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I’ve spent a bit more time than I usually do in coffee shops here in Glasgow over the last few weeks. Mainly because I like coffee, but also because I like the environment for getting work done when I’m away in town.

Something has begun to puzzle me though. What time does a purchase of a latte and a blueberry muffin, entitle you to hang about on the comfy sofas? As long as you like? An hour? Two hours, less if it’s busy? This is important, so I think we should be told. On a sign or something. As coffee shops are sadly lacking in any clear advice, I thought it’d be something to tackle on this weblog.

There seems to be no hard-and-fast rule, and I’ve certainly never been asked to leave. So it’s probably a fabrication of my own admittedly rather paranoid mind that there might even be some limit. But do recall that the Coffee republic chairman commented that they were getting rid of comfy sofas to “get rid of the slackers” or something sinister. So when does a stay become a deliberate “slack”? By his reckoning it’s ten minutes, but he’s hardly in a position to make authoritative comments, as Coffee Republic are struggling the most of all the big chains. Heck their shares are worth nothing these days, hardly a ringing endorsement of their business.

So I figure there must be factors and variables that any time duration would depend on. I would suggest some or all of the following criteria:

• Amount invested in caffeinated beverages, iced fruit beverages and baked produce of course containing berries, fruits and purified carbohydrates.
• Size of the venue
• “Comfyness” of the sofas
• Number of other people present
• Number of smokers present
• How loud the music is playing, and relative proximity to speakers
• Presence of toilets (not as frequent in coffee shops as you might suppose)
• Attitude of the staff
• Whether you can disguise a cup of water as a coffee
• How furtively you slouch inside your newspaper.
• Attitude of the customer that any of this matters in the slightest.

Some are positive pushes of course: A large investment of beverages clearly indicates serious intent: a minimum of an hour stay in my view. Drop the bakery goods, and what is lost? Half an hour? Maybe more?

But it’s the maximum stay that is hard to ascertain. Certainly when the shops close - anything longer would just be embarrassing, although I’m also not entirely sure how long you could survive on a diet purely consisting of muffins, cheese twists and coffee.

Of course furtiveness and apparent busyness (ideally involving a suit or mobile phone) are bonuses, and here in lies the crux: If you just furtively lurk in the corner avoiding eye contact and sipping a cold coffee, it’s clear you’re taking the michael. But if you’re actively working away, I suspect you can add a good multiplier of time. But if you’re on your own, the toilet dilemma becomes troublesome, especially if you’re a geek with a laptop. You have to lug it with you, but risk in doing so loosing your seat.

And what’s with this charging-for-internet-access that’s so prevalent? I can pay as little as £16/month for a reasonable ADSL line, and no more than £50 outlay for a wireless router. But coffee shops continue to charge extortionate rates for internet access - as much as £5/hr? AFTER I’ve paid £5 for coffee and a muffin. OK, so they want to stop Stewart the Student upstairs (yes, YOU Stewart) pinching the bandwidth, so what’s wrong with a bit of MAC address restriction? It’s really not difficult. Heck, it wouldn’t be difficult to write piece of perl scripting to limit particular laptops to a certain amount of free time for well known cheap-wireless ADSL routers. Really.

So the answer, I’d suggest, really is “as long as you bloody well want you fool”. Look busy, don’t be a nuisance, have a strong bladder, and you’re good to last. But with me being so horribly guilt ridden, I’ll probably buy another cup of coffee after a couple of hours.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 23rd, 2005 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Coffee, Glasgow, Ramblings, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.