Cape Coral, FL
in a Starbucks off Veterans Pkwy near a golf community.

I asked for my coffee to be served in a cup and it came in a paper cup. So I insisted, which defeats the entire environmental purpose of ordering a cup. The server was a mechanically beautiful young woman, thin as an idealized comic figure and just as inaccessible, to me anyway.

Some customers at the counter just complained about being treated like crap and walked out. I don’t know if they were talking about the service or about the non-responsive studio audience behind the laptop.

This is the 2nd day of the new year. I am trying to get some work into the Telfair project about visualizing the dynamics of Congressional legislation. It will be presented at this year’s PULSE

kaht Telecommuting

Cups are great.. Their wide mouths allow the coffee to breath and cool naturally so that by the time you take a sip, the coffee is a pleasant temperature and not the same temperature it was when it left the pot.

Cups also help save the environment. They don’t take up landfill space and when they are thrown away they degrade to sand.

kaht Telecommuting

The BEST List

Best place to meet for lunch November 2009:

SOHO South Cafe

Best place to work November 2009:

Starbucks on Montgomery

REVIEWS
Metro Coffee House and bubble tea
MLK BLVD — CLOSED summer 2009

Soho South Cafe
12 West Liberty St.

Nice, open space with full menu, art on display and other stuff. Space is a renovated garage. Excellent place for lunch meetings.

Cafe Mucha
202 Broughton St.

Good pastries and decent coffee. Relaxed atmosphere downtown. Good place for downtown meetings.

Sentient Bean
13 E. Park Ave.

The Bean is one of the jewels of downtown, with great pastries and vegetarian fare in a warm, eclectic atmosphere. This is a good place to plan a revolution or to tweak your divs. Often, the Bean will have film showings and performances at its stage so keep an eye on the calendar to attend or avoid — you will be charged or evicted from the main space if the event has a fee. The Bean was founded by ladies who valued the public space as a brewing pot for community and green living. Their coffee is fair trade and organic. The Bean sits at the edge of Forsyth Park, which is good to have if you need to pace or if you brought your dog along. The Bean closes at 10 PM and opens at 7:30 am (yeah right, like you’ll ever get up that early).

Tradewinds on Wilmington
107 Charlotte Dr, #F

Tradewinds is the heavyweight on iced drinks with a fully armed and operational ice cream bar. Just think about it: sugar,coffee, coffee, sugar, ya ya yah! You’ll be like that perverse cartoon weasel in no time, zipping around like your wireless card hunting a wi-fi connection. There’s one! And you get the password for it if you buy more sweet and caffeinated stuff. Nice place to hide and rule the world from the coveted tiki corner if you’re lucky.

Clary’s on Habersham and Clary’s on Abercorn

4330 Habersham St.

and

404 Abercorn St (next to big tower)

Clary’s has a full breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner menu and is the only place in town where you can order a cherry phosphate from a traditional soda fountain. The service is friendly and they are trying to encourage more telecommuters to hang around with wi-fi. It’s kindof intimidating and hard to work during their busy lunch hour and breakfast. But after lunch you have the place to yourself until around 5 or so.

Firefly
321 Habersham St.

Ahh the firefly. The name conjures an innocent childhood chasing bioluminescent insects and confining them in a jar. The atmosphere here is enchanting. It sits before Troop Square in the lovely downtown of our fair city. The main dining area is slightly below ground and there are also tables outside. This is our best place to meet for lunch. The menu and the atmosphere are great. You see people with their laptops during the lunch hour but you don’t see a lot of them sticking around. There is no wi-fi and the place gets busy on and off with tourists.

Christy’s Espresso on Eisenhower
400 Abercorn EXT # 904

No wi-fi but a good place to work if you’ve got Verizon Broadband. It’s right next to the Verizon store. Delicious treats and decent coffee. Mostly caters to office people around the area.

Savannah Bagel Cafe on Wilmington Island
444 Johnny Mercer Blvd

No wi-fi. Decent coffee and drinks and choice of bagels, sandwiches and pastries. Bagels made fresh every morning so if you like variety get there early. Art on display and for sale. Somewhat awkward for telecommuting but not bad to grab lunch and work an hour or two. Closes at 2 pm.

Carpe Vas (Abercorn and Liberty)
313 Abercorn St. (near Lafayette Square)

Built in a restored home in historic downtown. Classy atmosphere, limited selections but wi-fi if you ask for the PW. Don’t go upstairs the owners live there. Cozy place to work if you’re ok with having to feed the meters during the week or you have good parking somewhere. Tourists will walk in and out, though so be prepared to be talked at, about or with.

Franchise — these don’t need any bump but when you need to vanish into a franchise it’s better than nothing

Starbucks charges for WiFi through AT&T . If you have an AT&T mobile account it’s free for the mobile phones but not your laptop, those cheap bahstards.  Still ya gotta hand it to them, the atmosphere is usually pleasant or tolerable and there is a good variety of coffee and other stuff. Lucky for me I have a cellular Broadband card.

