Why is it that there is not a single coffee shop that’s capable of supplying tables that don’t wobble? I have long legs, and when I sit down with my coffee, I usually end up lightly bonking one of the table legs (or the only leg) with my knee. Or my coat brushes it should I wish to stand up. It happens! It often happens when I sit down at a normal table or a desk too.
However, for some reason, 90% of café tables are designed in such a way that the gentle tap of my knee - and I mean the gentle, unavoidable tap; I’m not throwing the coffee table all over the room, or pounding it with my fist - manages to propagate harmonics intense enough to distribute my coffee all over my immediate seating area and whatever proofreading work I may have brought with me. I’m not talking a little shaking, or a few drops; I’m talking waves that cause my coffee to pour out in large gouts.
Are the manufacturers of café tables completely unable to master the idea of making tables that actually allow the coffee to be placed on it and customers to sit down without involuntarily dyeing their clothing? What is up with that?
I went into a café today and I fuound the music surprisingly loud. So when I ordered, I politely asked whether it were possible to turn the music down. The clerk looked at me as though I had six heads and said, “It’s a coffee shop. The music is supposed to be loud.”
WTF are you talking about? There are three things you can do while seated in a coffee shop: 1) read, study, work, or otherwise pursue your scholastic or literary interests quietly; 2) talk to your friends; 3) relax and enjoy a peaceful moment while loitering over your caffeine. Loud music is directly antipathic to every one of those aims! It’s like saying, “It’s a meat packer’s freezer. The space heater is supposed to be turned on full blast.”
I understand if there’s some kind of perverse upper management diktat that this particular outlet, unlike the rest of the chain, is supposed to present some kind o’ rockin’ and boppin’ image; but there is nothing about its being “a coffee shop” that makes it meet and right that Jennifer Lopez be caterwauling at full decibels while I’m trying to concentrate on this badly written military regulation. WTF are you on?
I agree. Not only are tables too small to hold anything but a paperback trash novel along with your coffee, but they have to wobble. Some of them trick you into thinking you can fix the imbalance by incorporating screw-like things into their table-foot design, but it’s all a scam. You need sugar packets to squash under the short leg, but one packet isn’t enugh and two is too much and* then * what can you do?
I think it’s their way of discouraging students from hanging out in coffee shops to study. Which is too bad, because I spend a* lot * at coffee places during exams. I mean, you need the steady caffeine infusion, and muffins and cheesecake to keep the blood sugar up…
And yeah, the music is much too loud. Some are worse than others, though. I’ve narrowed my cafes down to two or three places I visit often, and I’m reluctant to try new ones because I’m sure they’ll disappoint me.
Loud fun music in a hip cafe during the summer is no problem. I enjoy that! But when the manager looks around his coffee shop during the first weeks of December and sees 45 stressed students caffeinating themselves over open textbooks… turn it* down*! We’ll thank you for it by coming back in the summer!
When I do my coffee ritual at the local cafe, before I sit down I set my mug down on the bar that runs along the front window.
Then I remove the Careers section from the Globe and Mail and take two pages, which, when folded up and inserted under the short leg of my preferred table, will render it stable enough to safely support a cup of coffee.
When I leave, I remove the Careers shim and dispose of it, since I understand that it upsets the natural order of things.
I haven’t figured out a way to make the place quiet, though. At least it’s usually Cuban stuff that’s a little easier to tune out than Jennifer Lopez.
Wow. “My” coffee shop has easy chairs, and little coffee tables. And the normal tables, I haven’t noticed that they wobble. But then, I usually take my coffee to go.
Welcome to Lowest Common Denominator for public retreats. The same syndrome infested bars ages ago. Big box labels aren’t even clues, alas, because danged few hold outs remain. The inane formula is pandemic.
I cherish my local (wonderful) coffee bar because it stalwartly skims beneath the radar, relying and thriving on fanatic customers, resistent to trends and wannabes. The furnishings are… quirky (okay, old) but comfortable and spacious. The coffee and go-with munchables are limited but excellent. Good jazz plays very softly in the background, mostly to keep the great staff happy. Heck, they have a running ‘word of the day’ game, chalked behind the counter, with genuinely tough words.
It’s a comfy and welcoming–and personal–as a pair of old slippers. I live in dread of the day the owner retires and/or The Formula takes over.
