No Seat for You!

Or as Terry Dawson astutely asked on Facebook, "Cultural growing pains?"

Link to August 2 New York Times article (Bits blog), "No E-books Allowed in This Establishment".

POINT
Excerpt: A few weeks ago I decided to mosey over to a local Manhattan coffee shop for an afternoon cappuccino.

After placing my order I sat down at a table and pulled out my Amazon Kindle.

I barely made it a sentence into the e-book I was reading before an employee of the coffee shop came by, stood over me and said, “Excuse me sir, but we don’t allow computers in the coffee shop.”

I looked up at him with an incredulous look and replied, “This isn’t a computer, it’s an e-book reader.”

He then told me that the “device” in my hand had a screen and required batteries, so it was obviously “some variation of a computer.” The coffee shop, I was told, did not allow the use of computers.

COUNTERPOINT
(The lead) comment (at the time I read this article): Maybe the issue is not use of computers but overstaying your welcome. I use an iPad and prefer eReaders to paper books, but many times recently I have entered a coffee shop because I simply wanted a drink and a place to sit and drink it - a short respite from my errands. Instead, every seat is filled with people using the place as an office. Nowhere for me to sit, so I leave - looking for another place where I can just sit for 15 minutes and drink a cup of something.

Maybe I don't go to the wrong places, but I've never encountered this situation in the Madison area.