6 ms·

War brews between cafés, remote workers as people use shops as offices

37 points by voisin 3y ago

Quinzel 3y ago
Do people who do their work in cafés consider the fact that other people can see what they’re working on? I like people watching and sometimes shoulder surfing. It’s a curiosity thing. If I can see someone doing work, I will sit somewhere where I can see what they’re doing. The other day, I was watching someone doing their invoicing. I could see the names addresses and emails of their customers, and how much they were being invoiced and the service they were being invoiced for. If I was trying to be a cyber criminal, I would have a decent amount of info just from that to be able to target some of those people. Perhaps even replicate the invoice, but change the bank account to a different account. I’m not saying that I would actually do that. But, if I can think that up, surely there are people who would also think that up, except act on it. I don’t know why people think that cafés or other public spaces are good spaces to do work, because people can see what you’re doing. I’m constantly surprised by some of the kinds of work people will carry out in public too. It doesn’t seem a smart thing to do.
- jon-wood 3y ago
  I sometimes work in coffee shops, but yes I take this into consideration. I’ll usually be working on either something that isn’t sensitive, or writing code where you’d need remarkably good eyesight and attention to work out what I’m actually doing from any distance. I also typically sit with my back to a wall but that’s just because I have crippling ADHD and can’t concentrate with things going on behind me. What really gets me is the people who’ll join video calls from a coffee shop. Not only is it going to reveal a ton of information to anyone nearby it’s just straight up anti-social, no one went to the coffee shop to hear about your quarterly sales goals, Bob.
  - Quinzel 3y ago
    Yeah those people are just their own special breed of ignorant twat.
- chaz6 3y ago
  At a former job, I was provided with a laptop that had a hot key that enabled a built-in privacy screen, so you had to be pretty much dead on straight to see it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=130bPdQvH3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=130bPdQvH3w
  - Quinzel 3y ago
    That is pretty cool! I have a screen I can put over my laptop screen that does the same thing, but I realised that depending on the angle you could still view some stuff on my screen. I never do any work outside of home/work so it doesn’t really matter for me. I would say a surprising number of people do not take measures to ensure their privacy/security when working outside of the home/office.
inemesitaffia 3y ago
There's restaurants that also operate as daytime working spaces
spookybones 3y ago
I had a guy try this recently while I was chatting with a friend in a dark speakeasy at 7pm. He sits down right next to us, opens his laptop at full brightness, and starts working in Excel. He even has the audacity to look over his receipts with his phone flashlight. It lit me up like a kid at a campsite about to tell a ghost story. Completely killed the atmosphere. I was about to have a Larry David moment when the server told him to leave.
m348e912 3y ago
If you're going to work from a coffee shop, you need to buy something. Co-working spaces are pretty expensive so even a daily 6-dollar latte is a better deal compared to some co-working facility fees. Anyway, I'm afraid that curbing internet won't be a complete solution since it's easy enough to tether off a phone or connect to an Xfinity hotspot. A potential solution to this problem would be to make useable power outlets scarce. Some laptops can last a full day without a charge, but you'll find that most people will need to plug in at some point if they're working for extended periods of time. Not a perfect solution since it can be thwarted by external battery power banks.
- abdullahkhalids 3y ago
  With a Thinkpad T series, you can also just swap your external battery.
- starkparker 3y ago
  It's not just about buying things. These places aren't selling workspaces, they're selling drinks, often to people in their immediate community and often with a goal of being part of the community. So if the community can't get a table, they stop coming at all, and that's a bigger existential threat to the owners than just the money. > The problem became so severe that the bar began to lose its regulars. Esten and his wife would bump into former customers around the neighbourhood and they told him that they could never get a seat at the bar because there were laptops everywhere, so they started going to other coffee shops instead. > “That was breaking our hearts,” he said. These people don't want to babysit tech workers. Even if it's financially sustainable to do, that's not what they opened a small coffee shop or bar to do.
