Frankly, I don’t care if it is against their contract. It is the feeling of being nickle-and-dimed. So whether or not the CC companies allow it or not, I generally won’t patronize a store which treats CC purchases differently than cash.
I’ve got a friend that keeps his restaurant closed on Sundays. While he is a somewhat serious Christian, he just considers Sunday a family day and wants to be able to give his crew at least one day a week off.
Also, when it comes to a bakery, you have to remember that being closed on Sunday means the employees get Saturday night off. They get in around 9 or 10pm the night before to start working.
Almost all of them are. Mine is closed on Sundays and Wednesdays. He’s very busy on Mondays, when all the others are closed.
Moved Cafe Society --> MPSIMS.
The No Frills (grocery store) here doesn’t accept Visa. Only Mastercard or Debit. (Found that out the hard way.)
Years ago I did a fair amount of island hopping by sailboat in the eastern Caribbean. There was one little island, in the Grenadines if my memory serves me, with a small shop close to the anchorage I would use.
After shopping there on occasion over a couple years I noticied he seemed to always be out of AA and C cell batteries. I asked the shopkeeper about it and his reply was to the effect that he he couldn’t keep them on the shelves so he gave up on ordering them as it was too much of a bother to keep restocking. :eek:
I guess some old times like this guy were serious about their sleepy island ways.
It was only in the past few years that Tim Hortons started accepting debit cards in Eastern Canada. This blew my mind, because in Western Canada, if they didn’t accept debit cards they’d probably go out of business. 
The idea of any chain store not accepting debit is mind boggling.
:smack: This boggles my mind. Yeah, it’s a pain to restock, but it’s MORE of a pain to have customers constantly asking for a common item.
I heard this same story, except it was a hardware store, and they quit stocking mailbox-sign E’s and S’s. :rolleyes:
The owner doesn’t have to be there just because the store is open. Other people can open and close a business. There are very few skills in retail that cannot be delegated, but sometimes small family businesses don’t get that.
the fuck? maybe he just wants a day off for himself/his crew, as suggested above? why is he automatically an eeeeeevil christian?
I can understand small businesses taking a day off a week- it can be hard to get someone reliable for only one full day a week, most places I’ve come across rely on high turnover teenage part-timers, when they’re not employing family. Sunday closing is still the absolute norm round where I live, for all small shops but convenience stores.
I have, however, come across a cafe that shut between the hours of 1-2pm. It was run by two old ladies, basically as a gossip centre, but still…
I don’t understand why more restaurants in my town don’t keep websites with online menus.
If I feel like exploring options for a new pizza or chinese food place, I do my research online.
If a restaurant doesn’t have a website with a menu, I don’t spend any money with them.
You say this as if it’s some sort of contradiction, but it’s precisely true, and it relates directly to the issue of opening hours.
These little stores are screwed either way. They can keep civilized hours, leaving themselves enough time to actually have a life, and they’ll have people like you complaining about how they want to be able to buy steak at 11 on a Friday night. Or they can try to compete with the big guys by staying open 16 hours a day, seven days a week, and drive themselves crazy by working all the damn time and never having a chance to take a breath.
And, as others have noted, it can often be hard to find someone honest and reliable to open and run a small business for you for just one or two days a week, especially at the sort of wages that a small business would have to pay in order to still make a profit. For some of these places, it might be worth it to lose a bit of business each week for the benefit of getting to live like a human being.
If we’re bitching about weird hours, I’ll chime in with “the entire country of France.”
I can’t tell you how many times we were out of luck because the museum/monument/whatever we planned on stopping to see on our way from one town to another was closed between noon and two, and we showed up at 12:15.
Or, alternatively, we didn’t have time/get hungry for lunch until after 2, and every single frickin’ restaurant in a 20 mile radius was closed between 2 & 5.
I guess we’re spoiled as Americans - not many places actually close for a few hours during the day. From what I hear, it’s not just France, but a lot of Europe with these kinds of hours. I get it from the employee point of view - it’s nice to have a lunch hour or get a few hour’s break between the lunch and dinner crowd - but boy-oh-boy is it a pain in the butt for the customer.
I’d think the donut shop might actually do more business Mon-Sat than on Sunday. During the week, you’re more likely to have people stopping in to buy a dozen or two for an office meeting or as a reward for workers.
For me, I don’t understand why any bar doesn’t accept tabs. I can see setting up a cash only beer stand on busier nights. I can even understand going cash only on the very busiest nights if the place is so packed that there is no way to keep track of individual tabs.
While I don’t expect businesses to be available 24/7 I do expect them to somewhat cater to customers and be open beyond typical banker’s hours if they want their business.
And yet the fact that some stores chose to keep shorter hours suggests that they have made the cost/benefit analysis and have decided that the time off is worth more to them than the extra business.
Basically, they have already responded to your ultimatum: if you don’t want to go when they’re open, then they don’t want your business. Suck it up.
To continue on the credit card theme, the salon where I get my hair cut takes credit cards, but is not set up so you can add a tip to the charge. So someone who doesn’t have enough cash to pay for his or her salon services is supposed to have enough cash to leave a tip? I feel sorry for the stylists, who must get screwed out of tips pretty regularly.
Speaking as someone who grew up long ago in a rural area dominated by family businesses and before big box stores came in:
Most family small businesses would rather lose much money rather than pay a non family member a decent wage/bennies…and hiring people to run a store effectively without owners around would require this.