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Basic Etiquette for Working in a Coffee Shop


Social site Mashable brings up a good etiquette topic: Working in coffee shops without being annoying. Whether you're just checking emails quickly, using it as an office to work on your time-travel screenplay, or somewhere in-between, there are not real written rules to guide your behavior. So what should you do to use their facilities guilt-free?

Here's a rough guideline of dos and don'ts, some taken from Mashable and experts that they consulted and some from our experience.

Do:

  • Buy a drink every 2-3 hours. Mashable's experts say that this is the sweet spot, but we'd lean more towards two hours, or even an hour and a half, depending on how busy the store is. If it's rather empty, you have more leeway.

  • Buy food when it's lunch or dinner time

  • Tip well, if you don't buy many drinks

  • Use headphones if you need to listen to audio

  • Throw away your own trash after you're done

  • Keep all your belongings next to you in a compact area

Don't:

  • Stay for more than four hours without buying something.

  • Camp a table if the store is busy

  • Hold long (2 hour+) meetings, especially if they are loud

  • Take or make loud phone calls, especially if there are others trying to work too

  • Stay the entire day, like it's your office. If you really must work in a coffee shop all day, relocate to another one after about four hours

  • Take more than one seat

  • Hog a lot of bandwidth on the Wi-Fi

  • Ask staff to watch your stuff, if it's busy

Have any rules you live by when you're toiling away in a coffee shop? Let's hear 'em in the comments. Photo by Zhiltsov Alexandr/Shutterstock

Coffee Shop Etiquette | Mashable

Etiquette is, by its very nature, subjective. What's acceptable today probably wasn't acceptable 20 years ago, and what's unheard of right now might be commonplace in a decade. It might also be seen as pedantic to some, because if you boil it down, it's just an arbitrary set of rules that we all abide by to make all our lives easier. So weigh in and tell us what you think about this subject. It's one of the few times that just about everybody's opinion is more or less as valid as everybody else's. Got something you're curious about? email [email protected]


You can email Jason Chen, the person who typed this post into a computer, at [email protected]. You can read his jokes on Twitter, his personal updates on Google+, and whatever's left on Facebook.