  - theoldlove 3y ago
    Don’t most coffee shops sell to the “immediate community?” I don’t think many people travel long distances for coffee. Maybe I’m just a miserable misanthrope, but despite all the rhetoric I’ve never had a “community” experience at a coffee shop. In my experience it’s just cash for drinks and a place to sit. I’ve had much better experiences getting to know people in explicitly non-commercial settings (dog parks, playgrounds, classes, etc.)
givemeethekeys 3y ago
For anything that isn't an outright espresso, moka pots are excellent. My cost per cup went down from $6 for a mocha to $0.50. With where the economy is heading, we'll be co-working from kitchens very soon. The coffee shops will wax lyrical of the days when they hated on tech bros who took up valuable real estate for hours.
- voisin 3y ago
  > My cost per cup went down from $6 for a mocha to $0.50. Are you comparing store bought mocha to homemade?
  - givemeethekeys 3y ago
    I'm comparing buying a cup of coffee in a coffee shop vs making it at home. My homemade mocha formula: - 1 teaspoon of cocoa or cacao powder. - 1 shot of Coffee from moka pot. - 1 cup of cashew milk made at home by blending hot water, 15 or so cashews, a couple of dates blended in for sweetness.
digitalsushi 3y ago
Back in 1994 the town dialup ISP started doing business; by 1996 I was working there and getting indoctrinated. I can't remember the name of the terminal servers anymore.. we had about 30 of them, 12 POTS lines on each, so we could have say 360 people online. At a 10 people to 1 port oversubscription ratio, people were getting busy signals at peak hours, but eventually got on ... ... as the months went on, people figured out how to use keep-alive programs and our idle-user scripts started to fail. Busy signals got worse and worse, and of course, we lost customers. When I think of the coffee shops, and people buying a cup of coffee, or a bagel, every now and then, I'm sure it must feel the same to the shop owners. And in our modern world of seemingly infinite resources, I get that trying to remember dial up modems run by a few poor dudes in a literal garage is only going to garner the same sillouettes of billionaires out to dominate the economy; and so does the sleepy cafe owner trying to make rent manifest as John Buckingham Starbucks himself. But this middle aged geezer has a nettled solidarity for these small business owners, who are without any apparent tool to save their business without deliberately summoning the modern marvel of public shaming on social media. I could never run a business.
faeriechangling 3y ago
This is a very old and easily solved problem. Policy at the front: “Patrons get 1 hour of seating with each purchase” You can also make the seating less comfortable to encourage people to move on, which is a classic technique. Or straight up just don’t have seating.
- digitalsushi 3y ago
  There's an engineering problem if any: design a chair that becomes uncomfortable after 9 minutes to 80% of people.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    Sounds like a dual purpose design that ensures 80% of people don't return to your coffee shop after their first visit.
  - r9295 3y ago
    That's solutionism, not an engineering problem
  - morkalork 3y ago
    That's most chairs in cafés
- silenced_trope 3y ago
  > Policy at the front: “Patrons get 1 hour of seating with each purchase” The problem with this is enforcement. People have become antisocial and angrier, an effect of COVID isolation? I don't know. But putting retail workers in the position of having to even ask people to leave is too uncomfortable and potentially even risky.
  - j7ake 3y ago
    Scan a receipt that gives you 60 minutes of electricity and wifi near your seat.
morkalork 3y ago
I hate people and love WFH. Who are these people taking such a good thing and ruining it by removing their pyjamas, getting dressed and going out in public?!
- dharmab 3y ago
  People with roommates/housemates People with small kids, schoolkids in the summer or after the kids are home from school but before work is over People with small apartments in dense cities who need to get out of their space for their well being
  - meiraleal 3y ago
    And the majority, people that think it's cool and posting in social media
- nicbou 3y ago
  I need to get out of the house sometimes. I also love to neet friends and do a bit of work in the same room. The modern world can be very isolating by default, so you have to head out sometimes.
syntheweave 3y ago
