When I slung sausage (so to speak) at the local PizzaSlut, we had a different method when clients insisted on barging in and ordering at closing. It when something like this:
Big Jerk: “Aww c’omon you can make one pizza can’t you.”
Me: “Sure. Of course, it’s gonna cost a little more since we have to get everything out again and fire up the oven but if it’s that important, you won’t mind will you?”
BJ: (now squinty suspiciously) “How much more?”
Me: “Oh, $100.00 above the standard price.”
BJ: “Are you nuts? No way.”
Me: “Buh-bye.”
I work in a clothing store where women will come in after we’re closed and upon hearing we’re closed will say:
“Oh - Can’t I just look around?”
“But I HAVE to have a dress for a function tonight!”
“Well - Where do YOU have to be?”
I’ve taken to telling these broads that I have to go home and get dinner for my 2 sons. I just fail to mention that my 2 sons are bunnies…
We close at 7:30 in the evening. I had a woman pound on the door at 7:55 demanding to be let in. When I inquired (I thought perhaps she needed an ambulance or something) she said she thought we were open until 8:00, and had rushed accross town to get here.
Listen lady, what the hell did you think you were gonna do 5 minutes before we close anyhow? There’s nothing on the hold rack. You didn’t call and have me hold all the size M blue tops (which we will do). I’ve never seen you before. What am I trying to say? Feck. Off.
Argh, I hate this. I worked in a bookstore for a year and a half, and the worst worst example was this lady who came up after we had turned off the lights, counted out the registers, and were just getting ready to leave. It was fricking 11:20 pm, we’d been closed for twenty minutes, and she absolutely would not go away. We had the door locked, but she kept banging on it and yelling that she HAD to buy some book, she was visiting from out of town and she’d seen it here earlier and it was of the utmost importance.
My coworker was a lot nicer than I would have been in her refusals to allow the woman to enter.
Fortunatly, both of the store owners not only think I’m great (they buy me gifts ALL THE TIME - horray for me!), they’re the ones that have said specifically that a) once we’re closed, boot people out b) say I have to get home to my family (just don’t mention that my family consists of 2 bunnies and a parakeet) and c)be as bitchy as I feel the need to.
Really, it’s the perfect job. I get a shwack of cool clothes, my bosses get me gifts, and when customers are snot boxes, I can tell them to get stuffed. It’s all good.
See, that’s pretty awesome, alice. Most of the people I’ve worked for in retail never wanted people to be kicked out once the store closed, for fear of losing their business in the future. I know, poor logic. We used to have one owner who would come in around 10 mins before closing and stay there, bullshitting with the customers, being a happy-go-lucky, eager-to-please sycophant - meaning we didn’t get to really close until 20 minutes later than we were supposed to.
I got you beat. I got all of you beat.
For a while I owned a movie theatre. But for several complicated reasons that we won’t go into, I closed the theatre. And I mean closed it. It was a single screen place, the type that you don’t see anymore because they all went out of business.
Anyway I close theatre. The was some publicity about the closing as it was a town landmark. So Thursday night we have the last shows and that’s the end.
Friday night me and a few friends are at the theatre having some drinks. They are trying to make me feel less like a loser, which is really difficult for a guy who has lost everything.
The marquee is turned off and reads CLOSED. There are very few lights on in the theatre. Two guys walk and ask me “Whats showin’?” I just laugh. It is the topper joke ending of a bad 3 years. I say while laughing “We are closed for business.” The guy punches me in the gut. I double over and fall to my knees and my friend calls 911. The two clowns beat it.
What I love are the people too lazy to get out of their cars-so they send their five year old son to walk across a dark parking lot at 10:30 pm and knock on the door. Priceless.
This thread reminded me of when I was visiting my sister in Beaumont and had gone out New Year’s Eve 1999 in search of some root beer. You see, it’s a tradition in my family to stay up and drink root beer floats. Not being able to drive at the time, I walked around the neighborhood to see if anyone’s open. I found a gas station that still had its lights on so I approached the door, whereupon I noticed the “CLOSED” sign; it had closed about 5 minutes earlier. When I looked up, it appeared as if the clerk was signalling for me to enter anyway so I tried the door. Found it to be locked, of course. Then I notice the clerk wasn’t trying to tell me to come in, she was motioning for me to go away.
Oh yeah, Jeff - when I was in retail, if we were in the store after closing and a car pulled up, we ducked behind the counter so they wouldn’t see us. Because you know, if an employee is in the store, it must be open for business, no matter the time!
why is it that customers can be stupid!!!
ok, i worked in a movie theater for a year and a half (best time of my life) and like most theaters we close the snack bar 15 minutes after the last showing, and we have a rather sign that says so. but we still got people who would come up demeanding service…that doesent bother me that much, what does bother me is when you cleaning out the popcorn machine…(and i mean its completly empty and you’re half inside cleaning its inerds) and some person starts banging on the counter trying to get youre attention, and when you’ve had enough and finale look up they ask for popcorn…WTF!!! can’t you see there isen’t any???
sorry but this is turning into a huge rant...oh one more,
our theater listed our show-times in the local paper like almost all theates do, but we had a little problem. we changed our shows friday nights, but the paper came out on wednesday, so the shows listed would always be for next week…so many people could not grasp this, and whould show up for movies not playing… we would politely explain the situation but they would then starting yelling at US for being incompetent…i hate it when low level employies get yelled at for things they have no control over
Ok, y’all, not every customer is a saint. But if your watch was off, or you’d just missed a bus, wouldn’t you be really, REALLY grateful, if you’d had a terrible day, to someone who let you in when “officially” the store was closed?
