Page 60 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

Moving between places
they would not be able to conduct their work: “There wasn't a proper internet connection, so I had to rethink the whole day and where to work." (Vanessa, event planner, #9)
We noticed during the interviews and our observations that the physical environments revealed similarities across the world (described in the section on workplaces). One chain of co-working spaces was even explicitly mentioned by two of our respondents because they had the exact same interior and functional places across their locations worldwide. Being able to recognize types of places created familiarity with the specific place. Moreover, familiarity, in turn, enables workers to set up more quickly and start working, as Matt summarized:
"You get more comfortable and know how stuff works. You don't have to worry about those things anymore [...] but if it's unknown that takes some of your mental space." (Matt, AB tester, #8)
Besides the physical features, there were also social elements within the places that afforded the nomadic workers to create temporary work environments: functional dedication, the presence of others, and norms in the place. Most importantly, the norms in a place influenced whether the nomadic workers felt legitimate to set up their temporary work environments in a place. The norms could be derived from the function of the place (e.g., a café) and the associated behavioral scripts:
"Restaurant-style places where you can’t sit, you have to buy food and eat it and leave [...] You don’t want to have a waitress asking you every five minutes if you want something else. Like, come on, leave me alone.” (Jacky, web designer, #4)
“I prefer cafés because if you go to a restaurant, it can usually be a little louder, and they don't really like you sitting there for hours at a time. Cafés are a little more tolerant, so I would say co-working spaces first and then cafés.” (Nero, workation organizer, #12)
As the quotes illustrate, the function and associated behavioral 58