Library environments are often better workspaces, especially study carrels at university libraries. (Stick to public universities if you don't want to be kicked out.) Cafes have more of a bustle to them that isn't good for extended "deep work" sessions. But this article happened back in 2009, too. I remember it. I may have been part of the problem. It's a signal of an economy that is displacing and reallocating workspaces.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  I am very much pro remote work - but tax payers and businesses shouldnt subsidise you. A public library or a coffee shop are not your office. Rent one, work from home, or go back to an on site job. I really dont get this entitlement - if someone came to my coffee shop, if owned one, and stood there all day working, i’d kick them out and ban them.
  - jon-wood 3y ago
    Ok, coffee shop I get in some cases. Libraries though? What harm is someone doing by sitting at one of many empty seats in a library and doing quiet work?
    - nicbou 3y ago
      As someone once said, if someone came up with the concept of public libraries today, it would never fly. I used a library to work while travelling, to avoid overstaying my welcome in a café. It was fantastic. I also use them at home, where they enable me to earn money and pay taxes, if that's such a big concern. Most students do, too.
  - meiraleal 3y ago
    That's why you don't own a coffeeshop, it would be a miserably experience for you and for the customers. Lots of recently opened coffeeshop would love to receive those remote workers tho
    - 3y ago
silenced_trope 3y ago
I have Comcast Xfinity at home in San Francisco. But at many of the coffee shops I go to I can use Xfinity, their city-wide solution for their customers. Often times I don't even need to ask for the coffeeshop's wifi password since the Xfinity connection may be good enough. Quite often it isn't, more often than not actually. But the main shop I go to near my apartment it's reliable.
dylukes 3y ago
American coffee shops have never been cafes. They're glorified caffeine dispensaries. Buy your drink, get out, drink it somewhere else. In Europe no one bats an eye at you spending your entire day in cafe seating using the WiFi.
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  I would say this is much more of an urban/rural thing than an American/European thing. Also a discount/luxury thing. If you are running a coffee shop in an insanely expensive urban area slinging $2 coffees, you need a certain turnover of customers or you will just straight up go out of business. I have been hustling franchise owners walking around their resteraunts stalking people to make sure people didn't mill about for longer than TWENTY MINUTES. Didn't finish eating? Fuck you buy something else or finish eating on the sidewalk. If you're in a suburban coffee shop with a cheaper lease sipping on a $9 iced coffee drink and a $7 pastry, and the place is dead, not only will the staff likely not care that you're sitting there, they might chat you up so stave off the boredom.
  - indigo0086 3y ago
    This. Urban areas are more likely to either see or equate your taking up space in their restaurant, even if you're not working from home. In NH most coffee shops I go to are absolutely empty, and usually have a couple people getting breakfast or coffee while working and it's a regular in out turnover or enough space that it doesn't matter. Even in Manchester which would be the closest thing to a city in NH
- toyg 3y ago
  I know for a fact that, if you hog a table for more than 30-45 min in most busy cafes in Milano, you'll get hate-looks at the very minimum, if not literally kicked out. It changes the further you move from the city centre - as rents get lower, of course. It's also why WiFi in cafes has been quietly de-emphasized, over the last 10 years, pretty much everywhere in Italy. Money is money.
- BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
indigo0086 3y ago
Starbucks could win this by making dedicated meeting spaces or simply charging to use outlets or Wi-Fi for an hour at a time. How did Dunkin donuts beat them to that.
DanielHillman 3y ago
Maybe jarvo.io could be the solution (somewhat biased) but seems to be working so far.
DanielHillman 3y ago
Can we create a decentralised networking of beautiful micro co-working hubs to create, inspire and connect within a 10 min walk or cycle commute from your doorstep. The cost needs to be so low, it's accessible to everyone which is hard initially but once there is sufficient volume/space inventory then it's easier to encourage membership with prices less than $100/month.
- coworker2023 3y ago
  Hi! We're working on exactly that. We have 16 locations throughout the US, and currently, our membership is $100/month. Where are you located? I can tell you if we have a location near you. If you prefer to check out our website, let me know and I Can post it.
  - DanielHillman 3y ago
    Awesome - just checked out your site, really nice locations!
- coworker2023 3y ago
  Adding in our website in case I don't get notified that you reply. www.AptCoWork.com

