Why do grocery stores only keep one door working during late-night hours, and barricade the other(s) with shopping carts, cones and signs?
I’m sure there’s an obvious reason, but I just can’t think of it off the top of my head.
I’ve wondered that myself. I think it’s for security reasons. With only one door working, the staff are more able to watch who comes in and out. Just a thought.
It’s an attempt at crowd control, or more accurately, an attempt to funnel people in and out through one door to more easily keep an eye on them.
I’ve noticed that more often than not, the door closest to the drug / liquor departments is the one that’s blocked.
I would think that’s for security. You don’t want the bad guys coming in from two different sides to rob the store.
At my grocery store, they lock the side closer to the pharmacy and keep the door nearer the liquor open, which is probably wise.
It is easier to watch people comming and going through one door than two. At night you want to make sure you know who is in your store it helps cut down on shoplifting and armer robbery. Since you have a very small staff on at night one door is blocked off to make it safer for those inside
Especially when people steal so much liquor that it’s actually a good idea to put tops on the liquor bottles to set off alarms.
Every once in a great while, my three-and-a-half years at Albertsons supermarket lends itself to my being able to answer a General Question here at the SDMB.
Uncle Joe would be proud.
At my store, we locked the east doors at 10:00 PM to, as samarm and gotpasswords suggest, funnel all the customers into an easily visible corridor past the customer service booth where we could keep an eye on them.
My Albertsons was open 24 hours (I was fond of saying “open forever except Thanksgiving and Christmas”), but after 10:00, it was really just a skeleton crew. The company realized that, since they had to keep the lights on and the air conditioning running for the night stocking crew, they might as well run a couple of registers and sell some stuff to late night shoppers as well.
However, the managers, sackers, and auxiliary personnel had mostly gone home by this time, resulting in a drastic drop in the number of eyes capable of watching would-be criminals.
As to the barrier of shopping buggies, it was a simple: Texas law forbade our selling alcohol during certain times of the day - most notably late at night and early morning. By completely cutting off access to the beer-and-wine section by surrounding it with buggies, we reduced instances of both theft by hard-up alcoholics and embarrassing customer service episodes (“Whaddaya mean I gotta come back tomorrow if I wanna buy this Thunderbird?!?”).
When I used to work for a movie theater, our rear exits (behind the screens) would get flooded after heavy rains. We would block them off so people wouldnt walk into water in the dark. Of course, someone complained, and the fire marshall came in, threatening to fine us becauase it was illegal to block any public exit.
Wouldn’t this apply here too?