One of the huge benefits of working in a mainly digital environment, is the ability to work remotely. Often referenced as home-office, at DMS it became a running gag to call it café-office when it’s about me being offsite. It began back when I was still graduating and had an apartment in the roof of the building. In summer, it was like a free sauna – and I don’t even enjoy going into those things as part of wellness.

So, I just went out looking for a place where I could settle to do my stuff. Naturally, I ended up in a café, as I like drinking some coffee alongside eating a snack, while being able to sit on the porch with the blessing of sunshades saturating it. I loved it. Actually, so much, I basically spend at least the half of my remote working time hanging around in cafés. When asked about the distraction through other people, I always say the same. Maybe it’s related to the fact that I grew up with five siblings, but it’s more like a white noise for me than actual noise. Like you would turn on the TV or Radio in your room when trying to work, as it’s “to quiet” else. Eventually, I ended up not enjoying doing literal home-office anymore.

But it’s not without some issues. I don’t like attention much, I like to melt into the mas and just focus on the stuff I want to do. Yet, somehow, it generates attention if you’re regularly in a café with a laptop. Underestimating this effect even in a city, I cut my time per café to less than 2 hours maximum, requiring me to juggle around with different places to still get my work done. It might sound odd to you, but hearing “the usual?” is a sing for me, that I’m too often there. This way, I came around a bit, testing new places and internally generating a sorted list rating those cafés. Not in a formal way, rather a diffuse, subjective feeling I associated with them.

After recognising the existence of this list and that there’s still no front() sufficing the criteria of being THE café for me, I also acknowledged this habit as a soft dedication to find it somewhere. I asked Google, but I couldn’t find something focusing on the aspects relevant for me, as most people seem to go in such places to have some quality time with their loved ones. They also rate it by how nice the food looks, going by the number of pictures capturing this specific part, with a felt ratio of 100:1 photos of the actual café. Mostly irrelevant to my preferences, as my std order is a cappuccino with a glass of water, I thought about making my own list, both for me having some kind of archive, but also for the poor souls out there sharing this weird habit. This is also an invitation to suggest a place you think might be to my liking.

Now the quantifying part. By making this public, I also need a metric where people can relate to. On the other hand, I don’t want to overcomplicate things. I decided to go with the good old 5-Star rating thing, which will sum up a description and a short conclusion.

And that’s basically it, have fun.