I was reading this thread:
And a couple posters mentioned stores open 24 hours a day are rare.
I live in a rural area and the only stores I know of that are open 24 hours a day are a couple truckstops on the Interstate highway.
Anyone?
A lot of the convenience stores that were open 24 hours a day consistently before Covid have have intermittently been closing at night doing to staffing shortages. A few just completely stopped even trying to be open 24 hours.
For reference I live in the northern rural part of New Hampshire.
Truck stops like OP.
Not very near.
But we’ve never had much open late at night. Joints even close at midnight(can’t really call them bars, well, cause they’re joints)
I live in Dallas (what was the distant suburbs in the early 70s), and near me, we’ve got a handful.
- Walmart is open 24 hours
- Many gas stations are open in some form 24 hours a day, even if it’s just that the automatic pumps are still on, while the convenience store part is closed.
- Some convenience stores are open 24-7
- Some restaurants are open 24-7
- Some restaurants like IHOP and Denny’s are open 24-7.
- And while there are only a handful in the whole area, there are some 24-7 pharmacy locations as well. Not super close to me, but still not that far in the grand scheme of things.
Most businesses are open from about 9-9, more or less, with some retailers like grocery stores being open more like 7-12 and some like Target being open 8-10. Most restaurants are open depending on what meals they serve- breakfast/brunch places are often open some absurdly early hour like 4 or 5 through about 1, while there are quite a few places that are open until 3 am to catch the late night drunk crowd.
There used to be a lot- Giant Eagle, Meijers, Walmart. None I can think of now.
This is your problem. I live in a city, and 24-hour convenience stores and bodegas are easy to find, laundromats, also some pharmacies and supermarkets. You can also find some cafes and bakeries and places to eat, I think a few gyms. Point is, you are far from screwed if you work the graveyard shift.
This too: if you need some pizza or kebab at 3 a.m. you can find something.
I have noticed this as well.
There’s not a single store open 24/7 anywhere near me. It’s illegal. Everything closes at like 2000 or 2100 and all day on Sunday.
I lived for a while in a town like that; if you wanted a carton of milk at 3 a.m. you had to go to the petrol station or train station, because it was illegal for any old store to stay open all night.
In the western suburbs of Chicago, it comes down to convenience stores, a small handful of drugstore locations, and a relatively small number of restaurants; the latter two are less common now than before COVID, as others have noted.
We used to have a few Targets and Walmarts in the area that were 24/7, but no longer.
Just 7-Elevens and gas stations (most of which double as convenience stores.) I’m pretty sure Vons and Ralph’s used to be open 24/7, but not the last time I tried to find a dozen eggs at 3am.
Nothing commercial is open 24/7 on Hawai’i Island, as far as I know (there may be something I don’t know about on the Kona side, which is more touristy, but I doubt it).
In Hilo (about 25 minutes from my place) Ken’s House of Pancakes was famously 24/7 before Covid, but they haven’t been able to find enough staff to stay open 'round the clock, so now even they close.
But Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park is open 24/7, at least when the lava is flowing. I’ve been there several times between 2 and 5 am during eruptions, in order to watch the glow.
I haven’t heard of a COVID-related staffing shortage for what… a year and a half now? Seems like around here, all that has worked itself out to some kind of new equilibrium.
I stand corrected; they’re open like 7 am - 10 pm these days. I wasn’t aware that they weren’t 24 hours until I read @kenobi_65’s comment.
Probably so, but I suspect, in many cases, that that new equilibrium still comes down to the same thing: “fewer staff available.”
Here in Illinois, the minimum wage is now $14, as of the start of the year, and I would not be surprised if higher labor costs are a factor in stores deciding to not operate during low-volume overnight hours.
The grocery store I work at is the only 24-hour grocery store in the county - most of our competitors stopped staying open overnight in 2020 and haven’t gone back, and the other holdout started closing at 10 last year.
Other than that, just 7-11, Denny’s, Jack in the Box, one McDonald’s, a few gas stations, and the truck stop.
I googled “gas stations near me open 24 hours,” and Google returned a handful within a couple of miles of me. But, one of those is a Shell station which is three blocks from my house, and I know that they actually close at some point no later than 11pm, given that they’re closed when I drive by, on my way home from D&D.
Given that, I’m not sure that I trust the rest of the results.
Y’all don’t have any Waffle Houses near you?
Some gas stations close the store part, but you can still pay at the pump 24/7.
I live about an hour north of Pittsburgh. Small town/county seat.
We used to have a Walmart and major grocery store open 24 hours until after Covid. Now all we have are a few Sheetz gas station/convenience stores that are open 24 hours.
Everything else closes at 8 or 9 PM.
A lot of the suburbs located closer to the city have nothing open 24 hours. I can’t say for certain whether there are or aren’t everywhere as I don’t frequent a lot of the more distant locations of the city.
My agency has never recovered from the staffing shortage brought about by Covid. We are still severely understaffed. It’s been a real struggle and I am getting ready to retire.
I tried to make an appointment with my local Social Security agency and they told me they are so understaffed they are only doing phone appointments.
I guess some areas have recovered better than others.
You live in New Castle?
Where I am we don’t have Waffle House. That’s a Southern thing and I’m up above the Mason-Dixon line. We used to have a 24-hour Walmart and Eat n Park but now all we have is Sheetz. GetGo closes around 10 pm. Even the Denny’s closes overnight.
(Sheetz and GetGo are gas stations/convenience stores. Eat n Park is a restaurant like Dennys.)