Cafes aren't offices - I'd slap a ban on laptops

Yep, no desks. So if you want to settle down and do a spot of work, you have to juggle your laptop on your knee. It’s not good enough; I’m about to rattle off a complaint.

Of course, I’m joking, but really, it won’t be long before people are making conference calls on board the 613 to Shipley.

The last time I took a long train journey with my husband a fellow passenger turned the table into his office, whipping out his laptop and proceeding to spread papers across both his half and ours. I wouldn’t have cared had he asked, but he didn’t.

When it came to lunchtime and I got out our sandwiches and bought tea from the trolley; he shot me a look before huffily moving his ‘office’, but only marginally.

On another journey a woman sitting in front of us kept pulling down the blind - shared with my seat. She didn’t ask whether it would be okay for us to sit for almost four hours with a blind blocking the entire window. I repeatedly pulled it up, and politely asked her to stop what she was doing.

“I can’t work with the sun on my screen,” she rudely replied. Risking a full-on fight, I said: “Well you’ll have to move, because that blind is staying up."

There were plenty of other seats, so she moved.

These days, there are very few spots that don’t double up as workplaces.

The car manufacturer Ford has now applied for a patent that would turn its vehicles' dashboards into a 'coffice' - car office - with fold-out desks to allow owners to work from the driver's seat.

So, in the future, I expect we will see row upon row of these cars-cum-offices taking over supermarket car parks, laybys, or wherever people decide to pull up, with the occupants conducting conference calls or firing off emails.

I work from home, which is a privilege, so I don’t want to appear too dismissive of innovative ways to work away from the office. But working in public spaces has to accommodate and be considerate of that very thing - the public.

I am amazed by how tolerant café owners are. A friend who works in a café told me how some people take their laptops and spend virtually all day working in there, stretching it out while ordering a coffee every three or so hours, and nothing much else

Some companies allow staff to work from the beach. Picture: Pixabay

In chains like Costa and Starbucks, people seem to get away with working all day, every day, hogging tables - often the best ones near the windows - while they tap,tap, tap on their laptops. I was once in Costa in Stokesley, North Yorkshire, when a woman on her laptop asked the people on the next table if they could be a bit quieter as was she was having trouble with the sound on her Zoom call and couldn’t hear what was being said.

You’d never have got away with that sort of thing in the cafes of my youth. In my local Wimpy, once you’d finished your coffee or tea - no more than six mouthfuls from a very small cup - the waiting staff would hover close to your table and expect you to leave if you didn’t buy something else. They would never have allowed people to hog tables all day while sipping a glass of Coke. If I ran a cafe I'd ban laptops.

Some companies allow staff to work from the beach. No doubt they are be the ones hogging the sun loungers or beach-side cafes all day and calling IT when they get sand on their keyboards.