A couple of years ago I had a stroke of luck in this regard. Our local coffee shop was polling its customers about the possibility of live music on occasion, so I took the opportunity to say that live music would be fine sometimes, but in general please turn the stereo down! Like the OP, I also pointed out that the most common activities in coffeeshops (reading, writing, conversation) were made more difficult by loud music. My most convincing tactic (I think) was to suggest a specific guideline: the whirr of the espresso maker should drown out the music, not the other way around.
I don’t know if I convinced them, but they did turn the music down, so I felt vindicated. (Maybe others had made the same request…)
A coffee shop in town got a load of plain cardboard beer mats printed with the coffee shop name and logo and the words “anti-wobble mat” (or similar, I don’t remember the exact wording). Each table has one or more of these customised beer mats under the offending leg.
What’s astonishing is that they haven’t figured out that a three-legged table can’t ever suffer from the “one leg a tad too short” syndrome. Of course, even a tripod table can be made out of springy steel that does a convincing rhumba if you bump into it.
There used to be 2 coffee shops in Pittsburgh that were worth going to. The one that was my favorite has long since closed (waaaaah) as apparently The Giant Coffee Chain With A Store On Every Corner has taken over.
The Beehive on Forbes Ave. was a wonderful coffee shop. The coffee bar was downstairs, where one could get their order with or without wings, and if you chose to drink-in, there was the downstairs room complete with loud music and dark decor, the upstairs room with less-lous music and a brighter decor (suitable for reading) and then there was the Quiet Room, where you could go if you wanted to read in near-library silence. There was also the movie theatre, which was the only place to watch a movie while sitting in a comfy, upholstered chair on wheels, drinking a coffee and smoking a cigarette.
Eventually, they turned the upstairs into a bar called the Pollinator. After a while, the downstairs became a bar also, and the theatre that used to show movies had bands. Then they put up a fence so they could have ‘all ages’ shows. Some time after I graduated from Pitt, the whole place closed.
Now, I refues to tell people where the other coffee shop I like is, because I don’t want it to be ruined. What I will say is that it also suffers from ‘split personality’. There is a distinct smoking side and a non-smoking side, totally separate rooms only accessible to each other by way of doors or going outside. I hope that the Big Evil Mediocre Coffee Conglomerate does not ruin it too.
Oh, you know what? I totally didn’t see where you said the Beehive on Forbes. The one I went to was in Southside. I was in Pittsburgh from… January to October of 1999. I’m really disappointed! The Beehive on Forbes sounds like it was great and even better than the one in SS.
Our local awesome coffee shop got revamped this summer. For some reason, the owners just couldn’t bear to have actual customers in there enjoying themselves, so they removed the computers with DSL (which you paid extra for), removed the comfy seats, and made the restrooms unavailable to customers. Um, OK. I’ll just be going someplace else then. What jackholes.
I have no idea what the deal is- I’m going to ask when I go in next, though. Allan and his friend he works with went in after it reopened and reported those facts to me. The only thing I can think of is that the restroom was definately not handicapped accessible, so I’ll bet rather then renovate it, they just declared “sorry, no restrooms”. Crazy. Like anyone ever has to pee at the coffee shop. :rolleyes:
It’s just sort of a carry out place now- get your coffee and get the fuck out! Too bad, too- as soon as I saw it reopened, I planned on organizing a knitting group to meet there on a non-busy night. Not if they aren’t welcoming or accomadating, though. I’ll pick someplace else.
Also, can we have some standardization of drink names? Granted, we’re cool on “coffee” and “latte” and “mocha”, but just about any other drink varies from store to store. If I’m feeling in the mood for a sugary, fatty, caffeinacious beverage, I don’t want to have to search your menu to discover that it’s called a “caramel macchiatto marvel” or whatever the fuck name you gave it.
Oh, and as much as I enjoy trip-hop and ambient electronica (which admittedly isn’t much), a coffee shop oughta be playing jazz. That’s just how it’s meant to be.
YES! YES YES YES! Why is it that us random people on a message board are better furniture engineers than whoever it is who got paid a salary to design these things?
I have settled into two coffee shops here in the past month or so. The McGill bookstore (which closes at 7 pm, yick) and Shaika (on Shrbrooke and Girouard, cool place, closes at 11, still a little yick).