You just reminded me of when I worked for Payless. People would always come in a few minutes before we closed, insisting they knew exactly what they were getting and just needed to pay for it, and then proceed to try on shoes for 45 minutes. :mad:
After getting sick of dealing with that every night, the manager came up with a plan. One of us snuck back to the office just before 9 p.m. and turned off all the lights. The manager would tell the customers the computer automatically shut off the lights every night at 9, and they’d have to come back the next day.
The customers believed it every time (either that or they got the hint …)
Over at the wallpaper section are three ladies looking at wallpaper books. It is 7 pm and time for me to close. They call me over to the table and then and only then all three ask me to figure how much wallpaper they will need. It will be 8 pm before I am able to close the store. In the meantime, because the lights are still on, people come driving up and start pounding on the door asking to be let in. I find it difficult to tell them we are closed, because while I am figuring wallpaper dimensions, the ladies have now decided they also need paint and have started lugging cans of paint to the counter.
I’ve also worked food service, and I’m afraid that I have to side with Zette on this one.
Unless it is otherwise stated that food is unavailable past a certain hour, but the dining room remains open until some other time, then I expect to be able to get food until the time the restaurant closes. The fact that it will take the staff time to clean up after they have finished providing service to me is not my concern. That’s an issue between management and its employees.
I see a lot of whining about “but I want to get out of here and home to my family!!” If that’s the case, then as Zette pointed out, don’t work the closing shift. If you do choose to work the closing shift, and you allow yourself to become accustomed to leaving at a certain time because you’re usually able to do you post-closing cleanup before the establishment actually closes, then the problem, IMO, is with the attitude of the employee not with the customer. Just because you’re usually able to leave early when no one comes in to impose on you towards the end of your shift does not mean that you are thereby exempt from providing your stated service to someone when they do dare to wander in during your (gasp!!) normal business hours, thinking they can expect service.
The way I see it, the time you get out work when someone demands service 5 minutes before the end of your shift, necessitating putting off your cleanup routine until after they’ve left, is your normal and expected end of shift. Anything earlier than that is a bonus to you, not an entitlement. You have no right to bitch and moan when you don’t get to leave early, and if leaving early is important to you, you’re in the wrong business.
All of the above, of course, does not apply to patrons who linger in the restaurant after closing hours and thereby prevent employees from truly starting their close routine.
I have to chime in in support of Zette and Jadis here.
I worked as a driver for Domino’s for over 4 years, and sometimes I was the closing driver. Customers had the right to place orders right up until closing time, which was midnight during the week and 1 AM on weekends. If somebody called in an order at 12:59:59 on Friday night, the pizza-maker had to make it, and then I had to go out and deliver it, after closing time. Then I got to come back and help clean the store so we could go home. Weekday nights there was usually one inside person and one driver, so there was nobody else to help with the cleanup, so I went home damn late on those nights.
It sucked big donkey dicks, but you know what? That’s life sometimes, baby. You’re in a customer service job, you serve the customers. It’s really not the customer’s responsibility to think, “Gee, I’m hungry, but the staff wants to go home, so I guess I’ll just suffer.” Not that they should be able to hang out until all hours of the night, but to expect service during business hours is not unreasonable.
jjtm there are some jobs where you can ask not to be scheduled for certain shifts, provided there are other people willing to work those shifts. Only once at Domino’s that I can recall did I have to involuntarily work a close.
Through high school and university, I worked my way up the totem poll that is the customer service industry business (a restaurant, in my case). And to this day, I strongly feel it is the customer’s right to put in an order up until the establishment closes business to customers.
Saying the restaurant ‘closes at 11’ is not the same thing as saying ‘your work ends at 11’. No way. You are done and free to go when your work is complete. Is it a bummer when you get a bus load of tourists pulls in 10 minutes to close? Yep. But that’s your job. Don’t like it? Get another job.
Your job runs from whenever you have to get there to be ready to go on time, to whenever it is that your job is complete. Store/restaurant hours are strictly customer service hours.
As a manager, keeping employees happy while still ensuring customers are satisfied, and you are making a profit (which is the only way you can ensure you keep your employees employed) is a constant battle. It is made much more difficult because people in customer service fields tend to end up with a ‘hostage/hate the customer’ mentality. ‘The customer wanted this, how unreasonable’. ‘The customer is so stupid, they didn’t know this or that’. Well, d’oh. If they knew everything about your business, they wouldn’t need your work, would they?
These same people, of course, forget that when they are out and about, they are now the customer.
Anyway, for restaurants, having an ‘orders stop’ time is more effective than a ‘closing’ time. For some reason, it is far easier for customers to accept the fact that the grill has been shut down. Perhaps is because if you turn them away because you ‘are closed’, it somehow makes it seem like you are trying to avoid serving them so you can run home. Saying the grill is down still makes it sound like you are there and working, just not able to serve them, so sorry, but do come back tomorrow.
