Kicked out of a coffee shop for sitting to long?!?
 

It happened to me yesterday. I was at a table with two friends studying for finals. Together we'd had about 8 big coffees and a giant pretzel thing, the cups and plate were all strewn on the table and the cashier coffee guy comes over and asks us to leave cause people were looking for tables! He said since we'd been there 2 hours that was long enough. I've studied in tons of coffee shops all the time for hours longer (we were only in this one about 4 hours) and they haven't cared. I was amazed. I said to the guy "yeah, it's not like we're paying customers or anything..." while gesturing at the empty cups. I was a little miffed. I can understand there are other people waiting to be seated, but there were people in there when we got there who were still sitting at tables with nothing ever been purchased. Grrr.

Anyone else ever been asked to leave for sitting to long? I thought this was the whole purpose of the coffee shop was to sit.

Gah, when I was in college we used to totally take advantage of a little place in town. I think it was called "Lil Chef." We would sit there for 8-12 hours in a row and buy nothing but 1 cup of coffee each, with free refills the rest of the time. It was a great place to study, and most of the waitresses there were TAs, so if we had problems with something, we could just ask.

Yeah, I've gotten kick out of some coffee shops with friends too. Given, it was probably because the management thought we looked like trouble. You know, with our collared shirts, our faces buried in books, loads of coffee having been bought by us... I think there's just something intimidating about 14-30 year olds sitting together in a coffee shop speaking lowly and exchanging ideas. I've always thougt of coffee shops as places to do just that: sit, think, and discuss ideas. I also think that a lot of coffee shops play to that idea and mentality, under the assumption that people won't actually sit there and play with ideas. Maybe that's what's more intimidating to the owners of these shops, that they're playing host to those with new ideas and don't want to get caught in the crossfire of debate.

Whatever it is that's making 'em kick us out, I wish they'd stop it. It's getting on my nerves.

I've never been kicked out, but I also generally try to leave if it looks like there's a bunch of folks waiting for a table. Kind of the old "treat other like you'd want to be treated" I guess.

Man, if a coffee shop tried to do that around here, they'd go out of business real quick. Word gets around.

Did you leave? I wouldn't have! In the past I've spent the entire day in Starbucks studying and was never kicked out. Starbucks employees can get fired for kicking out a paying customer. I was, however, asked to leave the Dean & Delucca's (sp?) next to Good Morning America once cuz I fell asleep on a table. I bought a muffin, too:-( Bastards.

You should make a huge stink about it to the manager -- you'll probably get free coffee.

The horror of trying to run a bussiness. Yes kicking people out isn't great for bussiness but either is someone sitting at a table hours on end when new customers are looking for tables.

I'd personally have kicked your ass out too :D

I can see both sides.

A pain in the ass for you to be asked to leave, but also a pain in the ass for the owners to have one table busy for so long.

I don't think there's one side that is entirely in the right.


Mr Mephisto

If the coffeeshop tried to kick me out, they'd get one hell of an angry letter. "An open letter to the bastards at the local java hut"

I've never been kicked out of a coffee shop, but once I had an extremely rude waiter at a Chinese restaurant trying to get us out. He wanted the table to be cleared so he could get more customers. I was there with my mom, two of her friends, and one of my friends. We were talking, laughing, and having a good time. The place wasn't packed or anything, but we were sitting at a relatively large table. After we were done eating, the waiter kept coming over to us asking if we were all set. And after about the fifth time when he went to walk away he said "then get the fuck outta the restaurant." under his breath. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't softly enough and my mom's friend heard. SHe made kinda a big scene with the whole, "EXCUSE ME, what did you say?" Another waiter ended up coming over and apologizing for our waiter. That's the closest I've ever been to being kicked out of a restaurant.

I have been asked to leave before.

I was sitting in Shoney's studying with a few friends. We had coffee, I had pie (mmmm, pie..) and things were going along fine.

A few hours later the manager asked us to leave as he felt we had sat there long enough. I asked him if the tables were for paying customers. He said yes. I told him I'd take another piece of pie and some more coffee, sugar.

We weren't being loud. We weren't being obnoxious. We just needed a nice place to get together and have a pot of coffee.