It’s not just a business transaction, it’s an exchange between two human beings. Let someone in, and maybe it won’t say “Be back in 30 minutes” for an hour the next time you go to their store.
I don’t think it’s so much about an ‘exchange between two human beings’, as it is rude people demanding food, when clearly the food is put away and grills and coffee makers have been cleaned. Cleaning industrial grills and coffee makers is a JOB, not at all like just wiping off a home grill.
To fire up the grill, or make coffee, or start up a pizza oven, plus getting out all the food is a huge PITA after you’ve cleaned up. Plus, you do it once, that same person will be back again the next night demanding service after you’ve closed.
And, as alice in wonderland said, service and retail people DO have lives outside of work. They’d like to go home.
“Where do YOU have to be?” How unbelieveably rude. :rolleyes:
Rudeness is out of order if a customer is asking for a favor, no question. Nary a one at all.
And if the kit is all packed up, and there’s no way within 30 minutes to get it started again, absolutely, the store is closed.
However, it’s pretty darn obvious that’s often not what’s happening. Frequently:
The worker’s ticked with their job, really wants to be somewhere else, and doesn’t care about anything, except leaving at the earliest possible moment. Fuck customers.
Oh. Thanks. I was just asking for a cup of coffee.
A wannabe petty minimum wage bureaucrat observes that the “official” closing time of the store is X hours, and that, by God, they can tell time when a watch is pointed directly at their face, and that it’s THREE minutes past that time. What else needs to be said? The natural laws of the universe are at stake!: don’t give an inch.
Well, I’m just thankful they aren’t in a position of real responsibility. Nod and smile. Wish them well. Hope and anticipate they are never, never promoted.
Payroll in retail is tight, therefore overtime is discouraged. Where I worked, if you were scheduled until 9pm and clocked out later, there better be a good reason. We were given a half hour after the service desk closed to be finished - balancing out the registers, the cash/check/credit card and debit card payments, preparing the bank deposits and processing the leftover cash (bundling the paper money and rolling coins).
If someone wandered up after closing and wanted a refund, we would have had to reopen a register, process the refund, rebalance the refund log, and reprocess the cash, and still get out on time.
That’s why the opening/closing hours are posted in large letter and small words. Management, not the people actually working, makes the decision.
partly warmer, have you ever worked in retail or the foodservice industry? Just asking.
If you have, then never mind.
If not, then you honestly have no idea what it’s like to be trying to close up a store, get it cleaned for the next shift, count out drawers (tills), and get out of there on time
(because the beaurocratic bigwigs in the home office have declared that no one is allowed to have overtime), with people banging on the door, asking to come in and “just look around.” Or asking for one cup of coffee, after you’ve already dissassembled the coffee maker and cleaned it.
It’s also a security issue. That’s when the robbers hit stores, when there aren’t any other customers around, and they know the money is out in the open.
It may seem rude, but it’s just the way it has to be.
I used to work in a large store that sold fine jewelry and giftware and fine china and silver. Nice, high quality, really expensive stuff. When we did inventory, we had to hire extra security guards for the front door, because every year, without fail, even though there were large signs on the door that said “CLOSED FOR INVENTORY” we’d get people banging on the door, demanding to be let in to “just look.” They were just clueless as to why we couldn’t let them in. They really thought it would be okay to come in and pick through the merchandise as we were trying to count it.
You are way out of line and your naivety is really pissing me off. They are not “petty minimum wage bureaucrat(s)”. Let me make this simple. THEY CAN’T HELP YOU FUCKFACE. THEY DON’T MAKE THE DECISIONS. There is nothing bureaucratic about being a minimum wage employee in retail. You simply do what you are told. If you don’t, well then you don’t have a job. Why don’t you get this? Here is why you can’t have your goddamned coffee after the store is closed (so you can spill it on your crotch and sue the company):
They don’t have anymore. The equipment is put up. Gone. Kaput. Get it.
It is dangerous. How would you like it if a family member was found dismembered in the freezer of a fast food place because a naive coworker let someone in after closing just to get a cup of coffee. This really does happen.
Everyone has to wait until the imbecile leaves. Closing down is a group effort. By asking for your one stupid cup of coffee, you will be making 2 - 15 people work overtime and be late for engagements after work, family, or other obligations. No one leaves until all the work is done.
You risk losing your job if you do it for all of the above reasons.
Many of these people are high school and college students that are working their way through school developing life skills that you apparently never got and WILL BE promoted to much bigger and better things some day. I did. I have no idea why you wish them badly for working hard and doing their job.
hardygrrl, BiblioCat, and Shagnasty, i can tell at once we aren’t talking about the same retail experience. Shagnasty, you can turn the flame off. I’ve never worked in a fast food joint, and never even retail in a large store. I was speaking strictly from my experience doing time in small mom-and-pop stores, where the owner could do whatever they wanted.
I can well understand now that in a strict environment re-opening the store would be out of the question.
I also understand that quite a few people don’t work in an environment anything like this. Experience with workers (at supermarkets, at hardware stores, at bookstores) strongly suggests the typical worker can bend quite a few rules. IF THEY WANT TO.
Don’t tell me there aren’t soda jerks who don’t feel hot, mounting resentment towards anyone who’s trying to keep them 30 seconds beyond their closing time. The current state of the equipment doesn’t even enter into their thinking. And yes, I’ve been there.
