Peets Coffee & Tea. At seven, this place was a noisy hive of caffeine addicts, shoving their way towards the front of a line that reached the door. Just three hours later, the morning crowd has subsided. The whiny two year olds in their neon safety suits are no longer clogging the doorway. The lipstick laden high schoolers are no longer sitting sullenly across from one another, silently texting while their twin triple-shot nonfat caramel lattes cool.

my tribe

And now, though you never notice them actually plugging in, Brookline's local tribe of lonely laptop people (we'll be calling them LLPers here, or just 'lepers' for short) have quietly arrived en masse and taken up positions near all of the available outlets. Feeding. Having observed fellow LLPers hunched over their little consoles during the past few years, I can confidently distinguish the few serious breeds out there from the innocent email checker.

These are not just the casual browsers or occasional visitors. No, these are the ones who will, once they have spotted someone Sitting Near An Outlet, stare unabashedly in their direction until the poor bastard feels uncomfortable enough to leave. These are the ones baristas have to mop up under every night because they won't leave until the posted closing time. They are a type. Actually, there are several types. Lets start with the innocent and work our way down to the unforgivable.

The Graduate Student

All LLPers would like to be graduate students, and the few genuine articles out there know this. They are classy. They will be important soon. Maybe. Some even wear ties, as if they're showing up for a real job. They turn off their cell phone when they work. They take lunch breaks. They are doing important things that require serious thought, and deserve our respect for having purchased that four dollar cup of coffee while still $100,000 in debt.

The Musician/Artist

Not unlike the graduate student, the musician/artist types seem to be pursuing a real life outside of the coffee shop. They are quiet (though the cell phone stays on) and are always doing something interesting. You can tell they're doing something interesting because they have brought enough equipment in with them to open a small studio. Scanners, amps, digital tablets, coconuts headphones. Standard outlets won't do, these people think ahead and bring their own power strip.

The Friendlies

I have a soft spot in my heart for these guys. God knows where they found a laptop, but I'm glad they're around to keep things interesting. After ordering dangerous sounding caffeine combinations that aren't on the menu, they will find your spot and sit immediately behind it. They are not afraid to ask questions about what you're working on, and, on occasion, read uncomfortably long passages from your screen after doing so. ("Sooooo, writing about Peets eh? You work here?") The term LLP'er broadens for your typical friendly, as many of them don't actually have a laptop. They bring computers instead. There was a guy at my favorite coffee shop in Minneapolis who brought his 30" iMac each day, which he would set up near the bathroom.

The College Student

We're getting down to the bottom of the barrel here. The most common type, the college student has absolutely no real interest in getting anything done, so most of their time is spent updating their facebook status ( STILL studying 🙄 ! ) or conducting longwinded cellphone conversations about last night's sex debacle (or, more often, someone else's sex debacle) in breathless detail. The graduate student would rather they study elsewhere.

The Webbie

Here we find the rotten bottom. Meet me and mine. We fancy ourselves rogue entrepreneurs! Wanderers free from the confines of a suffocating office space! And you hate us for it. You see, the problem is that we need an office sometimes, and when a client calls, we will not only treat you like a cubicle divider, we will actively pretend that the coffee shop is Our Own. That's why we purchased those commando-style Skype headsets. They might look a little silly to an outsider, but be warned, we take them very seriously.

Can’t you see we’re WORKING HERE?