A few months ago a cafe I’d been working from three times a week put up a small sign by the till: “Laptops welcome until 12, and after 3.” I was a little offended, right up until I counted. At 1 PM that day there were nine of us with laptops open, four empty cups between us, and a couple standing at the door with their lunch trays looking for a seat that didn’t exist.

The cafe wasn’t against laptops. It was against losing its lunch rush to people who’d ordered one drink at nine in the morning. That’s a completely fair position, and once I saw it that way, most of cafe etiquette stopped feeling like a set of rules and started feeling like common sense.

Here’s what I try to do now, so that I’m the laptop the staff are glad to see walk in.

Think of it as rent, not a coffee

When you work from a cafe, you’re not buying a coffee. You’re renting a table, electricity, wifi and a warm room, and paying for it in coffee. The rough rule I use is one order every two hours or so. It doesn’t have to be expensive: a second drink, a water and a pastry, lunch if I’m staying through midday.

Even with that, a day in a cafe usually costs less than a co-working day pass. If it doesn’t, that tells you something about whether this place should be your full-day spot at all.

Know the cafe’s busy hours, and get out of the way

Every cafe has a rush. For most it’s lunch; for some it’s the weekend brunch crowd, or the after-school hour. During that window, a table is worth far more to the business than your second americano.

You don’t have to leave. But you can make yourself small: move from the four-top to the bar along the window, pack the charger away, or plan your lunch break for exactly that hour. I’ve started treating the lunch rush as my cue to go for a walk, and I come back to a quieter room and a more relaxed barista.

Take one seat’s worth of space

This is the one people get wrong without noticing. Laptop, second screen, notebook, phone, bag on the chair opposite, jacket on the chair next to you. You’ve quietly turned a table for four into a desk for one.

• Solo? Sit at a small table or the bar. Leave the big tables to groups unless the place is empty.
• Bag on the floor or under your chair, not on a seat someone else could use.
• Don’t run a cable across a walkway. If the only free outlet means a tripwire, pick another seat or bring a power bank.

Calls: short, quiet, or somewhere else

Nothing makes a cafe feel like an open-plan office faster than someone running a full team meeting on speaker. If you have to take a call, wear headphones with a mic, keep your voice at table volume, and keep it short. For anything longer than fifteen minutes, or anything where you’ll need to talk a lot, step outside or schedule it for when you’re home.

A good test: if the people at the next table could summarize your meeting afterwards, you were too loud.

Be a person, not a workstation

Say hello. Take your headphones off when you order. Learn the barista’s name if you’re there every week. Bring your cups back to the counter. Tip if that’s the custom where you are.

None of this is about buying goodwill. It’s that a regular who’s friendly and tidy feels like part of the place, and a stranger who’s been silently plugged in since nine feels like a cost. The staff will save you “your” table, tell you the wifi password changed, and warn you before the big group booking at two. That’s worth more than any outlet.

Read the signs, literally

“No laptops on weekends.” “90-minute limit at peak times.” Outlets taped over. These aren’t hostile; they’re the cafe telling you how it pays its rent. Respect them, and if a place clearly doesn’t want laptop workers, don’t try to make it work. There are plenty of cafes that do, and they deserve your custom more.

The flip side is worth noticing too. A cafe with visible outlets, a wifi password on the menu board and long shared tables is telling you it wants you there. Those are the places to become a regular at.

Leave the table better than you found it

Crumbs wiped, cups stacked or returned, chair pushed back in, charger unplugged. It takes thirty seconds and it’s the last impression you leave. Over a few weeks, it’s the difference between “oh, the laptop person again” and “oh good, it’s you.”

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Remote work in cafes only keeps working if cafes keep wanting us there. Every one of us who orders regularly, makes space at lunch and keeps calls quiet makes it a little easier for the next person with a laptop to be welcomed in.

And if you’d like to start from places that already welcome laptops, that’s what ProductivePlaces is for: cafes and libraries rated by people who actually work in them, for wifi, outlets, noise and how laptop-friendly the staff are. Find a good one, then be the regular they’re glad to see.