Since my temporary departure from the working world, I have adopted a coffee shop near my house as my morning office. The name is Dragon Fly in Louisville. It’s an independent coffee shop owned by a Registered Nurse from Longmont named Patty. From what I can tell she still works one shift a week. She has done a great job with the business. Man is this an emotionally charged place...
I started coming to Dragon Fly about 9 months ago when my other coffee shop JavaJava in Lafayette decided not to take charge cards for less than $3 charges. The owner told me that he lost money on charges on less than $3. It seems to me he’s losing more money in the current configuration.
The WIFI at Dragon Fly works most of the time, but I bought the Verizon EDO card a while back for “broadband everywhere” access and it picks up when hotspots fail. All in all it’s a pretty good office setup.
I have a home office but I find it works best when I have “heads down” kind of work that doesn’t require free thought and research. It seems “being out” stimulates thought. Observing people can be quite interesting while you work, and I find while thinking up the next great thing keeping close to people’s behavior is valuable.
An interesting byproduct of my setup here is that I see coffee shop people come and go most of the morning between about 8 and 10am. I overhear conversations; see people’s reactions, notice their idiosyncrasies, etc.
I have come to realize, unexpectedly, that coffee shops are very emotional places. It seems that people meet there to discuss their life crises with amazing regularity. I would say in the month or so that I have coming to Dragon Fly with nearly daily attendance I have seen over 20 teary eyed conversations between people. Admittedly these are mostly female conversations, or at least the female participant is the one that’s upset. I’ve learned the art of not making eye contact as this tends to accelerate the entire emotional spiral.
Another interesting observation is that people that talk on cell phones in coffee shops seem to forget that the rest of us are here. I listened to a conversation the other day when a guy went through a whole dissertation about how he was constructing a entirely fictious resume for a job that he was applying for. At the end of the conversation he cautioned the person on the other end of the phone that this was, just between you and me….and about 10 other people.
My word of advice, if anyone is hiring a web developer in the Boulder area in the next few weeks, check the references…
