New York's Bitter Starbucks Beak-Up

Jonathan Knee, in what has to be the best subtitle in history, says "It started when they took away the comfortable chairs." Things only got worse:

Some city Starbucks stores began discouraging laptop users from lingering during peak hours.* Reuters broke the story last year that many New York City stores have begun to block electric outlets to discourage laptop users altogether. Last winter, under the headline, “Just a ‘wee’ change,” the New York Post reported that a few city Starbucks locations had closed their restrooms to the public.

(The closures occurred without corporate permission and were quickly reversed.)* Those discounted refills (actually free if you have a Starbucks Rewards card) now are the subject of increasingly frequent grilling at the counter by those once highly solicitous baristas: Did you really consume that beverage in the store? And, as message boards with names like www.ihatestarbucks.com attest, the interrogation sometimes continues as to whether the consumption actually took place over the last hour.