Teams calls in cafe and toddler

[Swiftswatch]

I’m probably being unreasonable for posting here in the first place since there’s a bit of an anti kids in public sentiment here at times, but when did it become acceptable for people to think a coffee shop is the same as an office??
I was just having breakfast and a coffee with my toddler and someone was taking a teams call at a nearby table. If it’s relevant we were seated first.
Toddler was being good as gold imo, I get sometimes they can be too loud or badly behaved but they were just sat drinking their juice and having a little babble and sing, occasionally pointing out things they seen. “Cup! Cup!” Obviously louder than if I was just sat by myself but really not a disturbance and no louder than any other table of 2 chatting.

The man was sat sighing and rolling his eyes for about ten minutes until I just had to turn to him and say ‘sorry but this is actually a cafe not an office, if you’re in a meeting and need silence you’re in the wrong place’.
He did a big huff, picked up his laptop and walked off trying to find a new table but had to come back as it was too busy.

Now he’s sitting there giving me evil eyes.

AIBU to think I’m not in the wrong here?? I’m really not a confrontational person and normal wouldn’t speak up but a public cafe at breakfast time isn’t exactly the place to do a work meeting!
If people want to rave about working from home then go fucking work at home. People out in public don’t need to tiptoe around you because you want a change of scenery during the work day while you sit in meetings.

I've long had concerns about confidentiality issues when working from 'home', or in this case, a public space. Even if it's not highly sensitive, work meetings should not be conducted in public.

As someone who regularly works from cafes YANBU in the slightest.
Some of the cafes I work from people have full on office set ups with screens, taking teams calls etc. It's not an office, it's a cafe!!

Work from a cafe, fine.
Think the cafe is an office and demand silence, not fine.

Well done for saying something.

Fine for him to do a call in a cafe, but this comes with attendant risks. One of which is someone being in there with a toddler, which is also fine. If he wants a public venue that doesn't have toddlers, he can find somewhere child free. A casino perhaps.

He became grossly unreasonable when he started rolling his eyes at you, and I'd probably have gone and stood behind him and started waving at everyone else in the meeting.

I hate it in hotels as well. I have felt as though I am sitting in on a business meeting whilst having my breakfast, having stayed overnight. Non residents come in and order a cup of coffee sit in the breakfast area and start a full on business conversation. Thanks, but I don't want to listen to it.

As for eye rolling at your small daughter. Seriously.

Well done for saying something OP.

If he wants a private place to work he should pay for it. So bloody entitled of him.

How? Surely there are risks if your using the cafe WIfi? And people are ALWAYS louder on Teams meetings/phones than they are talking in the flesh. People seem to think that they can't be heard on the other end for some reason. (DH, I'm looking right at you now)

I also can't believe they spend enough to warrant the time they take up a table (proprietor's problem I know, unless you're waiting to sit down)

We have 3 office space coffee shops in town, so they'd be directed to one of those by me. There are many places with office space around the country for meetings

www.premiermeetings.co.uk/venue/banbury/875 these is £230 per day but there are many free places dotted around

YANBU to think he shouldn't be doing work calls from a café. Not only is it not appropriate for him to want silence, there's also a confidentiality issue. Maybe it wasn't an important call but I don't think my work would take kindly to me discussing work stuff in public like that. (Before the Teams revolution we used to have the same issue with people taking work calls on their mobiles on trains etc)

However, if he wasn't saying anything but just rolling his eyes I would probably have just ignored him, unless your toddler actually picked up on it herself and it was upsetting her.

Exactly. What an utterly bizarre tangent from @Chippy1234 .

In summary OP you were utterly correct to call him out on this. Had you brought your toddler into his office or a co-working space then yes he’d be entitled to ask you to leave. A cafe - not so much. He’s a twat. As 99% of people on the thread agree.

It's transparently obvious that I'm not commenting on his state of mind. I'm commenting on the content of the OP as to the substance of his behaviour.

Confronted by OP about his huffing and eye-rolling, far from denying her admonition, his response was to stomp off and try to find another table. Had he not been assuming a right to silence, it's reasonable to assume he would have informed her she was mistaken.

Who cares about his state of mind? That's irrelevant.

