You would still go in there because the restaurant is open for business. How is that any different than if someone made a reservation for 9:55 p.m. at the same restaurant?
A customer is not being unreasonable or inconsiderate if they enter a place of business during the business’ posted hours and expect service. That is why the business is there in the first place. If the service being provided by the business could extend beyond the posted closing time, it makes sense to note a cutoff time beyond which customers will not receive full service (as I and many others have said previously). A business that does not do this implies that if you enter the door one second before closing, you get the same level of service as someone who came in four hours ago. To do otherwise is to jeopardize your customer base.
eh, looks like we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I think it would be a GREAT idea to post a “cut-off time” but not all resteraunts do this. I’m talking about the ones that don’t. I never argued with the fact that a customer has a right to do it. I stated NUMEROUS times that they did in fact, have that right. I just said that it’s just not all that considerate of the person that’s going to have to wait on you, after close, in those resteraunts that don’t have cut-off times. You may think it’s perfectly okay, I don’t. We’re never going to convince eachother of our points, we both have reasons for believing what we do. Frankly, i’m tired of arguing about it. You continue to stroll into resteraunts minutes before they close, i’ll continue to stroll into resteraunts that aren’t about to close, managers will be happy to see you, servers will be happy to see me. End of story.
If a restaurant now closes at 10:00, just change the policy that the cutoff time is 10:00 but the restaurant is open till 10:30 or 11:00. Would that make the employees that work there happy?
This is what I loved about the library: We closed at NINE. Not nine-ten. Not nine-oh-five. NINE. The doors got locked ten minutes before closing. The bathrooms had the same deal. At eight-fifty-five, we turned off all but one of the terminals. And at nine, that terminal, unless it was in use, was turned off. We also had a security guard who would shoo lingering patrons out the door. The people in charge, incidentally, always made sure that we pages, who were high school students with lots of homework, always got out as close to nine as possible. I was out at nine-oh-two pretty much every day. If there were books left to be checked in, they got checked in the next morning.
Still, we’d get the occasional patron who Just Didn’t Get It. Also, the EMPLOYEES would sometimes come around and ask to check things out after closing. But they were S.O.L.
Speaking of Sofa King’s “pervos who jerk off in the bathrooms,” I got flashed once while locking the bathrooms (I had to go into the men’s room to make sure there were no overflowing toilets or anything). I was very glad we had a security guard that day.
This thread is giving me flashbacks of my days working at a large book & music store not unlike Borders. Our closing procedure went something like this: 30 and 15 mins before closing we’d have the usual “we’ll be closing our registers, please make your selection and join the queue etc”. 5 mins to closing, we’d make a final announcement and start piping some loud music through the PA. The choice of music usually depended on the staff rostered for announcements. When it was my turn I played stuff like ‘Aria’ by Yanni, ‘What’s the Story Morning Glory?’ by Oasis (sent people out in droves) and ‘Closing Time’ by Leonard Cohen. I had a colleague who would dim the lights and play the Vincent Price bit from ‘Thriller’ (The bit with “Darkness falls across the land/ The midnite hour is close at hand”. Love it.) Sure we got a few complaints from people, but I think our customers found our method amusing, and more importantly, it got them out of the store without us sounding too annoying.
In response to the OP, I do agree that the Borders guy appears to be overdoing it. Then again, that’s probably a response to the type of customers they’ve had to deal with. In my experience, some customers tend to ‘shut out’ these announcements anyway.
Once I got a call from the police station at 2am. Apparently we had locked some guy in the store. When the cops and I went down to the store to let him out, I asked him why he didn’t leave when we were closing, and he said “I didn’t know you were closed.” Aside from wondering how we didn’t see him as we went on our final spotchecks before locking up, I was like, Hello? Announcements? Lights off? Air-conditioning down? And it wasn’t like he was in the men’s room or anything. He said he was ‘browsing’. In the dark. Erm, okay.
Your rant made me laugh Elmwood It sounds like the BB employees would rather shut down at 9:30 instead and nothing burns me more than businesses that quit answering their phones fifteen minutes before close of their business hours.
Ignore those other twits on line here, they have an astronomically high 'fuck you ass hat" daily quota that they try hard to meet even if it means piling it on for no reason.
I’ve had customers in the parts store that I used to work in on Sundays come in five minutes before closing, stay for 20 minutes even though we turned the lights off. They walk up to the counter: “Oh, uh…are you closing?”
