Boulder Coffee Shops blog

This is the message I was planning on scribbling as I rode my bike to Vic’s today: For my vote, Vic’s is by far the best working environment of all the Boulder coffee shops. It’s actually set up to work, with two big conference tables you can get comfy at, lots of open space, big windows and light, jazz piping in but not too loud, etc. And for a bonus, you get to people watch the working-out-and-want-everybody-to-know-about-it crowd at One Fitness next door.

I was maybe going to mention that the coffee needs to change, that Vic’s maybe should rethink the big “Proudly serving Allegro coffee” on their wall menu, but maybe I was going to leave that out in a bout of feeling generous.

But, see, Vic’s went ahead and did something weird. Now, the long-standing problem with Vic’s is that the internet connectivity is unreliable. Ok, that’s an understatement. It is reliable: it reliably goes down once every hour or two. A working patron must then stand and ask a barista or baristo to reset the wireless. Not the end of the world, but a pain in the ass. And, look, I’ve been working at Vic’s since they opened near January 2006 and they’ve always had the wireless problem AND THEY’VE NEVER FIXED IT! I mean, get a clue. Do you want a working coffee shop or not? The place is set up to be a work space but not fixing the wireless is a clear sign that you don’t care if people come to work there. And then, today.

I buy my coffee, I sit down, the wireless isn’t working. What else is new? I ask for it to be reset. I am then told that the boss has prohibited the employees from touching the wireless router to reset it. Wha wha what? Are you kidding? The employees, I venture to say, were noticeably annoyed. How could they not be? We were going to have at least three people working there for four hours this morning, giving them business (and tip) they otherwise wouldn’t have had. Oh well. There’s plenty of coffee shops to work at in this town. Most of them have reliable wireless.