Mom told me back in the 70s getting a coffee or tea at a cafe in Paris was really expensive. The reason was you were paying for the seat, not the drink; people would sit there for hours reading, writing, or chatting. The money you spent was less for the food itself and more for the services the cafe provided you.

I recalled this about a month ago when I read in The New York Times steps a Flushing McDonald's was taking against a group of elderly Koreans. This group would arrive at about 5AM, order $1 fries and proceed to spend the whole day there. Eventually cops were called, but they just walk around the block and return almost immediately once the police have left for another $1 fries and sit until the next time they're removed. Quite a few people are upset about this simply because the police were involved, and I don't know whether McDonald's gave them a verbal warning before involving the law.

Still, I think these old people are in the wrong here. This isn't like Starbucks, which is trying to keep a Parisian atmosphere of people reading, studying, or browsing the internet as they sip their coffee. McDonald's is a fast food place: Get your shit, eat your shit, and get the fuck out. I think they'd be willing to bend the rules a bit if you stay an hour or so, but if you're there from five until sundown every day, you are impacting business. Even Starbucks would start raising eyebrows at the twelve-hour mark. There aren't free public spaces in Flushing like there are in Manhattan (or maybe there are; I haven't been there in a while), but you can't be rude and just sit and sit. You have to keep buying things or else you're an asshole. And yeah, if after I told them they need to pay for shit and they didn't, I'd call the cops. And ban them from coming back in. I don't care if they're old or not. If fact that's even worse because you had longer to learn proper etiquette.