Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
Why don't they just set a time limit for table occupancy during peak hours?
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Because that requires people to monitor and time table occupancy. It might not be practical in a place like that, especially if they have a small staff, and
especially during noon rush. Also, asking someone to put their computer away is less confrontational than throwing them out of the place.
There are a lot of things they could have done, such as marking some tables as "express tables" (which would probably have been respected as well as express lines in supermarkets) but the solution they chose is not some kind of ebook holocaust or something. They just want to have the tables available at peak sales times, and when they identified the problem as people using their cafe as an extension of the office, they addressed that specific problem.
The root of the problem, again, is entitlement: "I bought a muffin so I'm
entitled to sit at this table for three hours when they're busy." Me, me, me, me, me. People didn't want to feel restricted by the internal rules of politeness, so now they're restricted by the external rules of cafe owners and HOAs and everyone else who has or can claim rulemaking power. Personally, I liked politeness better.