You can't walk into a coffeehouse anymore without seeing laptops open on tabletops. Tables near an electrical outlet are especially coveted. I like working in a coffeehouse sometimes myself. It gets me out of the house — I'm a freelance writer — and away from the disturbances of home (the dog, the telephone, the refrigerator, the piles of laundry). It also lets me see fellow human beings, which is nice if you're not a hermit by nature.

Now, listen up, all you people who work at the coffeehouse. There are polite ways and rude ways to operate. Here are some guidelines, and most of them are variations on things that all of us should have picked up in preschool:

•Be willing to share your table if it's big and you're alone.

•If you ask to share a table and the person already there agrees, do not start talking on your cell phone after you sit down.

•Cell phone users, you may have noticed, are often guilty of speaking as though everyone in the room wants to hear what they have to say. When, in fact, what people around them would really prefer to do is stuff a sock down their throats. Don't let it come to that. If you're at a table and need to talk on the cell phone — unless the call is for just a few seconds and your voice is very quiet — get up and leave.

•One more thing about cell phones: The reason they're bad in a public place is that people don't modulate their tone of voice to fit the physical situation. You lose awareness of the human beings around you and become TOO LOUD. It's rude. It's disruptive. Please stop doing it!

• OK, just one more thing about cell phones (can you tell this is a pet peeve of mine?): I think it's really fine to ask someone who's sitting next to you, talking really loudly on the cell phone, to stop doing it. I had a woman standing about six feet away from me on a patio at Starbucks once. I was reading, and she was talking with someone about makeup products — how to sell them, what she had in stock, how certain products felt and smelled and looked. This went on for about 20 minutes, and although I am by nature a peaceful person, I wanted to throttle her. I decided after that that it's perfectly acceptable to politely interrupt the conversation. "Excuse me," you can say. "I'm sure you don't realize it, but I can hear every word you're saying, and I'm finding it very disruptive. Would you mind having your conversation someplace where it won't disturb anybody?"

•One final thing about cell … just kidding! But seriously, if you walk in to a coffeehouse and someone is sitting at a table with an outlet but not using the outlet, and you want the outlet — get over it. It's not OK to shoot glances at the person as if to suggest, "I have important work and you're using my outlet." It's really not your outlet, after all. No one is obligated to give up their table to you (unless, say, you're pregnant, or old enough to have fought in World War I). People can sit down at any table and read a book with their coffee if they want. Or stare into space.

•If you've been at a table for more than several hours, and it's really crowded in the coffeehouse, it would be generous and considerate to leave. Not everyone agrees with this, but to me, people start to look like electricity and Wi-Fi hoggers after a while.

•If you're having a meeting — or really, even if you're just having any conversation at all — try to notice whether you're being too loud. (This is perhaps a corollary to the cell-phone issue.) Some people have amazingly loud voices, and they seem unaware of it. If you want to speak in a public place, your voice should not be audible in neighboring states. It should blend in to the buzz. Loud people who can change their tone to make it more quiet get extra etiquette points from me, because it seems like a non-existent skill for most of them.

The general rule is consideration for others. That's what politeness is — being aware of others around you and caring about how your actions affect them. This is an ancient practice, but it will never be outdated. It will make you a better person, and as an added benefit, no one will have any desire to stuff a sock down your throat.

Pamela Tanton lives and writes in Baltimore. Her e-mail is pamelatanton@comcast.net.