Starbucks on Montgomery and Abercorn

This is a fairly large sized facility that stays busy with many students from Armstrong U and South University as well as your telecommuters and business types. Scramble for that plug or bring a multi-plug connector because there are only 2 socket panels in this place (4 plugs). As always internet access is via AT&T wi fi hot spot arrangement.

Starbucks in Publix shopping center on North Abercorn

Starbucks in Barnes and Noble, Oglethorpe Mall

Starbucks in Oglethorpe Mall (yes there are 2 in that mall)

Starbucks at Kroger, Wilmington Island

Actually not bad. It’s not too far from Tybee and is open til 9PM. Because it’s part of Kroger it’s probably possible to stay in this space past 9PM. Will give that a try some day*. Good place to be anonymous. Noise is not too bad and enough activity going on to keep you from sleeping or picking your nose. The vibe is good and neutral. And if you get really hungry behold the 24/7  Kroger that surrounds you.

*Yes you can stay past the closing time…if you don’t mind working with the lights off (they are on a timer).

Starbucks at Victory and Skidaway

Housed in a restaurant building that had been turning over every 6 months since I’ve lived here, this Starbucks has stuck around and is a favorite for telecommuters, students and conspirators. Its easy location with close access to the Truman Parkway, the Daffin Park area, Home Depot, Target and Staples makes it an ideal meeting spot for pound the pavement business and organizer types. The service is decent and the scenery is great. Many of the tables have plugs directly beneath and this is a good place to work. Just make sure you’re paying your rent with constant refills and pastry purchases.

Huddle House on Hwy 80 near the bypass

Booths with places to plug in available. No WiFi. Coffee cheaper than starbucks and your usual fare of killer omelettes and other gut busting diner cuisine.

If you need to work longer hours into the night, though, this is not the place. They will rush you out the door once you finish a meal, even if the place is empty. Maybe this is company policy.

Eh.. the natives mean well. But it can be a drag to try to work here.

Public Spaces:
Forsyth Park
Savannah’s famous central park is a great place to work if you’ve got the battery charged up and you’ve got a broadband card. Perhaps we can convince the city to bless the space with a wi-fi cloud.

Tybee Pier
In the summer, NOT a great place to work because of the blaring music and temptation (for some of us) to visit the bar too early in the day or to be visited by visitors who have visited the bar too early in the day. Hint, on Tybee, it’s never too early in the day. But there are peaceful times on the pier in the spring and fall. Plugs near the railings. When you’re lucky you have a nice office overlooking the waterfront.

kaht Savannah, Telecommuting

One of the obvious challenges of fulltime telecommuting is developing one’s self-discipine. There are so many great things at home: 500 channels, a refrigerator that needs constant watching and attention, a wonderful, comfortable bed, couch or whatever. In some cases there are also outside temptations — a great day for a walk or a long bike ride or photo expedition or kayak expedition. Where is there room for the work that pays for all this?

Answer: that room can be found in your outside offices. Of course, there are times when you need all the equipment and conveniences of your home office. But many times, it pays to work outside. Outside in something like a cafe setting, there are distractions — but they are often the kind of distractions that can make an introvert turn inside instead of being bothered — things like people staring, standing in line or talking to each other. In today’s cafes, which are now typical work environments, one can feel right at home ignoring everybody, yet at the same time be able to make an occasional nod or conversation in a much more human way than in a chat room.

At home, your generous refrigerator and kitchen will keep giving until it is empty of all gifts. Then a magic troll in the form of yourself or your respective caregiver replenishes the gifts and all is good again.

At a cafe, you’re looking at $6 for a frappe and a piece of cake. You probably will not eat as much.

At home, you can go around in your underwear, have absolutely no structure to your day and even sleep for most of the time.

Then you realize that being your own boss means you can’t fire your own (often only) employee. You can curse your employee all you want, even put a pistol to his/her head and refuse to do anything else until some specific thing is done. But that won’t get your employee to work. Why? Because you chose this lifestyle to get away from that. And the employee side of you will shut down.

BEING YOUR OWN BOSS ALSO MEANS BEING YOUR OWN EMPLOYEE.  ”Hello there, I would like for you to pay me full time to work one hour per day for you”. Would you hire this employee? Probably not– unless the employee knows how to make a zillion dollars an hour for the company. But if you become this employee and you are your own boss, you will not be able to fire yourself for making nothing of each hour of the day.

Many of us are creatures of accountability. Utter embarrasment at indigency and bad hygiene might be the only thing that can get your employee to finally wise up and work for you. Once you’ve hit that bottom and you look your boss and your employee  in the face AND SEE THE SAME FACE, then you can start making progress.

Take your employee out. Your employee is not likely to sit around watching porn, sleeping or picking his/her nose while in public. He/she might waste time writing on a blog or other things like that. But eventually, you will justify the extra effort to get it together and get out. Why? Because the most important person in the world is counting on you.

kaht Telecommuting