Okay, Borders boy, we get the hint.

The BBQ Pit
1

“Attention Borders customers … the time is now 9:30. The Borders Cafe will be closing in one hour. The Borders Cafe wil reopen again tomorrow at 9:00 AM.”

“Attention Borders customers … the time is now 10:00. The Borders Cafe will be closing in one half hour. The Borders Cafe wil reopen again tomorrow at 9:00 AM.”

“Attention Borders customers … the time is now 10:10. The Borders Cafe will be closing in twenty minutes. The Borders Cafe wil reopen again tomorrow at 9:00 AM.”

“Attention Borders customers … the time is now 10:20. The Borders Cafe will be closing in ten minutes. The Borders Cafe wil reopen again tomorrow at 9:00 AM.”

“Attention Borders customers … the time is now 10:25. The Borders Cafe will be closing in five minutes. The Borders Cafe wil reopen again tomorrow at 9:00 AM.”

“Attention Borders customers … the time is now 10:30. The Borders Cafe is now closed. The Borders Cafe wil reopen again tomorrow at 9:00 AM. Borders will be closing in thirty minutes. If you have any purchases, please bring them to the checkout counter now.”

“Attention Borders customers … the time is now 10:35. Borders will be closing in twenty five minutes. If you have any purchases, please bring them to the checkout counter now. Borders will reopen for your shopping pleasure tomorrow at 9:00 AM.”

“Attention Borders customers … the time is now 10:40. Borders will be closing in twenty minutes. If you have any purchases, please bring them to the checkout counter now. Borders will reopen for your shopping pleasure tomorrow at 9:00 AM.”

“Attention Borders customers … the time is now 10:45. Borders will be closing in fifteen minutes. If you have any purchases, please bring them to the checkout counter now. Borders will reopen for your shopping pleasure tomorrow at 9:00 AM.”

“Attention Borders customers … the time is now 10:50. Borders will be closing in ten minutes. If you have any purchases, please bring them to the checkout counter now. Borders will reopen for your shopping pleasure tomorrow at 9:00 AM.”
At this point, I left. The Borders boy’s voice was irritating enough, without him having to remind me every five minutes that the eleventh hour approacheth. We get the fucking hint … you’re closing. Now shut up and leave me alone while I finish my damn coffee, okay?

2

“10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1. GET THE FUCK OUT NOOOOWWWWW!!!”

3

And I’d bet you twenty bucks that they had to physically shoo people out the door at 11:15.

4

Yeah, Borders sucks!

-BKB
Laid off December 26 from Borders in Simsbury, CT

5

Damn, man, how long does it take you to finish a cup of coffee? :wink:

That is a wee bit excessive, but there are frightfully few things more irritating in retail than having customers in the store after closing.

6

Well as they say at the bar “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here!”

7

Maybe it’s not his fault, I had friends that worked in stores where store policy was to make those kind of announcements. They hated doing it, said they felt like someone’s mom trying to get the kids to go to bed.

I was in a Home Depo once when they made one announcement about the store closing in 15 minutes, then 14 minutes later they started shutting off the lights. Those people were serious.

8

Sometimes it’s policy, sometimes it’s a not-so-subtle hint to the campers in the cafe that the employees would like to go home sometime before four in the morning.

9

Oh, lord. Late customers. One time, this family stayed in the restaurant until, like, 11:25 (it had closed at 11:00). There they were, sitting in the dark with chairs stacked on all the tables around them. We practically had to evict them physically after that point. And they had, like, a seven-year-old girl with them! What kind of a bedtime is that?

10

I used to work retail and I was often the person making those announcements. There’s nothing like having to make an announcement like “It is 9:45 and your ______ store is closed. Our registers are closing. Please bring all final selections to the front registers now.” when what you really wanted to say was “It is 9:45 and we’ve been closed for 45 minutes. Get the hell out. NOW.”

