I guess I wasn’t clear- I was specifically referring to the case where the policy of the establishment is to seat people until the posted closing time and the staff are therefore obligated to say "“Oh, please, order! Of course we would love to serve you” since they wouldn’t be so obligated if the policy were to stop seating people thirty minutes or an hour prior to the posted time. It doesn’t appear that the employees at Skald the Rhymer’s example feel obligated to say “Please come in and order” 15 minutes or half an hour before closing.
Your experience may be different from mine, but in my experience, when a doctor lists office hours from 2-4, that means the last appointment is at 4 not that the last appointment is expected to be done at 4. When motor vehicles lists the hours as 8-4, that means the doors are open until 4 and everyone who was there before 4 will be served. As a customer, I’m generally not interested in what time the staff at a doctor’s office, motor vehicles or a restaurant expects to leave for the day- what I’m interested in is the latest time I can get there and be served. If in fact, restaurants post a closing time of 10 pm, and the owner’s policy is to stop seating people at 9:30, that doesn’t make any sense and is annoying , but it’s the owner’s prerogative. But if the posted closing time is 10 pm, and the owners policy is to seat customers up until 10, that’s no different from the doctor’s policy to make the last appointment at 4.
Same here, but I’d be less likely to go in that late. I used to work at a job where I wanted the last customer to be gone at 10. It pissed me off when they lingered. So I don’t want to be “that guy.”
Having said that, on the few occasions when I’m still there after closing, I’m OK with it if there are still other customers there. As long as I’m not the last one there.
To me, a restaurant is more like a retail establishment: I can go into the mall whenever they are open, but it’s very poor form to keep browsing after closing time, and it’s irrelevant whether or not I got there ten minutes to close or two hours before close. The clerks have to tell me that it’s fine for me to keep shopping, but I know it’s not usual or customary for people to be there that late, and for me to unexpectedly extend their hours would be rude. Do you browse in retail stores past closing time, when they’ve locked the door to new customers?
I think there is a pretty strong convention that you don’t extend your stay at a restaurant much past close. Because of that convention, servers and staff have a reasonable expectation that they will end their work day at a given time. To extend that work day is not nice.
They’ll let people come in and order coffee, but you only get a to-go cup, I think. Order a cookie and you get it still wrapped up and placed in a to-go bag. They act on the assumption that every customer who comes in after 23:30 intends to dash in and dash out.
You should always be accommodated, and as you move upscale the accommodating gets better.
At fast food the appointed hour arrives and that’s it. I’ve worked in some tres chic joints that would always accommodate regardless. And none of the servers minded because it meant more coin. It’s not uncommon for the manager to ‘put something together’, not on the menu.
These are the same places, on a Monday night, after say 9pm, they just close up after the ‘rush’! That’s kind of the art of it, for a good manager. It takes a lot of people working together, but everyone from the server to the busboy or dishwasher knows, coming through the door, the hours for their shift are entirely open ended.
You can make a lot of money, in such a place if you’re good at what you do, one more table means a better night tip wise. That’s all good!
Your experience is very different from mine. Doctors, dentists, vets, any medical type office I’ve ever had any doings with has set the last standard appointment time such that the patient could reasonably expect to be gone at or before closing time. After that time, they only take truly urgent/emergent cases.
Ditto. The doctor’s office is open and available to take calls until closing time, but the last appointment you can make is typically about half an hour before they close.
Edit: Just saw Gary’s post. I am defining closed to mean “no longer open.”
To me a closing time means “This is when we want to be doing the work of ‘closing.’” Unless I’m planning to help them do that work, I should get out.
Saying it’s more money for the restaurant or server doesn’t make sense to me. If a restaurant only ever had one customer between 2 and 4, I think most of us would agree it would make sense for them to be closed between those hours. We wouldn’t say that it was worth it if they just had one customer. So I don’t see the argument that it’s obviously worth it to serve you if you make it through the door. One customer isn’t enough.
Now management might be trying to please people and hope that it means you’ll come back, but I doubt it makes them money if they only have one customer. I could be wrong, but restaurant margins never seem that high.
You should be able to enter a restaurant up until closing time, order and be served food - but excessive lingering is rude and counterproductive in my book.
As for “inconveniencing” the staff - hell, pay them to stay an hour past “closing”, or close down an hour sooner.
“No longer open” as in “the doors are locked and there are no customers in the building” or “the closed sign is out but there are still customers eating” or “we’re not taking any more walkins but the people waiting in the lobby will still be seated” or “we’re not seating any more people” or “the kitchen is closed to new orders” or …
“If you show up after this point the doors will be locked and if you happen to already be inside it’s time to start finishing up, because the place is closed.”
