What part of "no" is confusing you? The N part? Or the O part?

The store closed at 11:00 PM. It has closed at 11:00 PM on Sundays since the dawn of time. It is almost the only store in the whole city open that late. But it closed.

Ah yes, the door. It was indeed unlocked. This is because the majority of our late-night customers are a step below poo-flinging monkeys on the evolutionary ladder, and are terminally incapable of picking up their own trash, or dropping a cigarette butt in the ashtray they’re about to steal. It takes twenty full minutes to clean up the crop circles of trash and cigarettes they leave out there – and this was what my co-worker was in the middle of doing when you barged in.

Now, I looked up from cleaning the espresso bar, and I figured you were too dumb to be holding up the store. But then I listened to the following exchange:

“I’m sorry, we’re closed. You can’t come in.”
“We just want some coffee!”
“No, we can’t make you coffee. We’re closed. You cannot be in here.”
“Come on, you can let us in for just four coffees!”
“No, sir, I am not allowed to let you in here, and we can’t make you any coffee.”

At this point I decide my co-worker needs backup, because you’ve been joined by three of your friends who also think nothing of walking into a closed store. So I come out from behind the counter and use my harsh annoying get the fuck out of my store you moss-licking pigknuckles voice.

“NO. We can NOT make you coffee. We are CLOSED. You need to leave, NOW.”

And oh! The looks of confusion! How could we not bow to your every need? How could we not empty the coffee urns we’re cleaning, brew a pot of coffee, reopen and uncount a till, and break the rules badly enough to risk immediate termination for four belligerent assholes who apparently can’t read a watch?

Be glad I was in a good mood. It’s all that saved you from an excellent view of the back seat of a squad car. Next time I’m keeping my cel phone at hand when I close.

Store is closed, lock the door. Learn it. Live it.

I feel your pain. I saw the same confusion when I worked at McD’s. Breakfast ends at 10:30am every day, as it has since the age of dinosaurs. Other restaurants have similar policies. It should be a fairly simple concept.

But no. Even though it’s 10:45, or 11 (or noon, on one memorable occasion), we surely still are serving breakfast, right? Can’t we please get two Egg McMuffins? The breakfast foods were put away already? Surely, they can be taken out, and two breakfast sandwiches can be snuck by, right? You can throw a hash brown or four in with the french fries-- we don’t mind. It’s not really too late, is it?

I wouldn’t have lasted as long as I did if I actually said to customers the things I was thinking.

Ah, I’ve ranted this rant.

I slung pizza for many moons. It never amazes me that people will come in after you are closed (or call for delivery) and insist that you MUST make them food. The ovens are off, the food is covered, the floor is mopped and drying, the employees are tired, and ready to go home.

But-you are so darn important that you assume that we will put all of this aside to concentrate on YOUR problem (you’re hungry, and too lzay to cook)

I agree with Cheesesteak: Lock the door…it is the only solution. (And yes, they will pound on the door anyway…but you can mock them from inside without them hearing you)

When I did retail, we got the same folk you did. Didn’t matter if we started cleaning up 30 minutes before we closed, we’d still have trouble with latecomers. What I wound up doing was stationing myself at the door at about 5 minutes till closing, then giving a hearty, heartfelt “Good night” to people as they left - then locking it as soon as they did. If someone came up to the door with a few minutes to spare, I’d open it and let them know we were closing in a few minutes - still, always got the pushy type like you ran into.

The other side is the people who want to come in before you open - I’ve gotten to stores 30 mins before opening with people standing outside. And if they see you with keys, they assume you’re opening the store. No! No! I’m just going IN the store!

Ah yes, I remember my banking days well, if not fondly.

Sure, ma’am, we can break into the vault (which is on a security timer, so hope you brought a drill), call the police to say that we are not being robbed, have a teller log in, process your transaction, have the teller balance her drawer again, log out, and put her drawer back in the vault via the big hole we just drilled in it.

After all, all you want is five dollars.

Folks who come late to a place of business, and then insist on being waited upon, are idiots.

Just from a safety point of view you probably should get in the habit of locking up right on time. How many times have you read in the papers about store employees being found dead the next morning and the till empty. People do crazy stuff for money or when they’ve taken inappropriate drugs. Don’t become a stat.

It is a fairly simple concept and I agree patrons should get a clue and realize that 11:00 a.m. does not equal 10:30 a.m.

However, the brain dead, time challenged workers at McD’s (I worked at Burger King) need to realize that 10:15 a.m. DOES NOT equal 10:30 a.m.

