[xoa]

>"they come in here and get a drink and use that to stay all day."

Not wanting this behavior is absolutely reasonable, but what I'd find suspicious and don't understand is why cashless would be the method. I know of plenty of places that have policies along the lines of "during regular hours 15 minutes per drink, 40 with drink & food" or whatever is appropriate to the location. It's private property though a public business, and they can set non-discriminatory customer neutral policies for free use, particularly around interfering with other customers. It also doesn't seem like it'd be at all a class thing, I know lots of cafes around here have had issues sometimes with someone coming in and getting a single coffee then pulling out their high end notebook and using a table as a free internet accessible office for an hour or two. They are not even slightly poor, they've got credit cards and smartphones, they're just rude.

But the result was just that businesses instituted policies and simply ask such people to leave if it seems to be deterring other customers, and that also seems like the obvious general solution. I'm honestly curious about why in Palo Alto that wouldn't be true too, is there some local law/ordinance that prohibits asking a customer to leave or the like? If there is no such thing it does seem more likely they were just lying, and the real truth was that they want customers who meet some specific level of dress code and also don't want to be honest about it (for legal reasons or just plain PR or both).

There are plenty of real reasons for a business to want to take the hit to go cashless (managing significant amounts of physical cash is a genuine expense, and in some places raises the attractiveness for robbery too). This really doesn't seem like one of them though.

[etrautmann]

Paying for a coffee and sitting in a cafe for an hour is rude? I try to be conscious of being a responsible customer by this is completely normal and reasonable in the majority of cafes I'll frequent, like Philz in Palo Alto, or any Starbucks anywhere.

[lhorie]

An hour seems fairly reasonable. I've seen groups of four people doing business meetings at coffee shops. Where I've heard staff complain is when someone buys a coffee and then stays for 4+ hours on a regular basis in a high traffic shop (like near the touristic cable car stops in SF).

[jartelt]

I imagine it is just hard and annoying to try to enforce a time limit. You don't want your cashiers and baristas to have to keep track of how long each person has been sitting at a table. Plus, your cashiers may not be comfortable asking a homeless person to leave the establishment since it could lead to a confrontation.

On top of that, I could totally see a time limit rule being implemented poorly. The well-to-do looking businessman probably never gets asked to leave, while the young non-white person gets asked to leave...

I'm not saying cash-less is a good system, just saying the other policies have their issues as well.

[pavel_lishin]

> what I'd find suspicious and don't understand is why cashless would be the method.

It eliminates the confrontation at the end of the 15/40 minute grace limit.