Actually, I don’t browse at all. But when I have been in retail stores near closing time, they start making announcements “ABC store is closing in 30 minutes. Please finish your shopping and bring your purchases to the register” and then again at 15 minutes and again after the doors are locked. And one or two times when the store was busy and I was therefore still on line after the doors were locked , I saw staff tell people still shopping that they must get on line now.
I’m certainly not saying it’s just fine to sit there for hours after the posted closing over chatting over coffee or to take 20 minutes deciding what to order. (and in fact, I don’t think those things are fine even hours before closing) What I’m saying is if the owner posts a closing time of 10 and expects people who arrive at 10 to be seated and served a meal, then “closing time” for that establishment would be more accurately described as “last seating” time and when employees are estimating the end of their workday , they need to take the time required to serve people who are seated at 10 into account, just like laundromat workers have to account for time to wash and dry a load that goes in at the posted “last wash” time.The owner who wants the customers who arrive at 10 seated and served certainly knows they will not be leaving at 10:10 and so do the employees.
To go back to the doctor example, I very specifically did not use the phrase "closing time" because there is certainly a difference of opinion in what "closing time" means in the restaurant business. My doctors, vets, etc may or may not have a closing time- I wouldn't know. Because they don't give that time to the patients. The card lists office hours as 2-4 pm and means the last appointment is at 4 pm. They may well expect to be out of the office at 4:30 - but I don't know that because they don't list that on the card. Nearly every job I've had, from fast food to bank teller to a couple of government agencies has had a time when the doors closed to customers/clients - and while in every job we had an estimate of what time we would leave , that was **not** the "closing time" given to the customers/clients.
That works for a retail store, but how can I start finishing up if you’ve just taken my order or I’m still waiting to be seated or if the doctor hasn’t gotten to me yet or…? Finishing up isn’t always within the customer/patients control.
You go to very, very different doctors/vets/etc. than any I have ever been in contact with, then. The door, answering machine message, business cards, and website all list office hours as whatever hours that they’re in the office, usually something like 8 am to 5 or 6 pm. But when you call to make an appointment, the last appointment time is usually about 4:30. If you show up at 4:45, they’ll see you if you have a true urgency, but your sniffles will be scheduled for another day. That allows them to still be taking phone calls, letting people pick up prescriptions, etc. while they’re finishing that last patient and getting everything ready for the next day, then count down the drawer at closing time.
Could be a regional thing- and I’m sure the staff at my doctors/vets etc have things to do while the last patient is finishing up. But if the office hours are listed as 8-4, and the last appointment is at 4, it wouldn’t occur to me to plan to pick up a prescription after 4 anyway, unless I was specifically told it was OK to come later.
They way I understand it (and this was true when I worked in hospitality, I don’t believe it’s changed much since then) is that if the sign says closing at 10pm, that means you can get things like coffee and desserts right up until then, but actual cooked food probably stopped 30 mins to an hour ago.
It is, of course, considered appallingly poor form to enter a restaurant and order anything “involved” 5 minutes before closing, even if management will make the staff cook the food.
Of course, it depends what the establishment is - I’m not going to feel bad ordering a steak sandwich at the pub at 1:45pm when lunch finishes at 2 (nor would I reasonably expect saliva sauce in it for doing so). But going to “proper” restaurant and ordering a full meal at 9:40pm when they close at 10pm? Dick move.
I was back to talking about restaurants. If you were just seated, then you arrived at the restaurant shortly before closing, which I wouldn’t do anyway, but if you did, then you should order quickly, limit your order to meal only (skip the appetizer and dessert), pay quickly and then leave. If you’ve already been seated, then, you know, hurry it up a little. They locked the front door; that means it’s time to go.
The problem for a server with one table lingering long after close is that even if they are decent tippers, it’s still just a single table. You rarely make a decent wage when you’ve only got one table - certainly not compared to the rest of your night.
So, yeah, there’s some truth to not being the last to leave. If there are still three or four tables, I’d be much happier to stay longer.
Picked other because it depends on the kind of place/country/etc. In US, I expect servers to be bitchy about 45 minutes before closing. At a bar in a restaurant, I’d order food up until closing, but hope I started a Z-Pack.
Rule of thumb – they hate you, and eke their “careers” as singer-songwriters with service jobs, and are therefore not professionals. Expect the standard jive and you’ll never be disappointed – anyway, if it’s that late, and you can’t be arsed to cook, just get a pizza from Pizza the Hutt.
