Some cafes welcome laptops. Others simply tolerate them with visible, growing resentment
In the name of research, I spent a full working day rotating through every self-described “laptop-friendly” cafe on a single Shoreditch block, tracking not productivity, but the precise moment each establishment’s patience visibly began to run out.
A Spectrum of Tolerance
The first cafe welcomed laptops warmly, with dedicated plug sockets and a sign actively encouraging remote workers to “stay as long as you like,” a policy I suspect they may come to regret given how literally I took it.
By cafe three, the welcome had cooled considerably, plug sockets mysteriously “out of order,” and a gentle but unmistakable increase in how often a staff member wandered past my table to ask if I “needed anything else,” a question I have come to understand as a polite eviction notice.
The Final Verdict
One cafe had, refreshingly, simply removed all seating with table surfaces entirely, a blunt but honest solution I found myself respecting more than the passive-aggressive sockets-out-of-order approach elsewhere.
The London Prat has covered the wider tension between cafes and remote workers across several London boroughs, Shoreditch chief among them.
Londonist maintains a running guide to the city’s genuinely laptop-friendly spots, several of which I will now be treating as sacred ground.
I got very little actual work done. I did, however, develop a finely tuned instinct for reading a barista’s passive-aggressive body language. A skill, I suppose, of sorts.
More from me: Cyndi Himmelstiere, prat.uk. Further reading: Londonist.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
