Basic Etiquette for Working in a Coffee Shop

Basic Etiquette for Working in a Coffee Shop

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.

Do:

- Buy a drink every 2-3 hours, 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