davis_square | Diesel Closed this week?

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*nod* i've always found the people using booths to be perfectly willing to share (and i have been too, on the rare occasions i've been alone in a booth :)

Those booths were great, because I got to spread out and have all of the documents I needed available to me. Also in the fall, when I went to Diesel to study a good deal, the booths were great for spreading out with a notebook, coursepack, and laptop.

I think this is the problem. It's a coffee shop, not a mobile office or study library. Seating should go *first* to people who want to consume what they've purchased and secondarily to people who want to hang out.

Are you the Diesel nazi?

Nazis rounded up religious, ethnic and other minorities and gassed them to death.

I am merely saying that the *purpose* of a coffeshop is to provide drinks and snacks and a place to enjoy them so that ideally, seating priority should go to people actively doing those things and if there's room, people hanging out.

It's rather annoying to buy a coffee and muffin, look around and find no place to sit and scores of tables full of people not eating or drinking anything.

The "space hog" problem at Diesel (people hogging too much space or the same space for too long) is a reason I tend to avoid getting coffee and snacks at Diesel.

You have a valid point. That's not cool if people are space hogging tables and not eating or drinking anything. It's not the library or an office. That does drive me NUTS too as I am trying to find a table.

Sorry-I didn't mean to offend you. That was off color.

It's ok. I just really don't enjoy people who treat Diesel like their living room, office or study room. I'm not saying you must have hand-to-mouth action with food or drink at all times but I think a person should be buying something once per hour-ish. There are literally people who get there early in the morning and camp out alllll day. What's odd is that I've only noticed this really extended hanging out at Diesel. Other places in the Square I like to hang out (you know for a respectable hour or so, lol) people don't linger nearly as long.

I'm with you on this. I am going to make a point of sitting in on booth/office hoggers!

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I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I think buying lunch buys about an hour's worth of hanging out. Maybe two. I don't think it buys 6+ hours. I know Emack & Bolio's in JP has free Internet, but limits it to 3 hours per day. I think that's a great idea. Friendly, generous but with a hint.

I really only object to the most egregious of space hogs. The ones who sit there alllll day (e.g. 6+ hours) because unless they are buying a steady stream of something I find it quite unfair to new customers coming in and looking for a seat.

Another point I disagree on -- a booth is not meant for one person to "really spread out," it's meant to hold 2-4 people enjoying a coffeehouse purchase. If someone wants to "really spread out" then perhaps a crowded coffeehouse isn't the best bet.

And last -- I only really and truly objet to this behavior when the place is packed. If people want to space hog and spread out when the join is empty I have no objections.

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Actually, the crowding and my frequent inability to get a seat usually keeps me away. I don't go precisely because there *isn't* enough room. I got tired of buying a coffee and snack only to be standing around holding it and feeling like an idiot.

A bit over a year ago, was Someday still open? Because the space crunch at Diesel went from non-ideal to ridiculous about when Someday closed.

Someday closed in mid-August last year.

I know I'm adding to the conversation late, and that you're one of the conscientious single-people-in-a-booth, but one other issue that drives me nuts about this is that while it's possible to ask someone to share their booth when you go to Diesel just as an individual, it's not as easy when you go with friends. It's frustrating to go to Diesel as a group of 4 and have to try to convince someone alone in a booth to pack up their stuff and go share with another singleton so that you can sit in the same booth as your friends.

I'd prefer if there were some explicit ground rules laid out by Diesel about how they expect their customers to booth share, so that I wouldn't have to feel like I was the one being radical and putting someone out for suggesting that 4 people who just bought dinner have more right to a booth than one person writing a paper, even if that person was there first.

I don't plan social outings at Diesel anymore, because of this. I will attend someone else's outing there, and sometimes find myself there on my own, but I find that in general it's pretty inhospitable to any group larger than two, sometimes even larger than one, unless the group gets there early and stakes out space as it becomes available and stays camped out for the bulk of the night.

All that said, if I were a grad student I'd probably want to spread out in a booth on occasion myself. I just would keep a proactive eye out on the crowding, and try to indicate to people clearly looking for seating that I'm willing to accomodate them.

Really, the issue is that Davis could easily accomodate another entire cafe the size of Diesel, entirely composed of single-occupancy desks.

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I think you're a bit of an exception because you actually are also a food-purchasing customer, so I think your way of handling things would bother me less.

Still, though, booths are designed to be shared, as seating for up to 4 people. If there are however many booths (4? I haven't gone to Diesel now in maybe 6 months so I don't remember), and every single one of them is in use by a singleton, and then you turn to look at the non-booth tables, and almost all of them are in use by one person, and there is literally nowhere in the entire cafe that two people who want to be social with each other can sit at the same table, yes, I do think that a party of four should have priority over a single person at one of the few seating areas that's actually capable of handling a party of 4. I don't think that someone getting there first should still apply after they've been sitting in the same seat for more than 2 hours.

I've had this happen to me on several occasions, where every table was occupied, but the vast majority were occupied by just one person. I got tired of having to get food to go and go walk to the outdoor tables by JP Licks if I wanted to be able to eat in the company of the friends I was meeting.

But again, that's why I no longer patronize Diesel. I went there because it was a convenient place to meet up with a few friends without having to buy a full meal, and close enough to the T that nobody had to go out of their way. It was also nice that I used to be able to run into other friends there. Since it's clear that Diesel doesn't cater to the clientel segment of people who want to talk to the friends they came in with, though, there's really no reason for me to go there anymore.

The only reason I still care about this is that unfortunately, there's also really nowhere else for me to go for the kind of friends-gathering I used to count on Diesel for. At least Mr. Crepe enforces a table use/purchase limit, so I can go there until I'm sick of crepes, and as long as I don't mind that they're pricier than Diesel's sandwiches. But no place else has the theoretical seating capacity, or menu variety, of Diesel.

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Yeah, the only way these things go well is if folks are polite. Honestly, the only time I'll ever ask someone to move is if I'm also asking another singleton in another booth if they'd be able to pair up one way or another, and usually I'd rather not get into that sort of social request so I just leave before buying anything. I wouldn't ever ask someone to move without also negotiating a mutually acceptable place for them to move to, and doing the work of negotiating it myself. I figure that it's always worth the try, because you never know if someone will be willing to help out. I know that on the rare occasions when I'm in that position, I don't really mind, though I don't unpack as much as others. I guess I don't see it as that different from asking someone to share their table, or like when people trying to sit together on an airline ask if anyone nearby is willing to trade seats. If you come across someone like-minded, you never know. I've traded seats on airlines many times, and had it paid forward to me many times as well. I still wish Diesel had booth time limits during its crowded hours, or purchase requirements for time of table use, or some official etiquette beyond laissez faire. But since it's not gonna happen there, I'll just go to places that do, or be sure to get to Diesel early enough to claim tables as they turn over.

I totally hear what you mean about the Someday. I used to live with a Someday manager a while back and for that time the Someday felt like a second living room. I found that after I'd been living in Inman for a few years and no longer living with a manager when I came back to live in Davis again it didn't feel quite as friendly, but that was also in contrast to the complete homeyness I'd enjoyed there before. I actually used to be able to work in Someday pretty easily, except that friends would always come in and interrupt me. I do love Mr. Crepe though. I used to live right around the corner from their old location on Holland and so I was psyched to have them back. I just wish they were a tad cheaper, cos they are ohso tasty. I wish the Someday were making progress at coming back, though. I think this whole seating issue would be solved if we only had one more decent-sized cafe in the square.

Diesel Closed this week?

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whoa!

Re: whoa!

true

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Re: true

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