Fridays I work from home, which lately means not working from home at all. I've started picking a mall and finding a coffee shop in it.
You can tell within about a minute whether they want you there.
Some places are built for it. Sockets at the tables rather than one behind a plant. A QR code on the table, or a barista who just tells you the password. Enough space between chairs that opening a laptop isn't an act of aggression. Somebody thought about the person who is going to be there for two hours, and priced that in.
Others have thought about it just as hard and reached the opposite answer. No free wifi. No sockets anywhere you'd want to sit. Chairs that are pleasant for twenty minutes and a penance at ninety.
I used to read the second group as an oversight. It isn't. It's a decision, and a perfectly good one. A table that turns over four times in a morning is worth more than a table with me on it, one americano deep, on their electricity.
What I find odd is how rarely anyone says which they are. Both types look identical from the door. You commit, you sit, you open the laptop, and only then do you find out whether you're a customer or a problem.
Every business decides who it's for. Most of them just don't tell you at the entrance.