Coffee Shops, WiFi and Etiquette

I work out of my house and over the last 19 years, there have been many times where I have not left my residence for days at a time. Over the last few years I’ve tried to make a goal of getting out of the house at lease for a few hours every evening, or trying to run an errand sometime during the day just to get away from my home.

Recently a friend of mine suggested I gather up my laptop and head to a local WiFi equipped coffee shop each day in order to do some of my work there. Over the last couple months this has become a new habit. As a result, my psychological head-space is much, much healthier. And, ironically, I’ve actually made a number of new business contacts there–both in terms of new customers and new vendors. Going daily to WiFi coffee shops has been a win-win situation for me.

As a result of my new coffee shop obsession, I began thinking about etiquette while using WiFi and sipping coffee. Is there some written, or perhaps unwritten rule about how many cups of coffee you should purchase per hour while at the shop? Are there societal protocols in place I’m unaware of? I also wonder what was acceptable before WiFi became popular. Did people hand out for extended periods of time while buying only one or two cups of coffee?

I think perhaps it is good to look back at coffee shops prior to WiFi. What was the expectation of shops shops at the time? Were there individuals camped out in coffee shops for hours at a time during that pre-WiFi period? From those I’ve talked to, and just thinking back at my own experiences, I believe coffee shops have always been a place where college students go to hang out, do homework, write papers and socialize. I think is true for a number of reasons. It’s easier to stay awake in a coffee shop while studying or doing homework. There just enough in the way of distractions to not nod off–and the caffeine boost definitely helps.

I believe bringing WiFi to coffee shops is a natural extension of the student demographic. Students coming to coffee shops need internet access for writing and researching topics for school. Additionally, because much of the 20s demographic rely on internet social networking like Facebook and Twitter, WiFi is an intragel part. As such, I’m not so sure WiFi has really changed the demographic of coffee shops; I think they pretty much attract the same crowd now that they did pre-WiFi. Just observing those around me in a WiFi coffee shop, I’m not sure they spend too much more time in the shop because of WiFi than they would have done prior to its existence. I do, however, feel that I would choose a shop with free WiFi over one without it.

In the end, I think the etiquette in a WiFi coffee shop isn’t so much about WiFi as it is about supporting the shop who is providing the space you are sitting in. You should purchase something to be sitting there and as long as you keep that frame of mind, I think you should do fine.