Berkshire cafes tell home workers to stop ‘hogging’ tables

He said that people coming in with laptops often had “quite a low spend”, but would sit at tables for “quite a long time”.

Since the Covid pandemic, many people who work from home have adopted coffee shops as their second offices – saving them money on energy and wi-fi, while enabling them to work in a social environment.

The reaction from customers to The Collective’s laptop policy “really varies”, Mr Middleton said.

“We’re quite lucky that a lot of our customers are returning customers that come in quite often – so they respect the policy, but then you will get people that get a little bit antsy about it,” he said.

Mr Chaplin added that it was “one of those awkward conversations”, but added that he often had “no choice” but to tell customers to stop using their laptops.