wrap my head around his thought process. Starbucks is not your front room! There should be some kind of line, unless it's a service dog.

Surely this is a matter for the coffee shop and the people working? If they are not buying food and drink, the shop is quite capable of booting them out. And if the people working are discussing something confidential it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a public mobile phone conversation is overheard by somebody it shouldn’t have been. Hardly needs your input.

Fed up with drinking coffee in other people’s offices.
I read offices as orifices twice. I must start wearing my new reading glasses.

I actually think it’s rather lovely that he brought a dog blanket and bowl - was the dog being annoying?

My partner and I were in Nottingham last year and went into a large cafe and virtually every table was taken by a person with a laptop, most just had a drink (which could for all I know be just the only one they had). We were very annoyed - surely the cafes are losing customers and should only allow laptops to be used for the duration of eating a meal eg 30-40mins?

They are a business that needs people to eat and drink not just use the tables, chair and free WiFi.

That's bizarre.

I’ve lost count of the number of job interviews I’ve been party to in my local coffee shop. It’s sometimes quite entertaining but usually tedious as fuck. But it’s not as bad as the people who insist on watching videos with their phone on loudspeaker.

I WFH and hate going to coffer shops to work - it is noisy and expensive, and not very comfortable . Why an earth would anyone opt for this when you could either be at home or in your actual office

I can barely cope with the noise, distractions and uncomfortable set up of an office, there is no way I could work in a cafe. If people like noisy environments they should go to the office and leave coffee shops for coffee! There are definitely privacy and intellectual property concerns in a cafe, open WiFi networks are not safe so you need a vpn, and you never know who could be listening to your calls. If I take work calls in public areas I am always very careful about what I say, I couldn't do that all day long.

That is the way we have gone in the UK. Let the inconsiderate arseholes have free reign without consequence and expect everyone else to bend over backwards to mitigate the externalised costs to themselves. What a great society we have moulded for ourselves.🙄

There is a big difference.

I work in an office which the company rents space so is shared with employees from other companies. Some of the most annoying people are the ones who start a Teams meeting and then talk at a volume that is as if they are trying to talk to someone sat 100 meters away. People at neighbouring desks having a F2F meeting are far quieter and less disturbing. Even when it comes to people talking F2F, there can be a point when they cross the boundary* into gobshite territory and should have a bit of consideration for others around them. It is unfortunate in the individualistic self-obsessed Americanised UK that a lot of people treat public shared spaces as an extension of their own house, and exercise main character syndrome everywhere they go.

*The boundary is when you are loud enough to be an annoyance to someone else.

Look yourself at the OP’s posts. The cafes she is talking about are not filled with the 21st century’s great thinkers, revolutionaries, and authors.

This. I think office workers get a bad rap re their presence in coffee shops so thank you for pointing out other groups who could also be alienating. It does indeed sound a difficult job trying to accommodate all groups!

My other suggestion would be noise cancelling headphones.

I can't imagine going into a coffee shop for a drink and cake or whatever and whipping out my headphones. That seems overkill.

They're commercial businesses. They'll tell people with laptops to move is it's problematic for them. If it's not, you are free to use the space as you see fit, or not.

It's certainly true that increasing numbers of people are working in cafes rather than offices. This relates to the dislocation and disruption in the UK commercial real estate market as a result of lockdowns and then interest rate hikes. Small businesses have been finding it increasingly difficult to afford office space.

The thing is, small businesses are the backbone of the British economy: SMEs account for 60% of total employment. And they've had a horrendous time of it over the past 5 years. It's absolutely in all our interests that the economy recovers and that means SME recovery. If that means more people working in cafes until the commercial property market normalises, then I'm all for it.

If the cafe OP frequents is an indie cafe, then it too is an SME. Independent coffee shops have experienced a double shock over the past 5 years, firstly from lockdown, and most recently from the vertiginous rise in coffee prices due to the current volatility in the commodities market.

it would be a shame if OP withdraws her custom from a shop which needs her business, simply because other customers are discussing subjects which she has not personally pre-approved (ie work, rather than other conversational topics which are more acceptable to her).

My other suggestion would be noise cancelling headphones.

Nothing to do with the chatter and vibrancy, it’s the one person taking up a full table of 4, eating their own food and telling other patrons to be quiet because they are working/on a call that people object to

No one wants the quiet of a church or library 🙄 We like the atmosphere and vibe of a coffee shop with people, but not ones shouting on their phone. Also, who wants to hear someone talking about work, you're going for a coffee to relax

Well yes there is that!

Would you want to give Mr Martin more business? Brexiteer in chief.

I don't get the sense that anyone wants quiet coffee shops - just that some (as described) are very loud. TBH my main beef with those with laptops is the way they spread themselves across spaces and tables designed for more than one person

I, also, think it's a size thing. As I've described a cafe I use has a no laptops rule - given the small space and layout I quite understand why. It's near the university and popular with students

In a much bigger place it wouldn't be so much of an issue. My main cafe/bar location has more space especially outside. It's by a marina and gets the odd laptop user. They blend in more and the place is certainly not quiet. Groups meet there and there is plenty of chatter

No, but Pope, Dryden and Marlow were all reputedly pretty damn loud, weren't they?

Personally, and as a business owner, I enjoy seeing young people collaborating, working, socialising. Goddess knows the economy is stagnant enough, and British public spaces haven't fully recovered from Covid.

Go to Greece (where I'm from) or Poland (where I travel regularly for business) and coffee houses are loud with chatter, young children, office workers. It's a joy to see and hear. It's the mark of a thriving and cohesive society.

Far better the hustle and bustle of an active public space than the silent, depressed, dreary spaces that characterise so much of the UK outside London.

If a person prefers quiet spaces, there are churches and libraries, which are often also lovely.