Freeloading Monday!

[Jester]

Young guy, early 20s, comes up to my bar, with his cell phone and charger in hand.

YG: "Can I charge my phone?"
ME: "Sure. Would you like a food menu, or something to I drink?"
YG: "No."
ME: "Yeah. We only do that for customers."
YG: "Okay then. I'll have a raspberry juice."
ME: "Excuse me? A what?"
YG: "Raspberry juice? Do you have raspberry juice?"
ME: "....noooo....we have orange juice, cranberry juice--"
YG: "That's it. Cranberry juice." It should be noted he spoke perfect English, and was, I believe, American.
ME: "Okay. One cranberry juice." So I plugged in his phone and went off to the other end of the bar to pour his juice. I hate people like this, but technically, he was now a customer. Just as I finished pouring the juice...
YG: "Excuse me."
ME: "Huh?" I looked up to see that YG had come around to that end of the bar.
YG: "Can I just get a water instead?"
ME: (looking pointedly at the glass of cranberry juice) "I've already poured the juice."
YG: "Um....well how much is that gonna be....? I'd really just rather have water."
ME: "You DO realize that means you're not buying anything, right?"
YG: "...."
ME: "Forget it. Here's your water."

Asshole.

Anyone wanna guess how much he tipped for using our electricity and taking up space at the bar while only drinking tap water?

Hint: it squares nicely with the number of times Keira Knightley has blown me.

[Sandman]

Actually or in your dreams?

[MoonCat]

Actually or in your dreams?

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess in reality rules in this case....


Seriously, Mr. Big Spender couldn't even spring for ONE drink?

[AnaKhouri]

It drives me crazy when people camp out at the bookstore, plug in their phones/laptops, and stay for hours without buying anything. Some work on their laptops, one guy watched movies for several days straight (until he was thrown out because his headphones were up too loud and the movie was VERY R-rated), one women even conducted her online class (Skype) in our store. It's insame how entitled these people are. Sure, the electricity they steal is probably a drop in the bucket of our total electric bill but still...I would never think to do this (I didn't mind once after a snowstorm that left many houses around the store without power, but that was an emergency situation).

[wolfie]

Anyone wanna guess how much he tipped for using our electricity and taking up space at the bar while only drinking tap water?

I believe it's a number that can be expressed in Arabic numerals, but not Roman numerals.

[Pixilated]

Lemme guess what kind of reception he's going to get if he's fool enough to ever come in again and make a similar request ...

[barainga]

Hint: it squares nicely with the number of times Keira Knightley has blown me.

Over 9000?

[Jester]

Over 9000?

Whatever reality you're living in, I want a daily pass!

[taxguykarl]

Zero, right? Any prize for the right answer.

[mjr]

It drives me crazy when people camp out at the bookstore, plug in their phones/laptops, and stay for hours without buying anything.

I actually saw something akin to this recently at an Astro Dollars...

I met with a guy I know to help him build a website. Anyway, I get there before he does, and there's a couple of people off in this area to the side. They both have laptops out, plugged in, and are using the WiFi at Astro Dollars. I'm waiting for my friend for probably 20 minutes or so. These people are still using the WiFi and are plugged in, the entire time. Did they purchase anything? Nope.

Well, anyway, my friend arrives, and we actually go to lunch at a nearby restaurant named after a pepper. We're there an hour or so, and we go back to the Astro Dollar. Guess who's still there, and who still didn't buy anything! If you said, "the couple of people (I think they were an actual couple) in the corner", give yourself a point!

So my friend and I go up to the counter, and order ourselves a couple of teas, because Astro Dollar has tea, and I don't drink coffee, and we'd just had lunch.

So here's the score, by purchases:

Me: 1
My Friend: 1
Couple: 0

So we sit there talking about his design, and I end up helping him for a little over two hours.

During the course of the two hours, we're introduced to a guy I will refer to as Burger Boy. Burger Boy (or BB, for short) walks into the Astro Dollar with a fast food bag in his hand from a nearby Burger place. He then sits down, lays out his burger, fries, and drink (all from the burger place), takes out his laptop, and begins using Astro Dollar's WiFi.

So now, if you're keeping count, here's the score by purchases now:

Me: 1
Friend: 1
Couple: 0
BB: 0

I have a feeling that couple (who left probably 15 minutes before we did) were probably there at least 4 hours using the WiFi. Burger Boy wasn't there as long.

At least my friend and I made purchases.

[An Haddock]

"If you don't pay for it, I'm gonna take this swizzle stick and I'm gonna be jamming that straight up your peehole."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sXo_AnomXo

[Grendus]

It drives me crazy when people camp out at the bookstore, plug in their phones/laptops, and stay for hours without buying anything. Some work on their laptops, one guy watched movies for several days straight (until he was thrown out because his headphones were up too loud and the movie was VERY R-rated), one women even conducted her online class (Skype) in our store. It's insame how entitled these people are. Sure, the electricity they steal is probably a drop in the bucket of our total electric bill but still...I would never think to do this (I didn't mind once after a snowstorm that left many houses around the store without power, but that was an emergency situation).

It's not the cost, it's the opportunity cost. Especially if the store is crowded, they may actually be driving away paying customers. Doubly so if they're loud or use up all the bandwidth. There was actually a coffee shop (think it was a Starbucks in New York) that actually had to take all of their wall sockets out of their shop to keep people from camping out there all day and keeping paying customers from using the table.

[Jester]

Found this article about coffee shops in NY doing this.

[mikoyan29]

I'll use the WiFi at Panera when I am eating there but for the most part, I have WiFi at home so I don't really care. As for the charging, I would never think to ask a restaurant or bar to charge my phone unless I was a customer. I guess that's why I have a charger in my car.

[sstabeler]

I'll admit that free wifi in a cafe or restaurant would be an attraction for me, but I'd only be using it while I eat! ( in other words, I'm the kind of customer the free Wifi is for- eat while browsing the internet.

as for electrical outlets- sorry, but I'm careful about where I charge my stuff. ( it's possible to infect an iPhone with malware through a charging socket, because the same socket is used for charging and data transfer.) So I prefer to carry around a battery pack for my iPhone (it can fully recharge my iPhone once, then needs recharging itself. I've never had both run out on me. not expensive, either- it cost £30 IIRC) to recharge it, since it's safer. I don't carry around a laptop anyway, so why risk getting a virus?