Also,please consider the side of the business when these kinds of decisions are made. No business, especially one in the service industry wants to make decisions like this. As an employee of Kaldi’s I have been told over and over that customers are first…period. If there is a real problem with this, please approach one of our managers. I assure you that your outlook will change promptly.

Now, as for the $6 latte,that’s another discussion. Quality is worth the money. However, you will not pay $6 for a latte at Kaldi’s unless you are putting way too much stuff into and drinking it with a ton of milk. This is going to tax your taste buds and your health far more quickly than it will tax your wallet. Just go traditional!! Get a nice 6oz. cap with no syrup and you will drink quality, have beautiful art on top, not feel sick and walk away with a few extra bucks. You can even buy two before spending $6.00.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this!!

PS… If you want to stay longer, buy a small cookie or something… $.99. If you want a place to set up and the are no open tables, sit with some strangers. After all, that is the real coffee shop experience. Meet someone. Talk. Buy someone a doubleshot. Smile a bit.

I mostly wrote that blog to be silly, but I do think that places need to realize — particularly as more people work for themselves (or, heaven forbid, are laid off) — that a lot of modern workers don’t have an office, per se, but rather a series of spaces. I go to a ton of meetings, and I like to stop for coffee afterward to type up notes. I rarely stay for more than an hour, so for me it’s more the principle of the thing. I don’t think it’s a terrible business model to make people feel comfortable and productive, particularly when your coffee shop is half-empty and people aren’t exactly clambering for tables. I also think that I have this overly idealized idea of some [nonexistent?] coffeeshop where everyone respects each other’s space and works on interesting things and orders more coffee if they stay a certain amount of time. Also, I wish unicorns were real.

I too am a coffee snob (I usually go straight for daily brewed or espresso), and for that reason I cannot, will not patronize MoKaBe’s, even though I could probably shout my order from my porch and they’d hear it. I absolutely respect and appreciate the work they do on GLBT issues, too, but that doesn’t change the sad fact that the coffee is capital-T Terrible. I don’t mind Hartford’s coffee, and the people there are wonderful, but I invariably go there at a time when the “play area” in the back is swarming with shouty two-year-olds. It’s nice that they provide that, but it quickly turns my for-here into a to-go.

So, what to do? For now I regularly patronize: Park Avenue Coffee, Foundation Grounds, and Companion in the CWE. I like them all for different reasons. And none of them impose weird rules.

p.s. You, of course, rock too!

Honestly, I found it refreshing in DC that most places turn off the wifi during standard mealtimes so that there are actual tables available for people who are paying customers.

Try working at a library not a for profit establishment!