To be mad at Starbucks hosting a musical baby morning

[imnotreally]

My local Starbucks is located on the junction of an A road, just outside of town. People go there to work or to take business meetings. It also happens to be near the towns crematorium so a lot of mourners stop there for a coffee. I go because it’s a grown up coffee, away from the kids, I can have peace and quiet and think or work.

This morning I got there and half the seating was reserved. It turned out that a large portion of the seating area was being turned into a mother and baby/toddler group. Ok, fair enough but not really what you expect from a place where professionals meet. Then came the music. Loud kids music which involved clapping and singing along.

Am I being unreasonable to think they picked a totally inappropriate place and Starbucks are crazy to have arranged it?!

Since the coffee shop seem to be encouraging it, its fine. Would obviously not be ok for a group of parents to decide this themselves.

Starbuck were I am is an assortment of

braying competitive mums with prams size of tractor , spoon feeding tomatoey Gluck, which ends up on walls, on table,on floor

Business types on laptops having loud indiscreet conversation. Tutting if anyone else has an audible conversation

YANBU at all - everuone has the right to be in the coffee shop, no one has the right to make that much noise. Same as you wouldn't be allowed to go in with a speaker and drown out conversations with your personal music

Or a welsh town beginning with W? Sounds exactly like my local Starbucks! yep

I'd it Rhostyllen Starbucks?

What gave it away?!

I didn't realise they held a gun to your head!!

Don’t be ridiculous. It was a breast pump.

Don’t be ridiculous. It was a breast pump.

Yes it might have annoyed you but probably less annoying than the clicker clack of a keyboard and simecsychphantic call on a professionals mobile phone. You could always have gone to costa

Sounds hellish.

Parents with children - fine
People catching up witj friends - fine
People working out the office - fine (as long as they are actually buying things not nursing 1 latte)
People having meetings - fine. I'd rather be in a coffee shop than a half empty loungeof a hotel

Not ok:

• people having stupidly loud conversations (in person or on their phone)
• people hogging tables for hours on end
• people playing videos or music withour head phones (including kids tv on tablets)
• people doing group singing and group music

In other words, nobody expects a coffee shop to be silent. We expect a reasonable amount of chatter. That is different to 'lets sing old macdonald and do actions for the next 10 minutes' which is as irritating as loud meeting folk doing the 'hello! Yeah.. ueah... i'm getting a coffee with a client... yeah. We you tell ben tjat he needs to fac Washington those accounts by the time I'm back...yeaj... yeah...'

Lawyers do meet in coffee shops sometimes, usually meeting with a client before going to a third location (council offices, court, other side's offices) for the meeting proper.

There does seem to be a certain type of poster on MN who think that the world of work, people who work, are there to be sneered on.

Yes, I'm a professional and I'm very happy to be described that way. I've spent 30 years working in my field and am pleased with what I've achieved. And I will go to a coffee shop for a meeting if I choose to.

zee I work too. DH and I both own our own businesses. Mine is a small business and his is larger (£30m in sales per year) and what I would now call a small medium sized business. We also work regular jobs. A coffee shop isn't the place to do business. Going for lunch takes the same time as coffee and is much more private if you time it right. Also I might go for lunch and just have a drink but the setting is much more appropriate for a professional conversation.

As someone who has had many people report into me, I have never had a work performance conversation in a coffee shop. I took all of my team for lunch in small groups but it was for relationship building. We had the intern manage the coffee order to keep morale from the depths of despair.

Yabu...which area was this op..what amazing idea. Business meetings shouldnt be held in a public area...ive heard things said that shouldnt be said apart from below closed office doors.

I think people are getting a little mixed up about what sort of meetings are happening in coffee shops when they're angry about the lack of confidentiality! You wouldn't meet in a coffee shop to fire someone or tell them their performance isn't adequate, to discuss someone's sick leave or to discuss confidential info such as patients you work with.

But it can be very helpful to have a casual place to meet to discuss something work related, perhaps it's an informal interview, an informational interview, networking, it's also a nice place to meet if you're off sick and are having a check in but for whatever reason you don't feel comfortable going to the office. When I was off sick with a mental health condition my boss was lovely enough to come and meet me in costa, as I felt too ashamed and embarrassed to go to the office and didn't want to face my colleagues.

