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 Some wireless users sneak in their own food with
their laptops. Others buy one cup of coffee at 9 a.m. and surf the
Net until closing time. And the truly audacious sit for hours without
making any pretense of a purchase.
In and around Boston, cafe owners who installed wireless signals to draw customers
say they also are drawing Internet users who tie up seats for hours, buy little
or nothing, and make coffee shops feel like the office as they tap away at their
laptops. Now some owners are fighting back by charging for wireless access, shutting
off their signal at peak business hours, or telling loitering laptoppers to shell
out or ship out.
from the Boston Globe
We have been reading more and more articles and seeing
more and more video tout this kind of coffee shop as itinerant
office life-style as a way to a) save on rent, b) run a small business
with no overhead, c) work in a congenial environment or d) put it to
The Man. Quite frankly, we fail to see the charm.
A Starbucks or similar establishment seems like a
piss-poor locale for getting anything done. For one, the seats are
instruments of medieval torture. Designed to keep the trade moving,
more than 30 minutes in one of these bloody wooden ass alters and we
lose all sensation in our legs. Then, when we try to stand up, we end
up lurching across the Cafe like a drunken peg-leg sailor in a typhoon.
What else does the corner coffee shop have to offer
in the way of office amenities? Overpriced generic caffeine-flavored
beverages, sugary pastries and other sources of empty calories, and
a mangy menagerie of bums, autistic auteurs, displaced persons, traveling
salesmen, desperate, hard-edged scammers and walking borderline personality
disorders. Someone is always whining, crying or snorting
into a cell
phone nearby.
Meanwhile, one is inhibited and prohibited from engaging
in such normal private office behavior as nose-picking, ass-scratching
and passing fits of madness. Plus, the complete absence of privacy
would work our paranoia up something wicked, and before lone we would
be huddled over our screen, blocking peripheral views with old New
York Times, convinced the WinBook wielding nun in the corner was an
operative for Opus Dei.
What we don’t understand, why don’t they just work
out of their homes, like the Dowbrigade does when he is "between classes"?
Are they homeless? Do they have 17 nosy roommates who are always at home during
the day? Or are things so interesting, temptations so abundant at
home that they cannot muster the discipline to get anything done? Can
they not afford an internet connection? Are they unable to use a coffee
machine?
As a card-carrying member of the pajama-hadin, we
are much more comfortable sprawled in our underwear in front of a nice
big screen, with all of our books and periodicals within reach and
a refrigerator full of power snacks. We haven’t found a cafe yet that
serves Flor de Manabi Ecuadorian coffee, and until we do, we’ll work
from home.
As far as the WiFi moochers, it would seem elemental,
my dear Watsons, to design software which would keep track of both
wifi usage and consumption at each table, and enforce a minimum of,
say $2.00 of consumption per hour, and if they go over, after humorous
and politically correct warnings, interrupt the wi-fi until they
buy something else. We would wager there are
some
smart programmers out there working on it now….
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