Coffee Shop Computing

Lisa Hendrickson | April 27, 2012 | 0 Comments

This morning I had an 8:30 a.m. appt with a client and in a rush, I opted to not go to the office and just hit a local Caribou that was close to my friend’s house. I get in the Caribou and frantically look for an outlet close to the tables. I couldn’t find any! All of the outlets I could find where already being used or a family was sitting near it. I was close to getting a bit frustrated….I wandered around like a fool wondering how this busy little Caribou in Blaine, MN could only have two outlets for all the customers!

Then…doh. I look by the small tables in a row and see a strip right by the tables, installed so sharply that you can’t really see them up close, but they were installed as part of the window frame lol. I thought I had read years ago that coffee places had installed these power strips to accommodate the computers for the customers, but I guess I don’t go to coffee houses much to do real work.

So my doh turns to YAY. I plunk down and start to figure out all my junk and stuff; do my computer set up. Plug everything in, including my phone (my car charger just died and I was down to no juice!), turn on the computer, let it boot up and go get some java finally. Come back with coffee and find I can’t read my screen. UGH.

Go back to the counter, get some wet napkins, and clean my screen up. Now I cleaned all the crap off of the screen, but the glare is horrible (not getting a glare screen, because I barely ever need one in my day to day life), so I have to deal with the bit of glare. My body turns out to be a nice shadow against the windows, and I can see it enough to work.

My 8:30 appt starts. Then the next drama begins, the espresso machines are so loud that I can’t hear my client! LOL. I did really LOL out loud because I didn’t think of that noise before. Only now that I am on my phone I recognize it. I tell my client to just hold tight when they make espressos because I can’t really do anything about the noise.

While I am now done with my appt, I am still sitting here blogging, trying to enjoy the coffee shop experience. Now I can’t help but laugh…the guy next to me just made a phone call and immediately cupped his open ear so he can hear better, he has no power cord for his computer and has no bags to deal with. I can tell he’s a coffee shop pro.