I can’t count the times that my watch reads prior to the closing time or breakfast to lunch switch time or whatever only to be sandbagged by the mental midget behind the counter. I understand you are tired and want to go home but the fuckin door says you’re open till 11-fucking-pm and I want my fucking coffee (or whatever since I don’t drink coffee). I don’t give a rat’s ass what time YOU think it is since my hyper-accurate, linked to the United States National Observatory and the National Institute for Standards and Technology say it is 10:45 in the PM to within better than a millionth of a second! The whole fucking Universe along with the sign on your door say that you had better have a pot of coffe boiling in there somewhere (ok…maybe not boiling as then I might have to sue you but it better be lukewarm!).

It works both ways folks…

I remember the ##%(&#% customers who used to drive up to the drive-thru window exactly at 11:00 and place a huge order when I worked at Wendy’s.

We didn’t try too hard to get their order right.

Maybe you should start! :wink:

Nah … I’d say he doesn’t need coffee. :slight_smile:

You could always save a nice aged pot from the day before for these sorts of emergencies. :wink:

Firstly, these guys barged in a good twenty minutes after we closed. It’s not like my fast watch hit 11:00 and these guys came in expecting service. We don’t close until the store clock says eleven – the computer would show us making no sales and closing our tills early if we tried to close before then.

Secondly, locking the door would mean locking out my coworker as he cleaned up the patio. Not a good idea. He had stepped maybe six feet inside the door to grab a couple of trash bags when these ishial callosities (sp? it’s late) barged in.

We’ve had to call the police before, because of people lurking around after the store closed. Not just hangin’ out like they don’t want to go home – sitting in a black car, parked in the red, staring at my other coworker as she cleaned the patio. Being very threatening. And a lot of time there’ll be guys banging on the door “Just gotta use the restroom!” “All I need is a cup of water!”

Dragonblink you’ve got a serious problem here. Obviously, there have been past incidents, there is no reason to think that those incidents won’t happen again, perhaps worse. You and your management should take steps to keep the staff safe that late at night.

If possible, I would try to start the cleanup of the patio before closing, or devote more than one person to the job. This will get the outside work finished as early as possible, so that the staff can work safely indoors with the door locked. Also, it keeps the staff paired up for safety, having someone cleaning up outside, alone, at 11:30pm isn’t a hot idea, especially with past history.

What kind of establishment is it?

Falling Down Fantastic movie.

It’s a coffee store – specifically a Starbucks. And oh yes, it has problems. Thankfully it’s not the store I work at during the school year, just one I’m working at for a few weeks for some summer cash.

Let me put it this way. Normally, it’s easy to find employees willing to work closing shifts – night people like myself, people who have other things to do during the day, etc etc. At this store, almost everyone has flatly refused to work nights. I’ve been working at this store for almost a month, and I’ve only worked with maybe five different people.

The customers we get at night are that rude, that obnoxious, that difficult, that frustrating, and that childish. They treat us like crap (even moreso than your average customer treats your average retail worker), they make the place a mess, and they will not leave. We cannot close the patio early because there are at least twenty people sitting around, who totally ignore any warnings like “We’re closing in fifteen minutes,” “Sorry, we’re closed,” and “I need to take those tables inside now.” An hour after we close they’re still standing in the parking lot and at the four tables that are bolted down.

It’s in a shopping center, which provides no security guards or anything. For a few days after we called them about the guys in the car, the local police would cruise through the parking lot after we closed, but otherwise unless they do something specifically threatening and the cops get there in time to catch them at it, we can’t do anything.

When the guys were lurking in the car, I did come out and help clean the patio, partly to get it done faster and partly so my coworker wouldn’t be alone out there. But I’m not going to be working at this store past Friday, and I’m probably the most adamant about calling the cops.

It makes me angry. My coworkers are all great people, but the store is totally ruined by the unusually high asshole quotient after four PM. I could go on about it for days.

(I should probably add that the customers at this store are so bad that I’m actually looking forward to going back to the arrogant yuppies and spoiled high school brats at my home store. Ech.)

Oh, God, yes.

Back in the days of breakdancing, I managed a movie theater. It was our policy that 15 minutes after the last movie started, we closed the doors and balanced the books.

On a particular night, our last movie started at 11:00. We closed promptly at 11:15.

At 11:30, I got a call from a certain well known local reviewer (can’t say his name online, but it rhymes with Crudnoy). He complained that he needed to see a movie so he could write a review, and that our corporate policy stated that we were not to close our doors until 11:00. He threatened to get me fired, on the grounds that I didn’t know how to tell time.

The movie he was to review started at 10:30.