Impulse

SEATTLE, June 12. Coffee shops crack down on read­ers, stu­dents, and writ­ers in order to improve business.

“It’s as bad as WiFi was,” com­mented one store owner. Across the coun­try, shop own­ers recently began shut­ting down their free inter­net access to dis­cour­age lap­top users from turn­ing cafes into offices. Now, own­ers are find­ing that lap­top users weren’t the only peo­ple abus­ing their hos­pi­tal­ity.
“Students are the worst,” finds store owner Marshall Triplett. “These kids come in here sup­pos­edly to do home­work, they buy one cup, then stay here until clos­ing. I’ve got a busi­ness to run here. I can’t have these kids tak­ing up tables, laugh­ing, mak­ing noise.“
Brittnee Case, a sopho­more at the nearby uni­ver­sity, dis­agrees. “We do not just buy one cup! I spend at least, like, um, twenty dol­lars a day on cof­fee. Coffee shops are the best places to study.” Her solu­tion? “There’s, like fif­teen cof­fee shops on this street. If peo­ple can’t find a place to sit, they can try the next one.“
Students are not the only peo­ple slow­ing java com­merce. Many cus­tomers find that the cafe is the per­fect place to curl up with a book for a few hours or to write the Great American Novel.
“For fif­teen years, my friend Ernie and I have have been hav­ing cof­fee here every Tuesday. We come in here, have a cou­ple cups, talk a bit, then, boom, we go. Nowadays, peo­ple come in here like it’s their liv­ing room. Like that girl there,” he motions to a twen­tysome­thing woman in the cor­ner, “sit­ting there side­ways in her chair, no shoes, read­ing a book like there’s no tomor­row. Go home! That’s what I say.“
Businesses are exper­i­ment­ing with deter­rents against lin­ger­ing cus­tomers. The Jolt alter­nates between play­ing jazz and hard-core punk every hour. Owner Guillermo Adams of Java Paradise has replaced all his com­fort­able chairs with ones made of steel, claim­ing, “they still look hip, but they’re no fun to sit in for a long time”. Infernal Coffee sought a more cre­ative solu­tion, employ­ing an actor to sit next to lin­ger­ing cus­tomers and annoy them into leav­ing.“
Meanwhile, cus­tomers at Zoka Coffee seemed to be too happy read­ing, writ­ing, and using the free WiFi to com­ment.
Rumors of pick­et­ing and mass protests in the trendy Belltown dis­trict of Seattle have sparked anger in many store own­ers through­out the city. “These peo­ple just don’t under­stand,” describes Triplett. “You can only be so nice and still turn a profit.”