Back in the days when I had a car and worked graveyard shift at Jack in the Box, my paycheck would hit my bank account at exactly 1:42 AM on Friday morning. I’d then drive to Walmart to do my shopping. The only cashier on duty at that hour was a flamboyantly gay young man with platinum blonde hair who wore makeup and would always try to flirt with me when I went through his line. “HELLO, Mr. Jack in the Box man!”, he would say to me.
Now that I work in a grocery store and I buy what I need for the day on my way out the door instead of doing all my shopping for the next week or two all at once, I kinda miss those days.
I’d be happy if some of the restaurants around here just returned to their normal hours of closing at 11pm or midnight. Some of them are closing at 8pm now, even on Fridays and Saturdays. It’s ridiculous.
One thing that really irritates me is that stocking the grocery shelves is no longer done overnight, so the aisles are partially blocked throughout the day. I hate that it’s a hassle to get to the yogurt because there’s a line of dollies full of dairy products in the way. I have to maneuver myself around them (sans cart) find what I want, and carry it back to my cart, which I had to leave in the middle of the aisle behind the dollies.
Pain in the patoot!! Shopping or dining in the middle of the night isn’t an issue for me (geezer supper time is 4:30, right?) But even during the work day when I don’t have to deal with crowds at Food Lion, I’m still running an obstacle course.
I used to prefer to do my shopping at night. Now that I can just have Walmart or whoever deliver my groceries for no cost outside of a tip for the driver (300% worth it for saving me the time I would need to spend shopping), I no longer have any need for avoiding the crowds by shopping late…
Speaking in generalities, restaurants are in a weird transitional state. Driven by the weird transitions in their customer’s lives.
Lotta folks don’t go out much or at all. Instead they doordash or uber eats or … from a restaurant. These places need a kitchen & cooks, not a dining room & waitstaff.
And they do that early in the evening after or during streaming something on their own schedule.
The dinner or drinks + apps at 10pm after a movie or live show starting at 8pm is a dying model.
The decline of drinking culture also gets people home early.
Separate idea:
There are sorta 2 kinds of restaurants. Those that exist to feed the people on odd schedules and those who are mostly for entertainment or cooking avoidance.
As fewer retail & restaurants are open long hours, the number of people needing feeding at odd hours drops. A lot. And as the 3rd shift office workers become WFH.
I spent a career working odd hours. @pkbites who started this interesting side issue still works odd hours. We were always a minority compared to the legions of ~8-5 M-F folks. But I think we’re a rapidly shrinking & forgotten minority. Which sucks when its 10pm or 1am & you want a meal.
Yeah, Wal-Mart around here has tons of competition- Target, Kroger, Aldi, Tom Thumb (Safeway), Lowe’s, Home Depot, Calloway’s (garden store), Dick’s (sporting goods), Best Buy (Electronics), and so forth.
Yet they’re not open 24/7 any longer. I suspect that someone actually did the math at a corporate level and realized it wasn’t lucrative enough for all the other BS that it entails.