Ghetto Workspace

Some years ago there was some debate about the rights of consumers to use the wifi in coffee shops. See my posts on Ghetto Wifi, Ghetto Wifi 2. As I pointed out at the time, the scarce resource for the coffee shop is not the wifi but the fact that the tables and power sockets are occupied for an extended period without making any further purchases.

Students in South Korea are now taking this to an extreme extent. Some of them appear to think it's acceptable to leave their laptops on the table while they go and eat somewhere else!

Coffee shop owners have differing views on how to manage this phenomenon (known as Cagongjok), especially as there are some wider social factors that are outside their control. 

---

Kim Hojun, Cagong Culture (2023)

No Kyung-min, A portmanteau of cafe, study and tribe, the phenomenon offers a glimpse into cultural aspects of cafe-lingering in Korea (Korea Herald, 20 June 2023)

Juna Moon, 'Two laptops, six plugs': The South Korean cafes grappling with students who don't leave (BBC News, 23 August 2025)

Sasha Rogelberg, Starbucks asks customers in South Korea to stop bringing printers and desktop computers into stores as workers transform cafés into remote offices (Fortune, 11 August 2025)

 

Ghetto Architecture

Photographer and ethnographer Camilo Vergara explains why he has dedicated his attention to urban poverty. "I've always been interested in places that enhance my sense of instability and the precariousness of my own existence." His current project documents the reuse of ghetto architecture as storefront churches. The churches, proclaimed sacred spaces by ambitious pastors and re-branded with homespun additions and hand painted signs, often disappear as quickly as they arrived.

Source: Core77

Amos Klausner suggests that "these spaces become increasingly valuable because they are truly reflective of the people who live and work there". And according to Jane Holz Kay, these images "raise fundamental questions about the definition of architecture".

So much for escaping from the architecture ghetto then, eh Mr Koolhaas?

---

Marcus Fairs, Rem Koolhaas (ICON, June 2004)

Jane Holtz Kay, Ghetto architecture: an exhibition of makeshift design (Christian Science Monitor, 7 October 1983)

Amos Klausner, Undesigning America (Core77, undated)

Margaret Rhodes, Voluntary Ghettos: A Radical Idea for Reclaiming Urban Space (Wired, 17 December 2014)

Ghetto Wifi 2

Following my post on Ghetto Wifi, I passed a pub yesterday with a sign "Free wifi for customers only".

Thought of another perspective on this problem. How long do you remain a customer after you have bought a drink? One hour? One day? Is there some kind of dwindling right to use the facilities as time passes? If you bought a coffee within the last half hour then you are a full-status customer with full rights; if you haven't bought a coffee in the last two hours, then maybe your customer rights are weaker.


Let's look at some more examples. If you have lunch in a restaurant, and then do some shopping, can you then go back to the restaurant to use the toilet before driving home? (If you left a reasonable tip, then maybe the aura of "customerhood" still lingers.) If you have lunch in a pub, can you leave your car in the "customers only" car park for the rest of the day? Some establishments have strict limits - for example, some supermarkets have free parking for two hours, and then start clamping or ticketing people who stay longer.

Obviously there will always be some people to try to cheat - to use the facilities without buying anything at all. The point here isn't whether this is possible, or the extent to which the establishment tries to make you feel welcome (in order to convert you to future customer) or unwelcome (to reserve its facilities for genuine customers), but what moral rights you have in the first place.

Some people might think that the "customers only" goes without saying - you shouldn't need a notice - but presumably there are some people whose behaviour will be influenced by a reminder that these facilities are intended for genuine customers.

So it comes down to a question of what counts as a genuine customer, and for how long.

Ghetto Wifi

@TimHarford answers a reader's letter in his Financial Times Dear Economist column: "Why do cafes offer free wireless if I'm not allowed to use it?"

The reader complains about being politely asked to vacate a table at lunchtime, so that more paying customers could be accommodated. Should the coffee shop offer wireless internet access if it isn’t willing to accept the opportunity cost associated with it, rhetorically asks said reader?

As a matter of fact, the wireless is irrelevant. The problem of customers hogging tables for hours existed long before computers. The scarce resource (especially at lunchtime) is the table. (Especially the table next to an electricity socket.)

