What the hell is up with this? I was bored last weekend, so I decided to visit my local hobby shop and buy a model to build or something. I drive up, and discover that the place is fucking CLOSED on the weekends. Not only that, their hours during the week are 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
What kind of a sick joke is this? I can’t believe this place stays in business - they can’t be making very much money, since the only people who have time to shop there are the unemployed. It’s a goddamned hobby shop - I don’t about you, but I only have time for my hobbies on the weekend.
If the owner wants to take two days off, why doesn’t he pick Tuesday and Wednesday? Or at least open at 2:00 PM and stay open until ten.
And while this is a particularly egregious example, it’s by no means the only one. Auto mechanics are often closed on weekends, meaning I have to take time off work to bring my car in for service. Again, why not be closed on Tuesday and Wednesday?
And don’t even get me started about banks.
I understand that, for businesses that cater mostly to other businesses, closing on the weekend makes sense. But if you sell or deal mostly with individuals, you’re just making it inconvenient for your customers.
Over decades of dealing with them I have concluded that the majority* of the owners of small business catering to consumers are morons, plain and simple. Salt of the earth and all, but only vaguely aware of how to run a business, which is why so many go broke in the first few years.
Note the qualifiers. They are there so you, the SDMB small business owner, realize you are not one of the morons I am talking about. You are hard-working, have a business plan you are following, and were experienced in the industry so you started your business aware of the potential pitfalls.
I used to work in a toy store, hours M-Sat 10-6, Sun 11-5. It used to be dead, dead, dead M-F 10-2, and land-office business M-F 5-6. I often thought (and said) that they’d make more money staying open from 4-8 pm during the week, since they’d have more sales but fewer employee hours. They did not want to offend the few (but wealthy) traditional housewife mothers and grandmothers who shopped in the quiet morning hours, and they didn’t want to exhaust themselves with twelve-hour days, so they stuck with tradition. Fair play to them, their thought was, “We’re making enough money, we want to spend time with our families instead.”
On a related note, I came back from overseas to find a dead phone. This was Friday night, but AT&T’s repair technicians only work Monday through Friday. More to the point, their repair-line OPERATORS only work business hours, Monday through Friday. Because AT&T is not a big enough company to employ a second shift. (On Monday, it took them exactly three seconds to fix. The fact that they had already done the same thing to four of my neighbors, and that I had reported the problem via email weeks before, is a separate pitting.)
The ones that are closed on weekends are usually in one of two categories: those that quickly go out of business (as dropzone noted) or those that are owned as a hobby or whatever by people who don’t really need the money.
Then we have those like a certain chicken fast food restaurant whose name I refuse to mention, who will, if you visit their nauseating website, be gald to piously tell you their reasoning for not being open Sunday. :rolleyes:
[quote]
Then we have those like a certain chicken fast food restaurant whose name I refuse to mention. . .[/quot]
Hint: It rhymes with “Brik-Fil-A” and it sells chicken.
Franklin Covey stores (the guys who sell motivational crappola and actually pretty good day planners) are also closed on Sundays for faith-based reasons.
I’ve been thinking about this very subject recently myself. Despite my solemn vow to never work retail again, I’ve often entertained thoughts about What I Would Do as a small business owner.
Work sales tax into displayed prices so people know, immediately, to the penny, how much they’ll be charged at the register. All prices would also be rounded to the nearest 50 cents.
Refuse to give in to self-absorbed, whiny, poor customers.
Maintain full 8-hour days on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with half days on Thursday and Monday, and be closed Tuesday and Wednesday. This way I would still earn significant revenue, and my off-days will be in the middle of the week, which means when I want to go shopping, the number of people out in public will be fewer than on the weekends and those stores that have the dumb no-weekends policies will be open.
I haven’t even decided what I’d sell yet, but I bet I’d make a killing…
It’s pretty bad, them being closed on weekends. When are retail and service workers supposed to shop? They have to work during the week! They can only shop during the weekends, when they are off!
I was painting my daughter’s room, when I realized I needed a few more supplies. I didn’t really want to drive the few miles to Home D, but I remembered that there was a small mom-n-pop hardware shop just a few blocks away.
Unfortunately, it seems they think that no one does any home improvement projects on a Saturday afternoon. :rolleyes:
We live somewhat near San Francisco, which city is jam-packed with delightful little bistros and trattorias. I’m forever reading reviews of wonderful new cafes that I’d like to try. Unfortunately, dining in SF on a Saturday night is virtually impossible for an out-of-towner, as there is simply no parking to be had at that time. No problem, one might say - just go for Saturday lunch. However, though they’re open for lunch during the week, about 99.99% of these charming places are not open for lunch on Saturdays. Most of the places open at that time are just tourist joints or sandwich and fast food chains. It’s as frustrating as hell for a foodie!