I think the problem here is that in the restaurant business, this is fairly typical of anyone walking in at the last minute. I know where I worked, we would’ve done last-minute “to go” orders with no problem, and the kitchen/grill didn’t shut down until we were officially closed… but just because someone can straggle in five minutes before closing and demand a sit-down meal, doesn’t mean they should. After all, chances are that person would be one of a few, if not the ONLY person there keeping the restaurant operating past its closing time. The fact that we were usually a ghost town about ten minutes before closing should be enough of a hint for anyone walking in that perhaps they should consider taking their food “to go” or go eat someplace else that is open later. Most people are considerate enough to not to pull this kind of petty crap.
The fact is that businesses are privately operated, and are under no obligation to serve you at ANY time of the day. If their hours are posted as 9 am - 9 pm, then after 9 pm you have no “right” to complain about doors being locked or registers being shut. If you don’t like the employees, service, or hours of a given location, then don’t go there. Including Borders, if the announcements bother you. Most store policies are in response to something that made them necessary. The store I work at now (art and custom framing) locks the doors at close, and someone stands there with a key to let remaining shoppers out.
If you walk in to make a custom framing order five minutes before we close, I’m going to tell you I’m sorry, but framing orders take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or more to complete, so unless you already have an estimate made up from a previous visit that I can type in directly and ring you out, you’ll have to come back another time. I’ll even offer to make a specific appointment during my scheduled hours if you want to talk to me again. Yes, you can construe this as rude, but in my mind you’re rude for coming in right before close and asking me to do something you knew would likely take a signifigant length of time. You can go home and complain and say whatever you want about the bitch girl at the frame store all you want. Like someone else said, it’s the nice people coming in during business hours that are paying my salary. Not inconsiderate jerks who do things just because they can or believe they should be able to.
On the other hand, if you want to come in five minutes before close and buy some paint or a frame or something, be my guest… as long as you are ready to get out the door at 9. Have a little consideration for your fellow human beings.
Wow, I never caught Feather’s post, that’s awesome. I wonder if Jadis or Sauron are still crusing this board, i’m curious as to what they’d say to that…
Same thing I’ve been saying all along, lezlers: If a service-based business is open until 10 p.m. (or whenever), it must be prepared to serve customers who come in just before 10. Or – hey, here’s an idea! – it can notify customers that full service is only an option until 9:30.
Is walking in to such a business two minutes before closing fair to the servers? No. Does it make money for the business? In most cases, no. (See my earlier post in which I described my attempt to move the last-tour time earlier in the day.) Would I do such a thing? Unless circumstances were unusual, no.
However, I have no sympathy for those people who start their close-up routine (such as shutting off and cleaning the grill) 30 minutes before closing, and then whine when somebody comes in and they have to start everything up again. Newsflash: If you’d held off on closing duties (as you’re supposed to do) until the business actually closed, you wouldn’t have to start everything up again. The customer has an expectation and a right to be served by the business; after all, that’s why the business is there.
I don’t understand why this is a difficult concept to comprehend.
When customers come in your store with unreasonable requests, you have to be able to say no, regardless of what the request is. If they want you to stay open to unreasonable hours, say no.
I had a customer when I used to work at Radio Shack, he wanted me to open up an 18’ long really big ass CB antenna during a really busy Saturday and show it to him. I would have had this huge round antenna, and huge round tube lying across the floor for the other customers to trip over. I said “no”. He got really pissed off, and left. He came back the next week, on a much less busy weekday and I showed him the antenna, and he bought it.
Customers may not know that their request is unreasonable, until you refuse it. They may not even know your business hours, nor do they know you’re not getting paid. All they know is that they’re hungry, or they need a book, or picture frame, and that you said that your business is “open”.
I never said it was fair or considerate to the servers. What I have said, or at least tried to convey, is that the servers don’t automatically get to leave when the clock strikes “closing time.” We started this sidebar discussion based on servers (cooks, etc.) performing their closing duties before the business closes. That’s cool if they can get away with it – i.e., if nobody else walks in the door. They can lock the door and head out shortly after closing time. If somebody does walk in, though, they have no right to complain that they have to “restart” everything to serve the customer. It’s not fair to the servers to walk in two minutes before closing. By the same token, it’s not fair of the servers to get all bitchy about it. Both are being rude in that situation.
THAT’S what I’ve been trying to get you to acknowledge this whole time.