I have little tolerance for rudeness. Even from a register jockey with an ill-sense of self-importance. It's too bad you didn't stick around. This only encourages the fellow to do it again.

I miss The Buzz...local coffee shop here, where we'd sit for hours and hours and hours... playing cards, board games, just talking.

My little group always spent plenty of money (experimenting with latte flavors is fun :D ), but I guess too many people did the "one coffee, free refills" deal, since the place closed down last year :(

When I was a waitress, I didn't care how long someone took up one of my tables...as long as they either kept ordering or tipped well (or both).

In your situation...I would've ordered another coffee and stayed right where I was.

OMG this is a first , I actually agree with Ustwo :p

*puts a big star over this date on calander*

Never been kicked out.

I can see both sides too, he should have at least asked nicely, or just hinted that the table was needed. There are better ways to get people to leave than telling them.

I'm almost tempted to invite you out to coffee for the sole purpose of getting to read said letter.

I can see where it might be appropriate to leave if it is busy and people're looking for tables. On the flipside, however, if you're still buying drinks and/or food while you sit at a table, why should they care how long you sit in their shop? It's not as if they get more money from somebody who has just sat down as opposed to somebody who has been there for hours but is still buying. Think of it like Ken Jennings on Jeopardy. The producers gave out the same amount of money as they would have over the same amount of time, it just all went to one guy as opposed to a bunch of different people. The coffee shop's selling the same amount, just to a few people instead of a larger variety of people. Even then, there's more than the one table in the shop, so where's the sense in kicking them out unless they're being disruptive?

well it's different if he asked you at least. i mean i think it was resonable to ask you to leave but kicking you out is different.

Basically what you were doing was loitering, which is at the very least, an ordinance violation in most places. Since you are on private property, the management has every right to remove anyone from the property they want, for any reason. You could complain but you have no legal recourse.

How long had it been since you made your last purchase? Keep in mind that most businesses are there to make money, not to give college people a place to spend half of their day. Balancing the fine line between keeping customers happy by letting them stay or finding them a seat is tough. They are going to win and lose every time. You can either try again or find a new place to study.

I think they may feel that its not a library. Going into a cofee shop and sitting with your friends for a while to chat while having some coffee is one thing. But going there with all your books and doing hours of studying isnt really what a coffee shop is for. Especially if its all free refills. Its a business, not a school or library, and if there were people waiting for a table i can completely understand why you may be asked to leave.

As they say in the mob: It's nothing personal, just business.

I think that it depends on what audience the coffee shop is looking for. The coffee shop around here is highly dependent on college students, so it isnt uncommon to see bunches of college students sitting around studying. The place even has free wireless internet. On the other hand, if theres a starbucks in downtown baltimore or something, I can see where the employees might kick some people out if they are sitting there all day.

As long as you are a paying customer, then you should be able to sit and have coffee and study, especially if you weren't disturbing anyone else around you.

Man, I would be pissed too.

There's tons of places trying to create this atmosphere.
If I ever got kicked out of starbucks, I'd tell them that they aren't really creating the atmosphere they're trying to.

...or I'd just say, "FUCK Y'ALL! I DIDN'T KNOW YOU COULD GET KICKED OUT OF TULLY'S!"

yeah, so uh....who else thinks the backwards thing is gonna get real old real fast?

On the other hand, my local Java hut has never kicked me out, and I've spent over a hour at a table before. Meh. Maybe I need to stay longer.

You think that's bad? I got kicked out of the toy department at Walmart the other day. Where the hell is the sign telling us not to try out the dodgeballs? We didn't even knock anything over.

Personally, I would've asked for another round of coffee and kept sitting right there.

LOL my friends and I got kicked out of a bookstore Kinokuniya once because they said we were browsing the study books too long. .. all we were doing was reading a few tips about the SATs from a Barrons book and they told us to buy the book or leave... no wonder their business is bad

Have only been offered to be kicked out once, nice employee walked up (had just finished an expensive meal + offers of free refills on drinks) and asked us to leave. I turned around and asked for a free refill. 4 hours later (I had other stuff to do however pissing these people off seemed like a fun thing to do) after many visits from this employee (bringing more free drinks!) the manager came over and asked me to leave... I got a free meal! (Told him that I paid to sit in a friendly atmoshphere and finish my meal, as I was still drinking my meal was not over yet and that if he wanted me to leave I was not paying the bill... he agreed to this even though the place was now pretty empty).

