What’s it like working from the pub? Well, the beer numbs your cost-of-living anxiety

theguardian.com:

“I guess you can just sit wherever, really,” the woman says, seeming a little nonplussed as she gestures at the dozens of empty tables. I booked a slot at this London pub on its “work from the pub” scheme, but it seems I needn’t have bothered with the planning. I am the only customer in here. Which makes sense – because this is a pub, and it’s 11am on a Tuesday.

Trouble is brewing for pubs. Earlier this year there were 7,000 fewer of them in England and Wales than a decade ago. Pubs were bruised by the pandemic, and now, like all hospitality venues, they are staring down the barrel of the cost of living crisis, which will mean vastly increased energy bills and customers with less beer money in their pockets. More than 70% of pubs do not expect to survive the winter, according to one survey.

So, they need to get us through their doors any way they can. One of these ways is by encouraging people like me, who work from home, to work at the pub instead. Remote-working deals, which Fuller’s and Young’s pubs up and down the country are offering, are a formalised version of what many people without an office have had to do between meetings, or when their boiler is broken: set up shop in their local to hammer out some emails. For £15 at this particular pub – prices vary elsewhere – you get a desk (read: classically wonky, tacky-to-the-touch pub table), a plug socket, unlimited tea or coffee and something for lunch.

That I had most of the pub to myself may have had something to do with the fact that – despite what the website said – the scheme hadn’t officially started yet, and the staff hadn’t been informed about it. “See, sometimes [they] just do things and don’t tell us about it,” one worker said, rolling their eyes. They kindly