But somehow, I have a feeling that people getting all upset and angry at customers putting in an order ‘10 minutes before closing’ would also be upset at people putting in an order ‘10 minutes before the grill closes’.
Customers are so inconvenient. Why don’t we just make it really easy on our employees; we’ll stay closed, and tell everyone to stay home. I mean, how dare we consider servicing our customers, who are paying our salaries, when we could be more concerned with making it easy on the employees who for some reason always are complaining that they don’t make enough.
:rolleyes:
Re: Paying extra time: Unless we are talking about overtime, there is no such thing as ‘extra time paid’. You are on the clock anytime your store is open. That ‘one extra customer’ may not seem like much - say one couple ordering, say $15 total worth of food and drink. But multiply that by 365 days, and now you are looking at well over $5,000. And besides, in just about every industry, you need to look at marginal revenue. That U
As an aside, I believe I read somewhere that in some industries it costs more to close down/open up a shop, and that it is cheaper in the long run to simply stay open, even if you lose money on certain hours.
Most ‘owners/managers’ work far, far longer hours than the ‘people actually doing the work’. Managerial work is certainly not as visible or noticable as frontline work. Hey, I have been there, and I certainly often (and sometimes still do) wonder what the hell those guys in the offices were doing all the time, while we are sweating in the trenchs. Well, guess what? You tend to think that all the way up the food chain, until you realize that the guy above you probably has it way worse - not only does he have his own work to do, he has to worry about the wellbeing and the work of all his subordinates.
A good owner/manager is first and foremost concerned with making a profit. I hope you enjoy any experience you get working with a owner/manager who does not have this as a first priority, because it will be a very short job before you and everyone at the company hit the unemployment lines.
Now, does that mean that owners/managers have making money the first priority, with no thought or regard to their fellow employees? Of course not. It means that owners/managers must work at instilling a concept of ‘making the customer happy’ will make us all richer’. My complaint with bosses when I was working at that restaurant was the power-hungry turds working there whose only message was ‘I’m boss, you will work because I told you to work, now go back to your hole’.
I owe it to a lucky string of bosses my last few years there, plus many years of running my own company, for allowing me to see that work is indeed a privelage, not a right. I never take customers for granted anymore. Not that the customer is ‘always right’. If a customer was rude, or inconsiderate, or just plain wrong, the best bosses always support their employees - and gain their undying loyalty in return, I should add. If a guy showed up at 10 minutes after close, he was politely refused. If a guy was rude to an employee, he was asked to leave and was not permitted to return.
I also note that under the best manager I ever worked for, we had none of this petty shit like turning the clock ahead 10 minutes, etc. Petty stuff like that is exactly what gets people all fired up about leaving ‘as early as possible’ and all pissed off when some customer has the ‘gall to ask for service even though we are still open’. :rolleyes:
I am mixed on the ordering food up to closing time issue.
I think that eating establishments should tell the customer that the “grill closes at 10:40” or whatever, to avoid any confusion. However, anytime I have gone into a restaurant near closing time, I try to make sure that I had time to order my food, eat it, pay for it, all before the restaurant’s closing time. If I saw that it was 5 minutes before closing, and hardly anyone was in the place, I’d leave. I wouldn’t expect them to cook my meal and feed me 5 minutes before closing! Unless I saw that they had a grill open (a la McDonald’s). But if it’s obvious they are close to being all shut down, I sure as hell wouldn’t expect them to start everything up for just me.
The same would go for ordering out, like pizza. I would order pizza so they could get it to me before closing time. I wouldn’t order it a few minutes before closing, because I KNOW they’d never finish it before closing time. I think it’s common sense to consider this kind of thing, as a customer. I’d feel terrible if I knew that the staff was having to restart everything up just for me.
I have to admit that this is very admirable thinking, and if everyone were as willing to be as considerate as yosemitebabe, the world would have a lot less problems, and not just because the guys and gals over at Country Kitchen can go home early (i.e., not on time, * early) *.
But yosemitebabe, undersand my point that the staff shouldn’t have to ‘restart everything just for you’, because **the staff shouldn’t be shutting stuff down and getting ready to go home until closing time. **
My last post may have been a bit harsh. But see, my problem is with people who insist that ‘that last customer doesn’t mean much to the bottom line, and I could go home’. Doesn’t matter what time you move the clock up to (OK, we close at 11, but grill closes at 10:40). Now you just have people bitching about people ordering at 10:30, because the guys wanted to get a headstart on heading out the door.
Others have made the same points more eloquently than I, but I wanted to address a couple of assertions:
No, I didn’t get to leave early if nobody showed for the last tour. I got to leave on time (at 5 p.m.), just as all the other tour guides did. If somebody showed for the last tour, I had to stay late (leaving at 5:45, or, if the tourists were inquisitive types, sometimes as late as six or 6:15).