37 points by voisin 3y ago

Do people who do their work in cafés consider the fact that other people can see what they’re working on? I like people watching and sometimes shoulder surfing. It’s a curiosity thing. If I can see someone doing work, I will sit somewhere where I can see what they’re doing. The other day, I was watching someone doing their invoicing. I could see the names addresses and emails of their customers, and how much they were being invoiced and the service they were being invoiced for. If I was trying to be a cyber criminal, I would have a decent amount of info just from that to be able to target some of those people. Perhaps even replicate the invoice, but change the bank account to a different account. I’m not saying that I would actually do that. But, if I can think that up, surely there are people who would also think that up, except act on it. I don’t know why people think that cafés or other public spaces are good spaces to do work, because people can see what you’re doing. I’m constantly surprised by some of the kinds of work people will carry out in public too. It doesn’t seem a smart thing to do.

jon-wood 3y ago
I sometimes work in coffee shops, but yes I take this into consideration. I’ll usually be working on either something that isn’t sensitive, or writing code where you’d need remarkably good eyesight and attention to work out what I’m actually doing from any distance. I also typically sit with my back to a wall but that’s just because I have crippling ADHD and can’t concentrate with things going on behind me. What really gets me is the people who’ll join video calls from a coffee shop. Not only is it going to reveal a ton of information to anyone nearby it’s just straight up anti-social, no one went to the coffee shop to hear about your quarterly sales goals, Bob.
- Quinzel 3y ago
  Yeah those people are just their own special breed of ignorant twat.
chaz6 3y ago
At a former job, I was provided with a laptop that had a hot key that enabled a built-in privacy screen, so you had to be pretty much dead on straight to see it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=130bPdQvH3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=130bPdQvH3w
- Quinzel 3y ago
  That is pretty cool! I have a screen I can put over my laptop screen that does the same thing, but I realised that depending on the angle you could still view some stuff on my screen. I never do any work outside of home/work so it doesn’t really matter for me. I would say a surprising number of people do not take measures to ensure their privacy/security when working outside of the home/office.

inemesitaffia 3y ago

There's restaurants that also operate as daytime working spaces

spookybones 3y ago

I had a guy try this recently while I was chatting with a friend in a dark speakeasy at 7pm. He sits down right next to us, opens his laptop at full brightness, and starts working in Excel. He even has the audacity to look over his receipts with his phone flashlight. It lit me up like a kid at a campsite about to tell a ghost story. Completely killed the atmosphere. I was about to have a Larry David moment when the server told him to leave.

m348e912 3y ago

If you're going to work from a coffee shop, you need to buy something. Co-working spaces are pretty expensive so even a daily 6-dollar latte is a better deal compared to some co-working facility fees. Anyway, I'm afraid that curbing internet won't be a complete solution since it's easy enough to tether off a phone or connect to an Xfinity hotspot. A potential solution to this problem would be to make useable power outlets scarce. Some laptops can last a full day without a charge, but you'll find that most people will need to plug in at some point if they're working for extended periods of time. Not a perfect solution since it can be thwarted by external battery power banks.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago
With a Thinkpad T series, you can also just swap your external battery.
starkparker 3y ago
It's not just about buying things. These places aren't selling workspaces, they're selling drinks, often to people in their immediate community and often with a goal of being part of the community. So if the community can't get a table, they stop coming at all, and that's a bigger existential threat to the owners than just the money. > The problem became so severe that the bar began to lose its regulars. Esten and his wife would bump into former customers around the neighbourhood and they told him that they could never get a seat at the bar because there were laptops everywhere, so they started going to other coffee shops instead. > “That was breaking our hearts,” he said. These people don't want to babysit tech workers. Even if it's financially sustainable to do, that's not what they opened a small coffee shop or bar to do.
- theoldlove 3y ago
  Don’t most coffee shops sell to the “immediate community?” I don’t think many people travel long distances for coffee. Maybe I’m just a miserable misanthrope, but despite all the rhetoric I’ve never had a “community” experience at a coffee shop. In my experience it’s just cash for drinks and a place to sit. I’ve had much better experiences getting to know people in explicitly non-commercial settings (dog parks, playgrounds, classes, etc.)

