# How long should a retail store have to remain open after its official closing time?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-should-a-retail-store-have-to-remain-open-after-its-official-closing-time/690033
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [June 4, 2014, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-should-a-retail-store-have-to-remain-open-after-its-official-closing-time/690033 "2014-06-04T15:07:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 6
### Author:  [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2014, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-should-a-retail-store-have-to-remain-open-after-its-official-closing-time/690033/101 "2014-06-07T00:50:54Z")
> [@jtgain](#):
>
> This thread should be Exhibit A as to one of the reasons why Wal-Mart is putting mom and pop stores out of business. If I show up at mom and pop, employees are telling me to get the fuck out. I can show up at Wal-Mart at 3:14am looking for a caulking gun and can take my time.
>
> People have to realize that it’s not 1955 and the 9 to 5 world no longer exists.
Sure, but expect to either pay for the privilege, or for the store to exploit the fuck out of its workers to give that privilege without higher cost (and even then, you may pay in customer service frustration).
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2014, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-should-a-retail-store-have-to-remain-open-after-its-official-closing-time/690033/102 "2014-06-07T13:25:40Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> Not only am I saying that, I am saying that the concept of being annoyed at a customer for wanting to check out, to give the shop their money for product or service, with whatever order they may have, at a time the store is open (even if just about to close) is one is likely highly correlated with a store failing.
>
> The big chains and discount warehouses might succeed by offering lowest possible prices and by advertising; smaller shops more often succeed by customers feeling that you treat them right, by engendering some loyalty because you are willing to go above and beyond. That’s how you compete with Big Box. If you want your smaller shop to succeed you _look for_ those chances to go above and beyond, you are _grateful_ for having the chance to do so, because that is your chance to possibly win a customer’s lasting repeat business and word of mouth. You fear most of all the malignant discontented customer who is pissed off and goes out of their way to bad mouth your business (again, one of them off-sets ten happy campers at least). You want to do whatever you realistically can do to prevent that. Checking out a large, even special needs order (oh my wrapping 30 glasses! So special!) that came to the register before the clock struck closing is not even going out of your way: it is what you are OBLIGATED to do as _a minimum_, your freakin’ job, no more.
>
> It seems like a pretty basic retail concept to me.
Right. Go to the store where **Annie-Xmas** works if you want to check out 30 drinking glasses at closing time. And be on your cell phone so she has to ask you three times for your order. And put the basket on the counter so she has to empty it. And fumble to find your wallet and your credit card. And fumble to put it back. And stand there talking on the damn cell phone for ten minutes after the order is done. And then ask for help to get the bundles to the car.
Do it in the name of “good customer service.”
I
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### Author:  [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2014, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-should-a-retail-store-have-to-remain-open-after-its-official-closing-time/690033/103 "2014-06-07T13:37:22Z")
> [@Leaper](#):
>
> Sure, but expect to either pay for the privilege, or for the store to exploit the fuck out of its workers to give that privilege without higher cost (and even then, you may pay in customer service frustration).
How does it follow that being open 24 hours, or in keeping with the spirit of the thread, say a store is open from 8am to 8pm and the workers are expected to be there until 930pm mean exploitation?
Now, I suspect that some places want to only pay employees until 8pm and if they stay until 8:45 the boss isn’t paying them because they shouldn’t have waited on those stragglers. That is wrong and I agree with you to that extent. A store should take care of its late arriving customers, but likewise pay the workers for staying late.
But if I know up front that I am to be paid minimum wage and my shift is from 10pm to 6am, where is the exploitation?
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### Author:  [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2014, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-should-a-retail-store-have-to-remain-open-after-its-official-closing-time/690033/104 "2014-06-07T15:30:55Z")
Well, as a former waitress (who only made $2.13 an hour), staying two hours past closing time (when a party of six comes in just as you’re about to lock the doors and everything has already been shut down) can put a serious hurt on your income in the form of additional pay to the babysitter, whether or not you have to catch public transport that might even no longer be running and doesn’t gain you any more profit (if said customers run you ragged and yet leave no tip whatsoever – fortunately, that part never happened to me, but did to several of my co-workers over the years). And, as I stated previously, it can really hurt you if it delays you getting to your second (or third) job. Just saying.