As I said, I never worked food service, but my guess is that schedules for the end of the day say something like “4 p.m. - close.” “Close” doesn’t mean the time printed on the doors of the establishment; it means after all the chores have been done once the hours printed on the doors of the establishment have been completed. If you’re able to leave at the exact time printed on the doors, you’re actually leaving early.
Businesses usually set their hours based on the market. Large businesses (such as most fast-food chains) have done numerous studies on the times of day they expect to be most profitable, and they set their hours accordingly. Believe me, an intelligent owner/manager doesn’t want somebody coming in five minutes before closing to order food. It’s a losing proposition for them. The cost of the food, the additional electricity spent, and the additional wages paid more than eat up what little profit he/she was making on the single meal.
I worked the tour-guide job for seven years (summers during high school and college), and I finally got fed up with taking one or two people on the late tour. I wasn’t the only one doing the late tour, of course, but the principle of the thing bothered me. So I got the monthly power bills for the caverns, divided them by the number of hours we were normally open in a month, and generated an hourly power bill. Then I added in the cost of an hour’s wages (minimum wage, but still) and presented it to the owner of the caverns. I tried to explain that the late tour was actually costing him money, and that we should back up its starting time to 4 p.m. to have more people on the tour. No dice. His view was that as long as somebody wanted to take a tour before 4:45, they should be able to. He was a frustrating man to work for.
As I said multiple times before, i’m not arguing that a customer shouldn’t be ABLE to order right up until closing! Sheesh! :rollseyes: I’m just saying that AS a customer, I think it would be nice to have yosemitebabe’s type thinking. Maybe she said it more clearly than me. We’re arguing two different things. You’re arguing customers rights, i’m arguing customers consideration.
I read a a book with a prince in it who didn’t have hot water for his morning ablutions because, as he put it, “My whim is someone else’s work.” I think that best sums up my opinions on this whole issue. He had every right to demand that one of his serfs get up early, start a fire, and heat up some water so it would be ready for him when he got up. He didn’t, though, because he was considerate of what it would involve for others.
I believe the same holds true for customers that come in and expect full service 5 minutes before close; it is their right to have what they want, but it is something that I don’t take advantage of personally, because I think it lessens me as a person to be inconsiderate of people serving me. As always, this is just my opinion, and this is something we Dopers obviously have two equal and opposing sides on.
As I said multiple times before, i’m not arguing that a customer shouldn’t be ABLE to order right up until closing! Sheesh! :rollseyes: I’m just saying that AS a customer, I think it would be nice to have yosemitebabe’s type thinking. Maybe she said it more clearly than me. We’re arguing two different things. You’re arguing customers rights, i’m arguing customers consideration.
I agree with you, lezlers, that customers should show some consideration when it gets close to closing time. When they don’t, though, the employees can’t complain too much. Just because you’ve gotten to leave at 10 p.m. for the past week doesn’t mean that’s your contractually mandated time to leave.
I have to join all of you. I too worked numerous food service jobs- including many a closing shift. The hours are the hours. You can try and cheat a bit to get ready but if you luck out- tough cookies. It is “food service” not “food get it your damn self”. If a customer came in at 9:55 and wanted something off of the grill so be it. Although I did the eat-in “faster” food sort of place and we had a full BUS show up right before close. That kind of sucked.
Oh well, it served as an inspiration to go back to school and get my degree so I wouldn’t have to work that sort of job again. Then I ended up a lawyer- with twice the expectations and hours. Man am I a slow learner. . .
Noticed that many of the posters which I agreed with are from Northern Virginia or D.C. (as am I)- kind of funny really. Must be something in the water. . . .
I didn’t get to visit my family one Christmas because of bookstore browsers.
Christmas Eve. Everyone had to work, but we were guaranteed to be out as soon after 9:30 as possible. We started shutting things down an hour in advance, at 8:30. Announced at nine. Told everyone to line up at 9:15. Locked the doors at 9:25. Had to unlock the doors at 9:30 because so many people were in line we needed an extra cashier rather than a bridge troll. People kept coming in, arguing that the line was so long they would certainly have their selections ready by the time we finished up. Kicked the last indecisive browser out the back door at 10:30 because every time we let someone out the front, some other irresponsible shopper was trying to barge in.
Then it took an hour and a half to count out because things were so confused. Paid ten bucks–almost two hours’ wages-- for a cab ride home because the busses had quit running. I could have driven (my car was at home) the five hours home, but I would have had to drive right back the same day, because I had to work on the 26th.
But some inconsiderate asshole’s family got to wake up to a handful of one-dollar Penguin stocking-stuffers as a result of my reluctant sacrifice.
Border’s Boy was being annoying for a reason. The reason is that we too have lives, and if we don’t bodily prod you fuckers out the door, you won’t leave!
And don’t even let me get started on the pervs jacking off in the bathroom…