As Tim points out in his column, the lunchtime opportunity cost of letting someone take up a table for four is substantial, while the wireless access, cheap to provide at any time, is a side-issue. But Tim is more polite to his reader than the reader probably deserves, and he fails to point out the false premise in the question. Of course the customer is expected and encouraged to use the facilities of the cafe (table, wifi, toilets) as well as helping herself to milk and sugar. But there is an implicit notion of proportionality: you don't walk off with half a kilo of sugar; you are allowed to use the free wifi, but that's not an unrestricted right; and buying a single cup of coffee doesn't entitle you to sit there all day. (There is a similar dispute about the ethics of making Ghetto Latte.)

Even impoverished writers, who try to make a cup of coffee last as long as possible while writing the next Harry Potter, are aware that there are limits. JK Rowling herself says on her website "the best writing cafe ... has staff who don't glower at you if you sit there too long" (Places to Write). In other words, she doesn't think she has an automatic right to sit there too long, and she appreciates those cafes that tolerate her stretching the limits.

As a non-economist, I'd like to draw attention to two aspects of this. The first is the readiness of Tim and his readers to frame the consumption of coffee and wifi as an economic transaction. "I bought this coffee with free internet access, and I'm entitled to my economic rights." There is no sense of a social relationship between the cafe owner and the customer, or the idea that the customer might vacate the table at lunchtime before being asked, out of consideration for the cafe owner's ability to make a reasonable living.

The second is the irrelevant foregrounding of the wifi issue, suggesting that the reader wishes to see internet access as a primary economic issue. Perhaps this reader is one of those who would make a fetish out of net neutrality, and would see any restrictions on internet access (including this dastardly cafe owner denying me free and unlimited wifi) as a gross violation of some fundamental principle.


See also Ghetto Wifi 2 (June 2010), Ghetto Workspace (August 2025)

---

In January 2014, a flurry of press stories about a radical new way of solving this problem. A cafe in East London (called Ziferblat) now offers free coffee, free biscuits and free wifi. You pay for the time - 3p per minute.


Sources: Ziferblat website, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Time Out.

See also: @BBCNewsMagazine, The Etiquette of Coffee Shop Lounging (16 Jan 2014)

See also @BBCNewsMagazine, The generation dependent on the phone charger (15 March 2014)

Update 15 March 2014

Ghetto Latte

It seems that some Starbucks customers have developed the practice of ordering a cheap coffee, and then using the free milk and other condiments to convert it into a more expensive product. This is known as a ghetto latte or bootleg latte. There has been some discussion as to the ethics of this practice.

As Randy points out, this raises a more general question "under what circumstances can users deviate from the intended uses of producers" - a question that Randy links to digital rights management and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Let's look at this form of arbitrage from a service-oriented perspective. The provider (in this case Starbucks) provides two products - one relatively expensive (the latte) and one free (the milk). The consumer composes these two products in a manner that deviates from the provider's evident intentions and expectations, in order to obtain something of an equivalent value but at a lower price. This can be regarded either as a form of clever repurposing, or as a minor form of abuse. The provider apparently tolerates this not just because the cost of tolerating the practice is less than the cost of enforcing compliance with the intended pricing scheme, but also because the opportunity of expanding its business more than compensates for any extra complexity and confusion.

Could Starbucks have anticipated this? Well this is a pretty simple case, but in general, it may not be possible for a service provider to calculate every possible combination of its products and services, and it may not be desirable for the service provider to suppress or preempt the imagination and ingenuity of its customers. (There are lots of consumers, many of them using the service every day, so we should expect a considerable proportion of such innovations to emerge from the consumer side.) Instead, service providers need to be flexible and robust enough to provide a reasonable service under unforeseen conditions.

Just recalled, as I was readying to go grab afternoon coffee, that I was so broke in first year uni that I couldn’t afford to buy coffee on campus. I’d bring tetley tea bags and ask for hot water at the cafeteria and then I’d sneak milk and sweetener from the condiment stand.

— Dr Fish Philosopher🐟🌿 (@ZoeSTodd) September 19, 2019

HT @sladner

---

Related Posts

Ghetto Wifi 1 2 (June 2010)
Starbucks Test (November 2006)

---

Notes

Charles Leroux, The bootleg latte: Would you make one? (Chicago Tribune, 5 October 2006)

Randy Picker, Hacking Starbucks (University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog, 6 October 2006)


Hat Tip Tomorrows Fish and Chip Paper


Updated 19 September 2019