Good on you for speaking up. Too many instances of people thinking cafes are extensions of the offices now

Many cafes/ pubs encourage it as these people normally come outside the rush hours and tend to therefore buy drinks etc when there isn't otherwise a lot of customers.

It wouldn't be my ideal (due to dodgy wifi and noise), but I have done it before out of necessity (not being able to be at home for whatever reason, or travel). It's not a big deal, although I never expect silence.

Anyway, some people are rude and intolerant. Our school annually takes the reception kids to post their santa letters and then to costa for a babycinno. It's really sweet. I went with my son's class and there was of course the couple with the arsy stares and eyerolls when 25 5 year olds entered costa. I get it's noisy, but it was such a lovely experience for them, Costa isn't exactly the Ritz, and we were only there fore 15 minutes.

I wfh some days and sometimes work from a cafe for an hour, and I think you were 100% right.

I purposely work in a not very busy cafe that has loads of tables so I don’t end up hogging a table someone else needs. I also don’t work in a cafe if I have a teams meeting I’ll need to participate in - my work meetings are boring enough for me, I’d hate to inflict them on anyone else!

Plus as already mentioned upthread there’s potential confidentiality issues holding work meetings in public. A few weeks back I was in a cafe and the woman next to me had a meeting mentioning the company she works at, her role in HR, issues she was having with another team in her workplace etc

In a public place he should be prepared for other people's reasonable use of the facilities - normal talking and so on. It isn't as though your child was running round screaming, which would be annoying to everyone. If he wants silence he should work at home or in the office.

Starbucks is terrible for this. My baby days have gone now... but I do wonder how anybody can concentrate with the noise even now!

I think you may have missed the point- he seemed to expect that the cafe that he chose to have a work meeting in should not have other people in it who were doing their own thing. If h doesn't have an office to sit in, then fine - but that doesn't entitle him to huff and puff because the rest of the public don't meet his exacting expectations of "office behaviour" in a cafe! The OP had no problem with him working there. She had a problem with his exaggerated intolerance of the toddler daring to actually be a toddler in a public place.

YANBU. Good for you for standing up for yourself – and no, obviously you weren't rude, ignore the people on here being silly.

I occasionally work in a cafe for a change of scene (my work involves me sitting silently at my laptop, never doing calls). I always buy food and several drinks. And I only go to cafes where I'm friendly with the staff, and make clear to them that they can tell me if I outstay my welcome.
And I wouldn't huff about a bit of normal cafe noise.

The barista in one of my locals was recently telling me about a man who was working on his laptop and complained when one of the groups in the cafe started having a conversation. Barista had to point out to him that it wasn't a silent workspace. Apparently the guy then started talking to Siri! The barista and I agreed that we almost admired the sheer brass neck of it

Of course you weren't BU to just sit there with your toddler. If he wanted quiet, then he should have gone elsewhere.

Personally, I don't think it was necessary to say anything. He could roll his eyes and sigh all he liked and I wouldn't care. If he had complained or asked for quiet, then I'd have given him what for, but I wouldn't have gone out of my way to make it into an issue if he was just huff puffing to himself. That's his problem.

How could he have been 'sat for hours over 1 coffee' if you (with a toddler) were seated first?

Well to be fair we don't know that he was expecting total silence. OP just said he was reacting to the noise her child was making. Maybe the toddler was being a bit extra? They sometimes are. And there are basic expectations around public behaviour, even with young children.

I think my argument is that the differentiation between an office and a cafe is now a bit blurred; partly due to WFH and partly due to the rise of online-based businesses and working.

Don't get me wrong; I think the man crossed the line with the evil eye and probably was being a bit entitled. But I don't think the old boundaries between 'work' and 'not work' spaces exist any more really.

@CheersForThatEh He may have been rolling his eyes at the situation he was in and not particularly the OP or her toddler.

Yes, I thought that. It's one of the reasons why I wouldn't have said anything unless he did. For all we know, his annoyance might not have had anything to do with the OP or her toddler.

This made me laugh.. perhaps get the toddler to aswell.

Did you go right up to his laptop to check it was a teams working meeting? Maybe he was calling a friend. In breaking news people in public places are annoying. I’m not going to say good in you because you both sound annoying.