Here's how to not Mess Up Cafe Etiquette
Skyler Wahlberg
How long is it appropriate to linger in a cafe? Is there a benefit to working in a cafe while drinking coffee? Are you obligated to buy something from the business?
It’s a cozy winter day, and the most adorable cafe in town is packed with people, all rushing in to get their morning coffee. However, you want to come in, leisurely enjoy your coffee and work on that next task you have for school. Yet there are people at every table, some eating or hogging an entire table for their MacBook and half-full cappuccino. Whether you are a student or an adult working a full-time job, I’m sure at least once, you’ve gone to a cafe, ordered a small hot coffee, and sat down to work for an hour or two. I know I do. In the mornings, I sometimes go to my local coffee shop and order an iced coffee to sit there and work for about an hour to write. But how long is it socially acceptable to stay in the cafe?
It’s been proven that working in a cafe can help us focus more. A 2012 study showed that working in an area with a bit of background noise boosts your creative input and allows you to have more abstract thinking. They played background noises recorded from restaurants, cafes, streets, and distant construction sites in a room full of undergraduate students and assigned them all computer-based tasks. After multiple experiments with and without noise, they found that medium amounts of background noise boost your processing motivation (Mehta). The background noise helps you focus as opposed to libraries which are known to be quiet places. Cafes have been described as a place in between home and work. “Cafes may become ‘third places’ to produce collective identity and spontaneous, location-based communities…it is also a place where one can become a regular; a third place is easily accessible at all levels; and it has a good atmosphere” (Oldenburg). Although cafes are a great place to chat, work, and enjoy others’ company, we still have to be mindful that we are at a place of business. A single purchase does not give you the benefit of camping out all day with a laptop. The rules are often fuzzy for how long you can stay and can depend on how busy the cafe is or the company policy. However, if you follow this special step, you’ll be fine anywhere.
Always buy a drink.
Although it is not illegal to sit in a cafe without purchasing anything from them, it can come across as rude or disrespectful. It may be public; however, it is still a business that runs off high-demand income. Some cafes have even created limits to the free wireless internet to restrict how long the person stays since everything is done online. Caroline Bell, the CEO of Cafe Grumpy in New York City, has gone about this issue in a clever way (Goldberg). The original location in Brooklyn has free wifi and tons of tables and outlets. Yet, their other locations in Manhattan removed all the outlets and do not have free wifi available. This is because Manhattan is busier, and the company intended for these locations to be a place to buy coffee, not linger for hours.
I brought this question into my own school community, dividing the 60 participants by grade, average number of hours they would spend for each visit at a cafe, and if they thought they were required to buy a drink. Ninth graders’ average time in a cafe was 2–3 hours. Tenth and eleventh were about the same, with a 3-hour average, while twelfth graders spent 4–5 hours in a cafe. Only 5 out of 60 said they are not required to buy a drink. One participant said, “I think it depends on how busy the space is, but cafes tend to be a place where people sit and work peacefully. I do think it’s a little disrespectful to make a habit of working at a busy cafe and never buying anything” (Sudarshan). The majority of people in the survey said they would feel guilty if they knew they were not buying anything and were spending time in the coffee shop. This emphasizes the importance of common courtesy in cafes.
Always be reading the room. Yes, cafes can be a workplace, but we must avoid the habit of abusing that use and not benefiting the company, whether it’s a small coffee shop or a brand-name business. When you walk in, are other people lounging around working at a table in the back of the shop? Are there easily accessible outlets? Is there wifi? If there is, order a coffee before sitting down to work, showing that you are a paying customer. Next, look at how busy the place is; if it’s full, maybe you should reconsider working in this cafe, especially if you plan on staying there for a couple of hours. But that doesn’t mean you should rush yourself. It’s always best to order another drink or pastry if you decide to stay longer but don’t overstay your visit.
The bottom line is to respect the cafe, as a patron. These companies survive from a high volume of business and they provide you with a workspace, coffee, and wifi. The least you can do is support them by buying a drink. Help take care of them like they take care of you.
Works Cited
Corbin, Sam. “Why Coffee Shops Are Kicking You off Their WIFI Networks.” Brokelyn, 24 Feb. 2016, brokelyn.com/brooklyn-coffee-shop-owners-speak-timed-wi-fi/.
Goldberg, Elyssa. “Don’t Be That Loitering Jerk: Café Etiquette for You and Your Laptop.” Bon Appetit, 2015, www.bonappetit.com/restaurants-travel/article/cmon-dont-be-that-loitering-jerk#:~:text=Treat%20a%20smaller%20caf%C3%A9%20or,30%20minutes%2C%22%20says%20Gonzalez.
Gouw, Tim. “Women in Cafe.” Pexels.com, https://www.pexels.com/photo/women-in-cafe-240223/
Henrisken, Ida. “Situational Domestication and the Origin of the Cafe … — Sage Journals.” Sage Journals, 2016, journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0038038516674663.
Mehta, Ravi, et al. “Is Noise Always Bad? Exploring the Effects of Ambient Noise on Creative Cognition.” Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 39, no. 4, 2012, pp. 784–99. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/665048. Accessed 16 Jan. 2023.
Oldenburg, R. “The Café as a Third Place.” Semantic Scholar, 1 Jan. 1970, www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Caf%C3%A9-as-a-Third-Place-Oldenburg/8a141010db31694e52f0c05ba102be9b82fa9431.
Subiyanto, Ketut. Pexels.com. https://www.pexels.com/search/cafe%20laptop/
Sudarshan, Shreya. Personal interview. 12 December, 2022.
X, Science. “Researchers Consider the Growing Trend of Working in Coffee Shops.” Phys.org, Phys.org, 17 Aug. 2017, phys.org/news/2017–08-trend-coffee.html.