givemeethekeys 3y ago

For anything that isn't an outright espresso, moka pots are excellent. My cost per cup went down from $6 for a mocha to $0.50. With where the economy is heading, we'll be co-working from kitchens very soon. The coffee shops will wax lyrical of the days when they hated on tech bros who took up valuable real estate for hours.

voisin 3y ago
> My cost per cup went down from $6 for a mocha to $0.50. Are you comparing store bought mocha to homemade?
- givemeethekeys 3y ago
  I'm comparing buying a cup of coffee in a coffee shop vs making it at home. My homemade mocha formula: - 1 teaspoon of cocoa or cacao powder. - 1 shot of Coffee from moka pot. - 1 cup of cashew milk made at home by blending hot water, 15 or so cashews, a couple of dates blended in for sweetness.

digitalsushi 3y ago

Back in 1994 the town dialup ISP started doing business; by 1996 I was working there and getting indoctrinated. I can't remember the name of the terminal servers anymore.. we had about 30 of them, 12 POTS lines on each, so we could have say 360 people online. At a 10 people to 1 port oversubscription ratio, people were getting busy signals at peak hours, but eventually got on ... ... as the months went on, people figured out how to use keep-alive programs and our idle-user scripts started to fail. Busy signals got worse and worse, and of course, we lost customers. When I think of the coffee shops, and people buying a cup of coffee, or a bagel, every now and then, I'm sure it must feel the same to the shop owners. And in our modern world of seemingly infinite resources, I get that trying to remember dial up modems run by a few poor dudes in a literal garage is only going to garner the same sillouettes of billionaires out to dominate the economy; and so does the sleepy cafe owner trying to make rent manifest as John Buckingham Starbucks himself. But this middle aged geezer has a nettled solidarity for these small business owners, who are without any apparent tool to save their business without deliberately summoning the modern marvel of public shaming on social media. I could never run a business.

faeriechangling 3y ago

This is a very old and easily solved problem. Policy at the front: “Patrons get 1 hour of seating with each purchase” You can also make the seating less comfortable to encourage people to move on, which is a classic technique. Or straight up just don’t have seating.

digitalsushi 3y ago
There's an engineering problem if any: design a chair that becomes uncomfortable after 9 minutes to 80% of people.
- Jochim 3y ago
  Sounds like a dual purpose design that ensures 80% of people don't return to your coffee shop after their first visit.
- r9295 3y ago
  That's solutionism, not an engineering problem
- morkalork 3y ago
  That's most chairs in cafés
silenced_trope 3y ago
> Policy at the front: “Patrons get 1 hour of seating with each purchase” The problem with this is enforcement. People have become antisocial and angrier, an effect of COVID isolation? I don't know. But putting retail workers in the position of having to even ask people to leave is too uncomfortable and potentially even risky.
- j7ake 3y ago
  Scan a receipt that gives you 60 minutes of electricity and wifi near your seat.

morkalork 3y ago

I hate people and love WFH. Who are these people taking such a good thing and ruining it by removing their pyjamas, getting dressed and going out in public?!

dharmab 3y ago
People with roommates/housemates People with small kids, schoolkids in the summer or after the kids are home from school but before work is over People with small apartments in dense cities who need to get out of their space for their well being
- meiraleal 3y ago
  And the majority, people that think it's cool and posting in social media
nicbou 3y ago
I need to get out of the house sometimes. I also love to neet friends and do a bit of work in the same room. The modern world can be very isolating by default, so you have to head out sometimes.

syntheweave 3y ago

Library environments are often better workspaces, especially study carrels at university libraries. (Stick to public universities if you don't want to be kicked out.) Cafes have more of a bustle to them that isn't good for extended "deep work" sessions. But this article happened back in 2009, too. I remember it. I may have been part of the problem. It's a signal of an economy that is displacing and reallocating workspaces.

