Went to a diner last month that had a sign saying no laptops or phones at the counter, and it was the quietest hour I've had in years. Little places like that still exist if you look for them, they just don't advertise it much. Might be worth checking smaller spots instead of chains since they actually want people to talk to each other.

Cutting at one inch depth only works if the boards are thick enough and the nails are in the right spot. Half the pallets I've pulled apart have nails buried deep in the slats or staples that sit lower than that, so your blade hits metal anyway and now you've wrecked a good saw blade on top of it. And calling all pallet wood "oak" is a stretch, a lot of the ones I see are soft junk pine that dents if you look at it wrong. A bench top is the one place you can't afford soft wood, because every time you hammer on something you're carving dents into it. Plus you have no idea what was on those pallets. Some of them get sprayed with bug poison or sit in chemical plants for years, and dragging that stuff into your shop is a bad trade for saving a few bucks. Just buy a couple of 2x10s at the lumber yard and be done with it.