A bookseller at our local B&N (about to close because the landlord tripled the rent on them--a CVS pharmacy is going to take over the space) told us that they had to get rid of the cushy chairs because homeless people would take them all day and piss their pants while sitting there.
I could see that being a problem in an urban core. The first B&Ns I visited were in the late 1970s, in Boston (there were two or three of them I think, I visited a couple if memory serves), and they were more like the old B&N remainder / new catalog, not fancy, just tables (some were crappy ones) piled with books and standup pricetags. No chairs that I remember.