Happened once, me and some friends were studying for a test at a coffeshop when the owner told us that this was no friggin' library. So we left. There are plenty of coffeeshops that don't mind students so we went to one of those instead and bought our coffee and sanwiches there.

I think that if people are waiting for tables, and you're simply studying and taking up a table, then you should definitely be asked to leave. Is this a coffee shop that has waiters and waitresses? If it was, that's money going down the drain for them. If someone stays for multiple hours and only orders a coffee every once in a while, and then leaves a subpar tip, that's bad. They could have had 4 or 5 times as many customers in the same amount of time, with each giving a tip.


If it wasn't a waiter/waitress coffee shop, more like one where you get everything yourself, I wouldn't be so surprised either. If people are waiting in line to get a table. Enough is enough :) You can study at home. Other people want to relax for a little bit too ya know!



If there was no one waiting in line, then I'd question the person asking you to leave, however.

The places in town here would never do that... How totally lame.

here in NYC you'll see even McD's have a sign saying that tables are for 20 mins tops...

When I was studying in coffee shops, my simple rule was this:

I bought at least one drink an hour. Tip SOMETHING on each drink.

I don't think of an hour as an unreasonable time to sit in a coffee shop....

In my opinion, if it's so busy that they have to ask me to leave, then I'm not going to want to study there anyways...too loud, too many people making the coffee shop talk.

It's a crap situation, but I can understand the managment's side. The main lesson from this experience is that if you want to study there more frequently, uninterrupted, you need to get to know the employees better. They won't kick their friends out.

In most restuarants the table is yours as long as you are sitting there, however you would be expected to tip accordingly.

In the case of a coffee shop, where you aren't really tipping, and you aren't spending a lot of money, then 4 hours is an excessive amount of time, especially if tehre are paying customers waiting for tables. It's a coffee shop, not a library.

While I usually don't go to them, I know that the coffee shops around here essentially are libraries for studying. Thats where they get most of their business, college students use them to be able to study and whatnot for however long they want. I figure if something like that happened around here and others found out about it, everyone would abandon it and it'd be closed in 2 weeks time.

I guess it just depends on the atmosphere of the coffee shop in general, I'm in a college town and I imagine any place near a college would be expected to allow people to use it as a study center. If its a Frasier coffee shop however then maybe people would get upset.

I'm working in a book store and I've worked in retail for a while so I can see both sides of the story. Most people would be amazed at how easily a person can go from a prospective customer to a loiterer who's breaking-in books with no intention to pay for them.

We even have "regulars" who come in on a nightly basis and pick up the same book(s), stand or sit in a manner that obstructs the aisles, reads the books for hours on end, and leaves only when we're forced to ask them to leave because it's closing time.

It's a shitty situation but it's almost impossible to gauge who the customers are from those who are nothing more than a liability.

Although it's obvious that you can your friends wouldn't exactly be considered liabilities there's the possibility that the situation would've ended differently if you answered the man in a different tone.

I would have kicked you out if you were causing me to lose profits too.

i would have farted alarmingly close to your face, and then winked at you and invited you stick around for the fun part

Seinfeld...........Table for four.

Go to a bar. No one will kick you out of a bar for being there too long. Just too drunk.

Somehow I missed the last line in my first reading.

No the whole purpose of the coffee shop is to sell coffee, not provide a place to study. Some may want to foster that sort of activity and have people camping out for hours and hours, but its not required. Now that I am thinking about it, I remember coffee places at my college campus used to put signs up durring finals week about how long you could be at a table.

Exactly! (and a pox on you, for causing me to agree with Ustwo ;) )
If it was a slow night, and they didn't need the table, then I have no doubt that you'd have been welcome to sit there for as long as you wanted. On a busy night, after you've "finished" your patronage, and there are customers waiting, then by all means pack up your goodies and get the flock out. It's just common courtesy. It's a "manners" thing, in the book of BOR.