Starbucks And Other Coffee Shops Want To Stop People From Camping Out All Day

Crema Coffee House in Denver covered outlets to prevent laptop and cell phone users from camping out, according to Eater and an article by the Denver Post.

Co-owner Noah Price said he was worried about customers bringing extension cords and tangling them under tables and chairs to keep their electronics charged.

The concern for safety and the aesthetics of the shop were the reasons for the change, he said, not to keep squatters from spending hours on end in the shop.

Not everyone is as tolerable of the people who camp out all day.

The squatters, or "laptop hobos," are those who buy a single cup of coffee and spend lengthy amounts of time in coffee shops driving down turnover and so other establishments have gone further to detour the "laptop hobos."

Starbucks began covering some electrical outlets at locations in 2011 and a Denver coffee shop called Wooden Spoon has recently stopped offering wifi and banned laptop and cellphone use all together.

"It got to the point where we had customers watching YouTube videos and blasting them at full volume," Wooden Spoon's co-owner Jason Burgett told the Denver Post. "We're a small shop with only 16 seats. We prefer that our customers have the opportunity for social interaction."