Originally Posted by Worldwalker
I suspect the difference is that the book readers are probably not hogging tables at rush hour.
And that's really the bottom line. The shop allowed people to do things other than buying and consuming their products -- and still does, other than for a few hours at certain tables -- with the implicit understanding between them and their customers that polite people would not hog tables when it was busy. It's the reason a store I shop at doesn't give out free popcorn anymore: people were taking armloads of bags of it out to their cars. It seems that the entire concept of politeness, civility, sharing, and not being a total ass, is long gone. Rules and laws are stepping in, out of necessity, where etiquette stepped out. And we all lose.
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