gumballindie 3y ago
I am very much pro remote work - but tax payers and businesses shouldnt subsidise you. A public library or a coffee shop are not your office. Rent one, work from home, or go back to an on site job. I really dont get this entitlement - if someone came to my coffee shop, if owned one, and stood there all day working, i’d kick them out and ban them.
- jon-wood 3y ago
  Ok, coffee shop I get in some cases. Libraries though? What harm is someone doing by sitting at one of many empty seats in a library and doing quiet work?
  - nicbou 3y ago
    As someone once said, if someone came up with the concept of public libraries today, it would never fly. I used a library to work while travelling, to avoid overstaying my welcome in a café. It was fantastic. I also use them at home, where they enable me to earn money and pay taxes, if that's such a big concern. Most students do, too.
- meiraleal 3y ago
  That's why you don't own a coffeeshop, it would be a miserably experience for you and for the customers. Lots of recently opened coffeeshop would love to receive those remote workers tho
  - 3y ago

silenced_trope 3y ago

I have Comcast Xfinity at home in San Francisco. But at many of the coffee shops I go to I can use Xfinity, their city-wide solution for their customers. Often times I don't even need to ask for the coffeeshop's wifi password since the Xfinity connection may be good enough. Quite often it isn't, more often than not actually. But the main shop I go to near my apartment it's reliable.

dylukes 3y ago

American coffee shops have never been cafes. They're glorified caffeine dispensaries. Buy your drink, get out, drink it somewhere else. In Europe no one bats an eye at you spending your entire day in cafe seating using the WiFi.

faeriechangling 3y ago
I would say this is much more of an urban/rural thing than an American/European thing. Also a discount/luxury thing. If you are running a coffee shop in an insanely expensive urban area slinging $2 coffees, you need a certain turnover of customers or you will just straight up go out of business. I have been hustling franchise owners walking around their resteraunts stalking people to make sure people didn't mill about for longer than TWENTY MINUTES. Didn't finish eating? Fuck you buy something else or finish eating on the sidewalk. If you're in a suburban coffee shop with a cheaper lease sipping on a $9 iced coffee drink and a $7 pastry, and the place is dead, not only will the staff likely not care that you're sitting there, they might chat you up so stave off the boredom.
- indigo0086 3y ago
  This. Urban areas are more likely to either see or equate your taking up space in their restaurant, even if you're not working from home. In NH most coffee shops I go to are absolutely empty, and usually have a couple people getting breakfast or coffee while working and it's a regular in out turnover or enough space that it doesn't matter. Even in Manchester which would be the closest thing to a city in NH
toyg 3y ago
I know for a fact that, if you hog a table for more than 30-45 min in most busy cafes in Milano, you'll get hate-looks at the very minimum, if not literally kicked out. It changes the further you move from the city centre - as rents get lower, of course. It's also why WiFi in cafes has been quietly de-emphasized, over the last 10 years, pretty much everywhere in Italy. Money is money.
BHSPitMonkey 3y ago

indigo0086 3y ago

Starbucks could win this by making dedicated meeting spaces or simply charging to use outlets or Wi-Fi for an hour at a time. How did Dunkin donuts beat them to that.

DanielHillman 3y ago

Maybe jarvo.io could be the solution (somewhat biased) but seems to be working so far.

DanielHillman 3y ago

Can we create a decentralised networking of beautiful micro co-working hubs to create, inspire and connect within a 10 min walk or cycle commute from your doorstep. The cost needs to be so low, it's accessible to everyone which is hard initially but once there is sufficient volume/space inventory then it's easier to encourage membership with prices less than $100/month.

coworker2023 3y ago
Hi! We're working on exactly that. We have 16 locations throughout the US, and currently, our membership is $100/month. Where are you located? I can tell you if we have a location near you. If you prefer to check out our website, let me know and I Can post it.
- DanielHillman 3y ago
  Awesome - just checked out your site, really nice locations!
coworker2023 3y ago
Adding in our website in case I don't get notified that you reply. www.AptCoWork.com