11

I used to be an assistant manager at one of the largest Borders stores in the country. Racinchikki is right. Not only did we have to do an eviction patrol every night at 11:00, every single customer who was around then either insisted that they hadn’t heard the announcements (this is physically impossible, considering the number of announcements we made), or else they insisted that they’d be “just five more minutes”. Sorry, no. Time to leave, guys.

My personal favorites were the 50% of these people per night who insisted, "Oh, well, there’s a register still open, right? I’ll come down when the line gets shorter. Of course, the line was so long because people were trying to wait until the last minute to check out and leave - and if I gave everyone the oppurtuinity to wait, nobody would leave without being horsewhipped.

Of course it could be worse, and it could be handled better. At the liquor store that I run now, we’re subject to local law that says we can’t sell alcohol between 11:45 PM and 8:30 AM, so our hours are (surprise!) 8:30 to 11:45. If anyone at the store sold anything at all with a timestamp of 11:46, we could, potentially, lose our license - and that means that I’d be out of a job, since I wouldn’t be needed to run a liquor strore that’s not there due to my mismanagement. Consequently, not only do we lock the incoming doors at 11:30, but at 11:40, we announce to everyone that we will be closing in five minutes, even if they have cash in hand.

Not only do some people try to argue, but, inevitably, people show up outside our door at 11:50 and start banging on our doors to let them in. Unlike Borders, though, I am not obliged to be nice about it; in fact I am legally required not to be nice about it. Consequently, my nighttime security (all of the moonlighting police officers) have the authority not only to escort people out, but to have them arrested for trespassing if they don’t like it.

I’ll betcha if they tried that iat Borders, they wouldn’t have to keep making announcements :wink:

12

Closing story

I used to work as a bouncer/security in a rather large redneck cowboy bar on Texas’s infamous Jacksboro Hwy. By law, everybody has to be out by 2 am. Period. Johny Mayhal did a song about this stretch of road, its outside of the fort worth city limits and so we we rely on the Sherrif’s dept for law enforcement. Mostly, they just came and picked up what was left after we beat the crap out of them and handcuffed them.

Often the deputys would hang out in our parking lot waiting for the drunks to leave so they could nail them at closing. This couple is at the bar one night, the guy is plowed and the lady is a bit buzzed. They refuse to leave. We sho everyone else out of the bar, and I notice my partner is still having problems with this two, I start to head over and my partner grabs the drink out of her hand puts it on the bar and tells her to get the out. We escort them out the door, all the time she was making smart ass remarks giving us shit. The guy was just trying not to fall down.

They get outside, and I see the squad car parked in the dark back corner of the lot. I pull my mag-lite and flash it at the deputies and point to our two drunks. They hit the lights and head across the parking lot. The look on her face was priceless. Turns out she was an off duty cop, a fact she didnt make clear until he was about to give her a field sobriety test. He read her the riot act, and informed her that he would be calling her supervisor on monday and telling him what she had been doing.(Texas cops are real big on profesional courtesy, so he didnt give her the test). All in all, it totally ruined her evening. I got the feeling from the look on her face that she would almost rather be arrested.

13

Sorry, elmwood, my sypathies are with Borders guy. I did my time in retail in a department store and I still remember people turning up 5 minutes before closing wanting to buy half the department and return the other half. Doing returns required a manager’s approval.

CJ

14

I’ve told this one before. Ice Cream/fast food joing (local). I"m closing. 5 minutes before closing this guy & his date walk in, wanting ice cream. I say, “I can serve you, but we’re closing in 5 mintues”. They opt for the ice cream. Then they sit down.

the kicker (for me) is I hear them talking. She says “come on, let’s eat them outside, they want to close”. He says “they can’t close with us in here”.

I can’t?

watch me.

I came out into the dining room and put up every single chair except the two they were sitting in. and went back for the vacuum cleaner.
They were gone by the time I got back with it.

:smiley:

15

wring: Great story! All of these are great stories!

