Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainYooh
So, what's the tolerance limit on lingering in a private place of business? Are you entitled to stay at a cafe occupying a table for as long you want if you haven't bought anything there? How long can you occupy a table browsing Internet after buying a $2 cup of coffee? Should Starbucks charge something for the time you stay at a table in addition to charging you for coffee? These are all legitimate questions that everyone is ignoring while focusing on the race of these two guys instead.
My friend used to own a downtown cafe. On the opening day, a homeless guy showed up and wished my friend good luck. He gave him a free bowl of soup. Next day, he brought others. I came to visit the cafe in a few days, there were five homeless guys sitting inside and occupying a table. No other customers were around. People would come in, look at that table and just leave. My friend asked them to leave, they started shouting and attacked him. Police officer stopped by and said "yeah, that's a problem downtown, not much we can do"...
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I've seen a lot of variations on this, and a have dealt with a lot of businesses struggling with answering these questions.
One of the ones I like are some of the McD's I've seen, especially around schools, that have signs along the lines of "Please limit your visit with us to 30 minutes". Gives them a bit of a leg to stand on, and sets some expectations to the customers, can be 'looked the other way at' if the staff is feeling it, or pointed to if they need to.