I feel that ANYTHING you do in a coffee shop that's loud enough to impact someone on the next table is ignorant, yeah that sometimes is people having meetings but those people are being unreasonable, if you saw me and my boss you couldn't tell we were anything other than two friends catching up as we kept our voices to a normal indoor level.

The problem with a music group is how much it impacts everybody else, playing loud music is inappropriate in a public space like a coffee shop just like if you were sat on a bus and someone started streaming loud videos from their phone. So a music group is ridiculous as everyone has to listen to it. Someone having a causal business meeting in a coffee shop shouldn't affect everyone else like that. I'd say the same if a group of teens rocked up with their acoustic guitars for a singalong. And I do walk out of places if I've gone for a chat with a friend and they've got a singer or guitarist playing so loud you can't hear yourself think!

There are a lot of naive people on this thread who seem to have a weird view of 'business', believing all business or workplace interactions between colleagues or people from different companies takes place in an office. You must never have been to a busy city during the weekday and seen how many causes work related meet ups and interactions happen not just in the office but also in coffee shops, bars and restaurants!

Serves you right for being cheap and trying to do business in a cafe.

This kind of attitude is very outdated. It's more and more usual to have work meetings in coffee shops as the way people work and the structure of work continues to change.

There are a lot of naive people on this thread who seem to have a weird view of 'business', believing all business or workplace interactions between colleagues or people from different companies takes place in an office. You must never have been to a busy city during the weekday and seen how many causes work related meet ups and interactions happen not just in the office but also in coffee shops, bars and restaurants!

I agree with this.

Yep, it's very normal to conduct business outside of your workplace. And coffee shops love it I'm sure given how much business it brings them. The world of work is changing, I have an office I can use but a laptop that means I can work from anywhere I wish when I'm not facing clients. Some days I work from my sofa, some from a coffee shop, sometimes mix it up, but I rarely go into the office if I don't need to, most of us don't. A lot of places are increasingly flexible which is great, but clearly from this thread it takes time for those cultural norms and expectations to shift away from clocking into the office (or wherever) at 9, leaving at 5, and being in the same location all day. I mean do none of you who are bitchy about coffee shop meetings ever take work home with you? What if you need a break from the house and just want to get out and be around others for a bit?

However despite all of this I fully recognise Starbucks can do what they like for their business, and I can choose to accept it or leave. That's fine, I don't think anyone deserves the space to be one way or another and I judge Starbucks for it not the mums who are just attending something they've had permission for. I'm just pushing back against these comments about working out of a coffee shop, which seem really odd and old fashioned.

In my experience, meeting recruiters always happens in coffee shops. I'm not sure what they'd do if starbucks/costa didn't exist.

I have done my fair share of listening to this waffle. Is it such a crime to ask to drink my coffee in peace without being subjected to more?

Who was forcing you to stay there? Were there no other coffee shops you could go to?

Not all work meetings involve talking to someone about their performance or anything at all that are confidential. Many of my meetings are with people in my team to share ideas and results from our research, other meetings are catch ups with other stakeholders to talk about general things to dow ith projects etc. We don't talk loudly enough for people to overhear, so why shouldn't we meet somewhere nicer and more comfortable and with better coffee than our workplace?

The world does not revolve around children.

I wonder if starbucks new what was going to happen? Maybe they thought it was a large group?

I meet with colleagues in coffee shops.We work all over. We are not talking about anything confidential or even remotely interesting. And once it is agreed, the details will be on our company website anyway.

OP you are definitely not being unreasonable. I will happily tolerate those informal mother & toddler groups which most coffee chains seem to attract, but I would leave the moment anyone started singing. It's intrusive.

I love all of these comments about how unprofessional it is to meet in a coffee shop. I regularly meet new clients in coffee shops as it is a far safer environment than visiting them at home or inviting them into my home. Most people love talking about their business in general terms and, as a professional bound by an ethical code including confidentiality, I wouldn't discuss sensitive matters in public. I don't make phone calls if I'm working alone and I don't hog tables for hours on end.

OK halfwit, if I take my DC to see Father Christmas and the only place to eat is Starbucks, should I not be allowed to take them in there? This has happened.

Perfect Don't be ridiculous. There is a whole world of difference between taking your children to a coffee shop and there being a musical toddler group.