I respect your opinions and all, different strokes for different folks. But how do you justify a coffee shop being private? They're anything but. Anybody can walk in.
In an oddly unique way, busy, busy places are very private. As the volume of humanity in any given area rises, the desire (and general acceptance) of interacting with a random person beside you goes down, as much to protect your own space as it is your own presupposition that any given stranger is also trying to protect
his or her space, and your unwillingness to intrude for fear of them lashing out or responding in a way you're not mentally equipped to respond to yourself. Sometimes, even issuing a brief "hi" is expected to bring a small exchange of pleasantries or gestures
you simply don't want to be bothered with. As people become more conscious of their loss of close personal space they begin - voluntarily or involuntarily - to "put up walls" to protect what little space they perceive they have left, fighting viscously to keep it safe from intrusion. The funny thing is that this all happens subconsciously, based on our (perhaps erroneous) mammalian postulations that it's a Dog Eat Dog world and we have to maintain an upper hand 'in the wild' lest that ol' notion of 'fight or flight' breaks out.
Ergo, very densely populated places are more likely to result in fewer necessities for lily-gilding our speech with those personal touches that can potentially make communication so fun. Often, merely avoiding eye contact or even more subtle Do Not Disturb body language is all that is required to keep unwanted, pesky strangers at bay. Conversely, in low population areas you generally have more friendly, more talkative strangers (it's the whole "small town" ideal, after all).
In the case at hand, the same effect is in force: We visit a coffee shop and receive service congruent to the nature of the establishment: In a very public place like Starbucks
we walk up to the Barista,
we place the order using a rehearsed, utilitarian phrase, and
we decide to leave.
* Were we stopping at a small town diner for coffee, we take a private booth, the waitress often includes less impersonal chatter or even pseudo-affectionate addresses ("Hon'" or "Dear" come to mind), and it's almost expected to engage in conversation - however briefly or trite it might seem. As our choice of establishment becomes more full of people or more public, our desire to interact in a friendly, down-to-earth manner decreases. And this is why even busy, popular restaurants offer dark, private seating: To provide the haven and comfort of privacy in a sea of people - regardless of the size of the urban setting of the restaurant.
Therefore, what you perceive as a lack of privacy is actually your own belief that the general public is focusing more on you as an individual and less as simply a member of the faceless public one must endure while enjoying the small tediums of daily life - of ordering a coffee.
Did you want to talk about human nature or were you just making chit chat?
tldr:
The more people you have around the less likely you are to experience uninvited interaction.
*Starbucks prides itself on the friendliness of it's staff. We accept this - and even praise it - so long as it does not infringe on our perceived privacy. Were the staff to crank up the friendliness just a little to the borderline of 'gregarious' or 'outgoing', more than a few customers would be rubbed the wrong way and what was formerly simply "friendliness" and "professionalism" is now irritation and for some even irrational inner vehemence. And you thought you just went to a coffee shop and ordered a latte. : )
mscriv said:
What I did reflect on was the seemingly strange correlation between Starbucks and Apple gear.
The human mind is wired to match patterns and make assumptions based on previous experiences and observations - in so many cases, our minds take a sample of a few and form a general theory or rule and apply that to the whole thing.
It's very hard not to do it when it comes to people, but general patterns still manifest themselves in so many cases. The problem being, matching the pattern of "4 Apple laptops in a Starbucks" is significantly less politically incorrect (and dangerous or even outright wrong) than matching "4 black/latino/
x men rob a convenience store." The inherent problem with this inborn nature of pattern matching is that while it may work a surprisingly large amount of the time when it comes to people, humans are by nature wild cards - and unlike scientific proofs, we have the ability to change ourselves. Lucky sods that we are.
