Café Paquebot Mont-Royal — Restaurant in Montreal

Standard 3rd wave coffee shop with a ridiculous policy about laptops. On an empty Sunday evening, I was told to sit in the corner because I had my laptop out, and laptops are "unsightly" and "antisocial". The corner was essentially a window sill, with enough space for maybe two people, but meant for four.

I was reading a digitized textbook, so I pulled out the paperback version of the textbook and therefore I was allowed to keep sitting there. Immediately after, an argument formed between a young and an old woman about the policy. The young woman began doing photography work on her laptop just after buying her coffee, and was told the same thing as me. The older woman rudely argued in favor of the rule until the young woman angrily left. Then, the older woman continued to chat amicably with the baristas.

The baristas seem to devote themselves to this policy without question.

A dozen atomized individuals staring aimlessly at their phones is perfectly fine, but productive behavior on a laptop is not. It's clear that it comes from a place of fear, masqueraded by a petty attempt to appear hip. There are ways to achieve a thriving, human environment. This is not. Look at Myriad, as a...

TLDR; Go to the old port location if you want good service and people who care about their customers. Coffee is still good, I guess.. The barista barely spoke french, which isn't a problem for us clearly, and spoke very quietly. She misunderstood my boyfriend's order when he asked for a cup of WHIPPED CREAM for his DOG since it's her birthday. The barista gave us a cup of ground espresso in a cup... I then confronted and asked her why she gave us this. This is when we noticed her french is not so great so we switched to English. The problem is, she then took our bag of fresh coffee beans (which was the last one of that variety), and ground it without us asking for it to be ground????? Why would you buy FRESH COFFEE BEANS if you're going to grind it and ruin all it's freshness.... PS. I've worked in customer service myself and this is NOT how you should treat customers. If you have trouble understanding someone, ASK FOR CLARIFICATIONS! Or ask one of your co-workers to handle the...

This coffee shop has downgraded dramatically. I use to come here when it was Cafe Plume and it was much better in every way.

The menu is not as good. In my case, they removed the vegepate they had (which was delicious and sweet) for a crappy dry vegewrap with carrots.

The location also has a crappy rules in place to make it so that you cannot work on your laptop, even for short periods of time (30 minutes). If you are having problems with customers squatting on their laptop, then charge for time like other coffee shops are doing (e.g: anticafe). As a customer, i actually spend quite a lot over time but i understand not everyone is like that. I would still suggest you revisit your business model instead of completely barring it as it is a turn off for me and for a lot of other people. Makes me never want to step in as there is a chance i might get kicked out and no way around it. At least a time limit would be...