Two words: public transportation. It’s not just for the lower classes any more.
Oh, wait. Public transportation on Saturday night just possibly might not work out too well either. Passenger volume is low, therefore frequency of buses/trains is also low. Oh well, now back to your regularly scheduled pitting.
Maybe the business is a front for the MIT crime-syndicate? Or maybe the store does its bulk of business with students or by mail-order?
But I am with you on this issue and can add a few of my own: hair cutting places and libraries. When I have asked the same question, I have heard a couple of possible reasons though. Store owners need day hours for their interactions with other businesses. Deliveries, sales calls, accountants, lawyers, etc. will all occur during weekdays, although it seems like you could consolidate it to two or three weekdays. The other reason that I hear is that store owners also have a fair amount of maintenance and bookkeeping to do. Although it seems like you may as well do this at night when there is a chance a customer might show up instead of some broke kid trying to shoplift after school.
I have often wondered why more small businesses don’t “flip” their store hours and give up stable, but small day business for the exciting and lucrative night-time business.
I did a thread on this not long ago, wondering how the economy survived when most businesses were only open M-5 9-5 (or 8-4), and most people work the same hours.
Supermarkets here are open until 9pm of an evening, which is a step in the right direction, though…
It is odd how easy it is to do one’s retail shopping during the day.
I usually stick with thrift stores, but decided to go to JC Penney’s one morning so the twins could pick out soft throws (perfect toddler blanket size) in hopes of getting them to sleep in their own beds. Place was absolutely crawling with employees! I had no idea that many people even worked there.
It was great for me on that occasion b/c I REALLY needed their help, but I felt cheated thinking about all time I’ve spent waiting in lines, or trying to find a salesclerk.
I worked for years in a restaurant that was only open Monday through Friday from 10:30 to 3. At first I wondered why they would do that, only to find out that as soon as work ended (most were state workers, the restaurant being within sight of the Pennsylvania Capitol building) the city was so empty that you could walk for blocks and not run into a single person.
How, then, does it benefit the owner to keep the place open and incur potential labor and energy costs for no appreciable benefit? I’m willing to bet that a lot of these businesses have tried to stay open later and looked failure right in the eye before they amended their hours to the more profitable times.
Well, that can’t be right. I’m sure I put out a directive to all the public transportation agencies last year that they were to, with all possible speed, initiate 24/7 service on all routes, to run at six-minute intervals, to cover the event of my being in town, and wanting to go somewhere.
I was wondering how compliance was going, because I hadn’t noticed the OCTA suddenly becoming more convenient.
Wait a minute. :o I left it in my “drafts” folder. My bad.
Oh, well. I got a car this year, so the hell with it.
Sure , in some locations it doesn’t make sense for businesses to be open late. I’ve spent plenty of time working in areas that were deserted after 5pm, when all of the government workers went home becasue there was no nearby residential section… But it’s not just businesses in those areas that close early. I live in a residential neighborhood. No large office buildings or government agencies. People who work in the neighborhood work in the retail stores, doctor’s offices, banks, etc. “Shop Jamaica Avenue (the shopping street)” is a constant theme at street fairs etc. and the local businesses are not happy when a Home Depot or Target opens up nearby. But these local businesses are still operating on the " women can do the shopping during the day" model. They open at 10, close at 6, sometimes open a half day Sat. and close on Sunday. By the time I leave work, go to the doctor and want my prescription filled, the local mom-and-pop drugstores were closed. That’s why I started going to RiteAid. I guess a lot of other people did too, because we used to have about 10 independent drugstores, and now there’s only one left.
You guys think that’s weird. I live in a 24 hour state. Everything is open 24 hours here. Whenever I encounter something that closes even for a few hours I get confused. Our McDonalds stays open 24 hours.
I just don’t get it, but then again, I suppose having a heavy tweaker and stoner population helps with the profitability. People don’t sleep a lot here.
This, I understand. On the (increasingly rare) nights I’ve assisted a bartender in closing an establishment, I need Taco Bell. “Open 'til 2 a.m.”? Fat lot of good that does me if the bar doesn’t close until then.
Heh, I remember when my state had blue laws. Supermarkets weren’t allowed to open until 9AM on Sundays and had to close by 6PM. The larger retail stores weren’t allowed to open until noontime. Mom-and-pop stores? Forget it. That’s when everybody crossed the border into the neighboring state on Sundays. The blue laws were revised.
By law you still can’t buy any liquor, beer, or wine on Sundays here, not even in the few supermarkets that carry them.
Speaking from the retail side, it’s a double-edged sword. I’ve been working most Sundays now for…how many years? It’d be nice not to have a 6-day work week. OTOH, I get paid time and a half, so I really shouldn’t complain.
