Working from a coffee shop?

[ManhattanNY]

Let me firstly caveat this by saying I have no more than a passing curiosity. I’m not upset or anything like that, I just wondered if this is usual? It’s a lighthearted thread. I’m not trying to judge or shame. I’m simply bored on a Sunday and wondering.

DH and I were free yesterday, so I suggested a drive to our local Costa, where we could sit down and chat about an upcoming trip, with a coffee and one of their yummy Bakewell tarts.

When we got there around 10am it was heaving, without a single table spare. DH and I have a favourite seat in the corner and a man was working there on his laptop. No problem, we decided to leave it for today and do something else instead.

We went to the next town and visited Primark, did some other bits. Paid a visit to MiL and then went to Sainsbury’s, did some shopping, mainly cupboard stuff.

On route home around 5.15pm DH said, come on, let’s get that Costa, so we popped in. This time lots of free tables, so got our coffee and enjoyed 45 mins. But I noticed that the guy from that morning was still on his laptop in the corner seat.

As I say, just curious. I’ve never thought of working all day from a coffee shop, but I could see why it’s nice. Of course I’m assuming he’s working, I guess he could be gaming. But it also seems a bit impolite to take up a table all day - I guess he’s paying for drinks though.

just curious if this is a thing and how long do you spend on your coffee shop visits?

A new coffee shop opened up near us and we tried to get a table the first week it opened. We went in, about ten tables in total about 5 of them were single people working at laptops. So we left and went elsewhere.

Next time we tried to go there we’re signs up saying 45 minutes max if working from laptop etc. they’d clearly lost a lot of business from people table hogging.

Managed to get a table that time and it was really lovely.

We recently went to a very small cafe (4 tables). All of the tables were taken, but one table that sat 4 or 5 if one sat at the end, was occupied by one person with a laptop talking loudly on their phone.
We'd already placed our order so had no other option but to mime that we would like to share their table. They rolled their eyes at us and stood up so that I could uncomfortably sidle past them into my seat. The rest of my party sat in the three remaining seats.
The person who had been sat at the table had already finished their drink and we and in fact the rest of the customers in the cafe were subjected to their loud work call for another 15 minutes.
I could maybe understand this during the week but this was 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, prime cafe time.