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### Author:  [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2014, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-should-a-retail-store-have-to-remain-open-after-its-official-closing-time/690033/105 "2014-06-07T15:46:52Z")
If it’s after hours, I’d expect a shop to be shut. Great if they do let you in or let you carry on shopping, but that’s an extra, not an expected thing.
When a local plant place let my family in bang on closing for the one open day my mum could make it to (them being only a few times a year and her living several hundred miles away) then cheerfully encouraged us all to take our time browsing, ending with the owner getting stuff out of the closed section for us to look at (and buy) I’ll remember it and recommend the place to people, but if they’d just said “Sorry, we’re closed” I wouldn’t have held it against them- it’s not their fault we couldn’t get there sooner.
I’ve done enough retail to know that going out of your way for the most demanding customers is rarely worth the bother- the guys who come in at 1 minute to closing and expect to do a weekly shop are often the same guys who demand discounts on everything, upset the staff and annoy other, more valuable customers. You’re better off without them.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2014, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-should-a-retail-store-have-to-remain-open-after-its-official-closing-time/690033/106 "2014-06-07T23:37:18Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#):
>
> … if you want to check out 30 drinking glasses at closing time. And be on your cell phone so she has to ask you three times for your order. And put the basket on the counter so she has to empty it. And fumble to find your wallet and your credit card. And fumble to put it back. And stand there talking on the damn cell phone for ten minutes after the order is done. And then ask for help to get the bundles to the car.
>
> Do it in the name of “good customer service.” …
You just made a long list there. Let’s go through them:
You want to check out 30 drinking glasses at closing time … that, the one you had bitched about, should not be a problem to anyone. It is what you came to the store to do and you are doing it when you are supposed to, before the register closes. There is no way for a customer to know that an employee leaves no margin of time to make her bus.
Being on cell phone at check out … rude and annoying, agreed.
Basket on the counter? Not sure. I wouldn’t be sure as a customer which would be easier for the check out person - putting them out with the risk of some rolling or sliding the whole basket down, so the cashier can pick up one of the identical glasses and scan it 30 times, and then slide the whole thing down to the bagging area.
Fumble for credit card? Meh. Personally I don’t take out my wallet, let alone the card, until I am done unloading and it is just about time to pay. I try to have it out by the time it is needed but guilty that sometimes minds wander and I forget until jarred out of my mind going to the next five things on my to-do list. I am so sorry that saving you the five seconds, or maybe ten if somehow I had placed the card in the wrong spot last time, making check out as efficient as possible, is not the number one item in my (the customer) head that second.
Cell phone a second time, still on it? Still rude. Not twice as rude for having been listed twice though.
Asking for help to the car? Is that a service the store offers usually? (Like our grocery store does now.) Reasonable to ask for if it was an hour earlier? Then reasonable then. Not a usual service but the person could use the help? Then it would be a nice thing to do and reasonable to say sorry I cannot do that right now. To be annoyed that a customer dared to ask for help to the car? Uncalled for.
> [@Filbert](#):
>
> … I’ve done enough retail to know that going out of your way for the most demanding customers is rarely worth the bother- the guys who come in at 1 minute to closing and expect to do a weekly shop are often the same guys who demand discounts on everything, upset the staff and annoy other, more valuable customers. You’re better off without them.
Hence the qualifier “realistically” … expecting to be able to check out a large order that you got the register just before closing is not an unrealistic or especially demanding expectation. Being annoyed that a customer has that expectation is a sign that employees put satisfying customers way below their own conveniences, someone who thinks that customer service is something that gets in their way other than something to roll eyes at … a pretty good indicator that the business will fail.
There is a difference between trying to satisfy unrealistically demanding customers and trying to go above and beyond for someone, assuming that they had misread the hours or ran into traffic and spent a long time trying to get there in time. Still even the unrealistically demanding are best handled with respect. And there are the rigid employees who won’t go out of their way no matter how small the request and whose attitude of resenting customers clearly comes through. Those employees make bad press.
Otherwise agreed with what you said and said pretty much the same earlier. In your anecdote the owner clearly went above and beyond and in return it was appreciated and good word of mouth was earned, beyond that one sale.
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