Private conversations in public places
August 3, 2007 4:41 am miscellaneousI am one of the many who sometimes takes advantage of Wi-Fi in coffee shops and other public spaces. It can be a less distracting place to think and work than the office. When I really need to concentrate on something, I put on noise canceling headphones. Rarely, however, am I doing anything requiring that intensity. Over time I have overheard conversations that in the past would probably not have occurred in these public places. Why, I wonder do, people feel comfortable having these conversations in the rather close quarters of a coffee shop? Is it because through their experience in using social networking Web sites they have developed a loose notion of privacy? Is it because this space seems more like a workplace than a third place?
Whatever the reason, I have overhead a personal financial advisor relentlessly interview a prospective client about personal details such as debt, income, and savings that few of us divulge to family or co-workers. I have overheard job performance appraisal discussions. In one of these a trio of employees from a company conducted a review of a contractor. After opening with small talk over coffee and bagels, the review abruptly shifted to criticism which put the contractor on the defensive.
These discussions differ from the intimacies a couple may exchange in public, whether those be professions of love or a marital spat. They differ from the conversation of friends meeting for lunch or to fete a friend on her birthday. Those sorts of conversations have taken place in public probably since humans developed speech. Business conversations have been conducted in public view for a long time, as well, but generally in more discreet venues than crowded coffee shops and not in others' earshot. Those headphones do more than help me concentrate. Sometimes they create a boundary between the public and private when the latter ought not be public. I really didn't want to listen to a tag team pick to pieces that visibly shaken contractor's work any more than he probably wanted anyone to hear it.