Of course, I have my own stories (though not as great). I worked at a fabric store in LaCañada Calif., where movie stars and the horsey set hang out. (But it ain’t Beverly Hills, mind.) So, we got some princesses in there sometimes.

One time, during a big sale (where we worked a LONG shift, and stayed open late) some young women wanted to come in at the time we were closing, “just for a minute”. They said they were old-time customers, and seemed really nice. So we let them in, with the understanding that they’d dash in, get their stuff, and be right out. That’s what they assured us they’d do. But, oh no. That’s not what they did. The bitches wouldn’t leave for over half an hour, and they browsed and took their time through the store. They laughed and laughed, as we sat there, watching them, dog tired, just wanting to GO HOME. Finally they bought some piddley things, and left. Laughing and smirking all the while. I guess they figured that if they could sweet talk us into letting them in, all bets were off, and they were free to take as long as they wanted. (Which was pretty damned long.) :frowning:

Other times, we’d get angry ladies banging on our door, yelling at us because we had already closed the doors. (Like, what could be SUCH an emergency at a fabric store? I mean, I understand that some people have projects they might be eager to finish, but nothing life-or-death.)

The obliviousness of some of these people was astonishing. Apparently they thought that retail store workers have no lives, and are happy to stay open an hour or so late, to cater to their late-night lace trim needs. Or whatever.

16

Oh, and the first idiot to say, “The Customer is Always Right!” is the first one up against the wall when the Revolution comes!

17

I have to say I’m delighted this thread has gone from “Those annoying we’re closing announcement” to “those annoying customers who won’t leave”.

I have long wanted to change the announcement from “We are now closed. Thank you for shopping” to an Amityville style “GETTTT OOOUUUUTTTTT”.

And now I’m off to the closing shift. Wish me luck.

18

While an announcement every five minutes seems excessive, I’d have to watch the store close to make a judgement. I worked in a store in a yupscale neighborhood where we really did have to turn out the lights to get people to leave. (I’ve worked elsewhere that a single announcement usually cleared the store.) Bookstores are often worse then most, simply because browsers always feel that they should have more time than they could possibly get.

Sorry, elmwood, but I’m joining the rest of the retail slaves (and escaped retail slaves) in offering minimal commiseration.

19

In high school I worked part-time as a cashier in a grocery store. Closing time was always fun, wondering if a customer who had run in five seconds before the doors were locked was really just running in for toilet paper or if we’d be waiting twenty minutes while she did a month’s shopping for an army batallion. One customer in particular was almost never seen except at the very end of the work day; we called her The Midnight Shopper. She’d go to the deli counter as they were trying to clean up, and ask for “a taste” of this lunchmeat and “a taste” of that cheese, and when it was all over, she might maybe buy a little bit of one of the products she’d tasted. Just as often she’d sigh and say thanks, but none of those was quite what she was looking for! Wouldn’t be quite so annoying any other time, but just before closing the deli staff had to unwrap and re-wrap everything she’d tasted; sometimes they also had to re-do the end-of-day slicer cleaning. The kicker was when she did this on Christmas Eve. She kept us all 25 minutes after closing time and had the balls to wish us a Merry Christmas. A sadist or just terminally clueless? You make the call! :mad:

So count me in as another one whose sympathy is with the kid at Borders.

20

hee! I might have seen you working at some point…my best friend and I used to go to that Borders just about every week, usually on Friday night. :slight_smile:

I work in a grocery store, and whoo, boy, do i know what this thread is all about. Once, the manager was making his final walk though the store to see if there were any customers left. It was 11:05 at the time (we close at 11). He saw a lady in the pet food aisle, so he approached her and told her “Ma’am, we close at 11 pm”, very diplomatic, in a nice tone of voice. she actually said, “Oh, that’s nice,” and kept on shopping at her own damn pace for another 15 or 20 minutes! my bagger and I were PISSED. there’s no excuse for that sort of crap.