After the tone was set in several European countries, where many cafes imposed rules regarding the use of laptops or even restricted access to wifi, the idea gained more and more ground in Romania as well.
In some European cities, the rules regarding the laptop are strict, archive photo
Because they noticed that some of their customers sometimes spend hours on end with just a coffee in front of them and their eyes on the screen and are so focused on work that they forget to place an order at least once in a while, several patrons of cafes in Romania have decided to take measures, reports Antena3.
It is already happening in several cafes in Bucharest and Cluj, where the owners have started to forbid customers from using their laptops during the weekend. After, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, more and more people worked at home, a significant part of them continued teleworking even after the restrictions were lifted. This is the reason why younger people have ended up moving their office, more and more often, to the cafe.
Simona Croitoru, who owns such a place in Bucharest, says that, in addition to the fact that they don't drink who knows what, some people who work on a laptop in the cafe also claim not to be disturbed by others or by the ambient music. Thus she made the decision that during the weekend the use of such devices in the cafe would be prohibited.
“It's not a good environment to work on the weekend, because we have children guests, there's a lot of noise, there's commotion, and it wouldn't be fair even for the guests who come to relax for someone to work next to them and say to turn the music down slow. And, after all, we are a cafe and we live from the consumption that our guests make”, says the owner of the cafe.
Although this internal regulation has been in operation for a year, there are still dissatisfied people who believe that the rule violates some of their rights.
“It would be fine for me to be able to use the laptop. It's my thing now when I use it: on the weekend, during the week, I wouldn't want to be confined. Usually people come to coffee shops who I saw want to work and it's not really the best environment. Perhaps it would be better to concentrate at home, but everyone works where they want”,
said the customer of a cafe.
In Romania, the restrictions on the use of laptops in cafes are applied in several such premises in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca, but in other European countries they are extended to the national level. In Spain, for example, the rules are even stricter. In big cities like Valencia, Santiago and Barcelona, to get people to stop coming to the cafe with their laptop, the patrons gave up wifi.
Also, in Paris, Berlin, Lisbon and Brighton, either the use of a laptop in cafes is completely banned, or those who still want to work pay a fee for each hour spent in front of a computer, instead of enjoying a coffee.
Those who carry out their basic activity in front of the computer are more and more numerous and, because they can do it from any corner of the world, they have been called digital nomads.
Due to the good speed of the Internet and the fact that life is cheaper in Romania when you receive your salary almost any other European state, our country has become, after Spain and Argentina, the third destination in the preferences of digital nomads.
