More and more people work remotely and it is often convenient for them to do their work from a coffee shop. But they sometimes look down on it because they don't want someone to sit with them for half a day with two coffees. Alexander Abu Samra is trying to solve that problem
Alexander Abu Samra, our man whose grandfather is from Sudan, comes in while a rooster crows in the background. And a Guatemalan rooster, in the village of San Marcos la Laguna.
Aleksandar (36) completed the ETF in Belgrade, was in Berlin, programmed, completed a master's degree in urban planning in Abu Dhabi, lived as a digital nomad everywhere, mostly in Singapore, and he went to Guatemala because San Francisco was tense for him.
Aleksandar works "remotely". He can open a laptop anywhere. But, he does not like to be in the apartment or room he rents.
"If I work from home in a new city - I haven't even seen that city. Likewise, even if I work from a shared office. I like going to cafes. I have food, coffee. Maybe I'll meet someone," Abu Samra told our newsletter Medjuvreme.
Among all the things he does, Aleksandar started a website with his friends laptop-friendly where people map and rate coffee shops according to the conditions for working on a laptop.
Cafes vs. laptops
More and more people work remotely - Belgrade is full of them! – but more and more cafes are looking down on it. They won't have someone sitting for half the day with one or two coffees.
Even when coffee costs 500 dinars each, as in the largest Belgrade chain Coffedream. "We are a cafeteria, a place where different types of coffee are sold and consumed, not an office, where you will sit for eight hours a day and complete your business obligations," they say to Medjuvreme.
They haven't completely banned laptops, but you have to ask the waiter if and where they're allowed. They say that it happened that people with laptops occupied a larger table, so there was no room for other customers.
There are cafes that have banished books because they won't be visited by students, weak consumers. "You have reading rooms at the faculties," it says in a cafe near the Wolf Monument.
That can be uncomfortable. "Some cafes do it because of value - so that people can hang out. Some think it's an attack on business, someone will sit for five hours with coffee," says Aleksandar.
"I'm trying to understand them, but it's annoying when someone won't let you have a laptop. That's how we came up with the idea of marking coffee shops. I won't even go if they don't want a laptop. Why don't they put a sticker so that it's known right away?"
Like on Google
Abu Samra is an enterprising man, but the laptopfriendly project failed to turn into a business. He didn't shut it down because people from all over the world came in and rated the cafes.
As on Google, the object receives a rating. It can be filtered by whether it has internet, steak-doses, whether it allows longer stays, whether it accepts cards and pets. Hundreds of cities in the world have been mapped.
There are cafes that advertise themselves as "workplaces", they are often a bit more expensive. And there are a lot of shared offices, the so-called coworking space - you pay a daily "ticket" or a monthly one, and you can work from there, next to other people.
"The need to work from public places will only increase. It requires a different way of thinking about the space. Offices are not the answer. Cafes, whatever. Even those that have adapted - for example, if you leave your laptop to go to the toilet, maybe someone steals it," says Aleksandar.
Fighting loneliness
His dream is a new kind of space that is neither a cafe nor an office nor a library.
"I call that new hub. That you feel at ease, work, listen to lectures, drink coffee, eat... when you say 'hi' to someone next to you, that you are not a weirdo, but that the environment predicts it."
Staying in the apartment is not an option. It is also about mental health. "There are more and more people in cities lonely, and especially such remote workers."
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