> Most coffee shops aren't staffed for table service. That's part of the point. If the coffee shop is so busy that the staff can't sweep the relatively small s

> Most coffee shops aren't staffed for table service. That's part of the point. If the coffee shop is so busy that the staff can't sweep the relatively small space, then they have no need to bother anyone to buy more. The bulk of my experience though, in both large cities and small towns, is that the staff spends plenty of time just hanging out. > Customers interpret this signal in restaurants because there are social cues... And those social cues are only social cues because restaurants train their wait staff to visit with the customers on a regular basis. The coffee shops are the only ones that don't seem to know this about the industry; if they started doing it, customers would learn the cues PDQ. (My pet theory for this is that coffee shops aren't run by restaurateurs; they're run by hobbyists, people like the article's author.)