Beyond Selidor

there's something really irritating to me about seeing these places presented as just a cool spot to hang out with your friends, without any awful behaviour from customers, or irreconcilable interpersonal conflicts between coworkers, or really any need to do any work at all. It's as if the authors think of bakeries, coffeeshops, indie bookshops, florists, libraries etc as these kinds of fantasy setting with no conflict, where every colleague is automatically part of a close-knit found family, and work is incidental.

Yes, this! I worked customer service at Target in the US, and middle class women were always telling me that Target was their happy place, that I must've been so happy to work somewhere that they were so happy to grab a Starbucks and abuse the staff while ransacking the $1 section and yelling at cashiers while extreme couponing. It really is telling which people find these spaces 'cosy' and conflict-free.