It's 10:05 AM. My medical appointment got out late. I have a work meeting in 10 minutes.

In the next ten minutes, I need to:

Find parking
Find a cafe with WiFi
Get my laptop connected.

I've been in this situation before, sitting down at a cafe with a name like (but not actually) "The F-Stop". I barely recognized it was a cafe, but I did, went inside, got a coffee and a decent bagel, and... Found out there was no WiFi. I had to apologize two hours later for missing the work meeting. Wildly unprofessional of me. Bad for my career.

So today, I didn't even bother with the myriad nearby cafes. I went to the nearest Starbucks, despising their pro-Zionist anti-unionist hardline stances, despising charging $7 for the shittiest sandwich in the world, despising their stranglehold killing other nearby cafes... Because it was now 10:10AM, I needed WiFi, and every Starbucks has WiFi. (And power outlets galore, but that wasn't something I personally needed at the time.)

I drank down their shitty, shitty coffee, wondering if literally any of the competing cafes might have satiated my needs. But now is not the time. I log on to Microsoft Teams and get crackin.

If I were running a cafe, this is what I would do. Please hire me as your "Business Genius", cafe owners:

Have WiFi
Have "cafe" in the name, so people know you're a cafe

Comments

devtesla wrote on March 20, 2025 at 5:16 PM

I apologize for being critical in your vent post but why didn't you use your phone as a hotspot. I do this all the time for work, sometimes even when there is wifi because it's more reliable.

In any case cafes with wifi are kind of dying out. Being packed full of people who aren't going anywhere and only occasionally are buying more isn't actually good for a restaurant. I used to live near a great wifi coffee shop and I miss it a ton! It was open until 9pm! But it also was way expensive which I guess was paying for the space. The only other one I go to is also expensive and is part co-working so I guess rip good times

twovests OP wrote on March 20, 2025 at 5:42 PM

This doesn't read as confrontational or untoward or anything. I only have a personal phone and I don't feel comfortable connecrting that to my work laptop for anything whatsoever (and even then, I only have so much data in my plan).

That said, at least in my experience, I think having wifi is still the default where I'm at? Excluding big businesses which all have WiFi, I'd estimate that it's at least >50% of independent cafes I've been to had WiFi offerings. I hope wifi cafes don't die out :< I think my social neurons are atrophied almost out of existence and I need to at least be in the vicinity of other people a few times a month

devtesla wrote on March 21, 2025 at 3:49 PM

Ahh that's not a bad reason. I would expect things to be well isolated from one another but you can't always be sure.

This is very off topic but I got my social neurons back by going to board game clubs.... tho you gotta be direct at saying "I don't want to ___" at those to really make it tho Lol. But it was good for me!

twovests OP wrote on March 21, 2025 at 4:15 PM

you gotta be direct at saying "I don't want to ___" at those to really make it tho

I'm curious, what fills in the ___? Normal "I don't want to drink", "I don't want to play that," or is there something Nefarious that goes on with board games?

devtesla wrote on March 21, 2025 at 6:22 PM

Oh lord I meant, I don't want to play that, I don't want to play with them, etc. Disengaging stuff Lol

nitori wrote on March 22, 2025 at 2:33 AM

Man I miss being in Vietnam, almost all the bistros I visited there have free wifi lol