Is it just ME?

Or are cafe hogs leaving us all short-changed?

HAVE we lost our grip on basic fairness between business and customers? Laws stop shops and cafes blatantly cheating us, but how about the other way round? And why (oh, the shame) are females the worst offenders?

It isn’t only shoplifting that afflicts retailers, but sneaky habits some women actually brag about — such as wearing a grand dress to a wedding then returning it for a refund.

Or there’s deliberate ‘de-shopping’, where you max out your plastic one weekend for the buzz, then the next, bring back all you bought, causing the shop a loss on packaging, accounting and time.

Now, a brave cafe owner in Surrey has called out the habit of women nursing one coffee for hours.

Last week, the owner of Henry’s Bistro complained that a party of 17 spent three hours clogging it up, spending just over a quid an hour each. Some commenters blustered about ‘customer care’, but I was pleased to see the worm has turned.

For this is, once again, a female vice.

Just watch those episodes of BBC sitcom Motherland where yummy mummies monopolise the Big Table all morning for committee meetings over the dregs of one small coffee, or ‘a tap water, please’ when proudly detoxing.

We’ve all seen it — sometimes when peering hopefully through the window in the hope of a free seat for a sandwich.

It isn’t fair, especially for a start-up cafe that has limited space.

There are unwritten social rules of consideration. Caffs need to pay their costs and staff. Big groups should remember this — and so should people like me, the lone laptop woman in the corner.

Yummy mummies monopolise the cafe’s big table all morning, eking out one small coffee