Workers spend all day making money to spend. At the end of eight hours or so, just when they have enough, they step out of their factories and offices only to have department store doors slammed in their faces. It has been this way throughout history and even now, when consumerism is almost a demand, night shopping is not available on any real level.
It’s only because I read a recent, shocking thread about Los Angeles nightlife (apparently it’s a “nine o’clock town”) that I can admit just how limited retail hours were when I was a child in New Zealand. In the sixties my father only had access to shops from about 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on a Friday night. There was late night shopping only on that day. How did men cope back then?
This is my question: Why don’t stores open when workplaces close? It’s makes business sense.
How many people want to go shopping at a department store after 9 pm? Not many I imagine. If there were a demand, the stores would change their hours. They do at Christmastime.
And yes people in L.A. don’t go out much at night. One of the main reasons is that a lot of people have to get up so early to deal with the horrendously long commutes.
Also, L.A. is so spread out, there is no one particular place that people go to gather together at night. So we just all go home, watch TV, and go to bed, with the exception of the hipsters.
I think that the OP is a damn good question. Most stores are absolutely dead during the day. The only busy times are around lunch and in the evenings. Weekday mornings and mid-afternoons must be very unprofitable times for most businesses.
There was a story in the Washington Post several months ago about the number of retailers in the area, and nationwide, who are in fact extending their hours so people can actually come shopping after work. Supermarkets, hardware stores, office supply stores, auto repair outlets, and department stores are among the leaders.
Back in the old days, men were men and the womenfolk didn’t have jobs. This gave the little ladies plenty of leisure time which they filled by raising children, cleaning the house, cooking the meals, and doing all the shopping. So there was no need to open shops at night; it was expected that after five, the men would be home from work and the women would be there with them.
You know, material goods in the post-industrial world have only been made accessible to men through marriage. That’s an astonishing thought isn’t it? It is only housewives who have been able to shop. Another astonishing thought is that until about 100 years ago all gay people got married. Unless they became nuns or monks they married and had children. It was the only way they could buy soap and hair conditioner.
You would think, at least, that if stores opened at midday and closed eight to ten hours later they would pick up a lot of custom. When I went on a day trip to another city years ago I had to take an early morning flight. The function I was supposed to attend didn’t start till 1 p.m. so I had to wander around the city all morning. All the stores were open but it was like a ghost city. Just about every shop assistant in the city was idle. At noon that all changed but by 1 p.m. it was quiet again. Shop assistants who are not allowed to read during down times must be all secretly, certifiably crazy.
I truely believe that if shops closed more often and had only a few hours, at more relevant times, they’d be able to make just as much money, but have much less expenses (utilities, wages, etc).
When I’m in the UK, I’ve noticed that shops always seem a lot busier than here in Ontario. I really believe that it’s cause they are open for far less hours… so they do all their business in a smaller time frame.
It’s like when Ontario introduced Sunday shopping… all it really seemed to do was make Monday dead (going by what people I know in retail tell me).
And when there’s a holiday Monday and the shops are closed… watch out on Tuesday, everyone comes that day!
Strange points about pre-Industrial gay hygiene aside, I don’t think you’ve quite got it right on this men/marriage/consumer goods chain.
I’m not sure where exactly you’re getting the examples of shops closing at the end of an eight-hour day, but that is definitely not the case in my area of the world. All department stores that I’m familiar with are open until at least eight P.M., and many others are open until nine or ten. I think it’s precisely because they realize that the work force is changing in its composition, and many households no longer have a member who is available to shop or run errands during the day. In addition, it’s rare that people work 7 days a week as a regular schedule anymore, and most stores are open on the weekends to accomodate shoppers who are unable/unwilling to make the trip on weekday evenings.
I can speak, quite proudly in fact, as a bachelor who has absolutely no problem in acquiring the consumer goods necessary to maintain reasonable levels of comfort and hygiene. While your theory that marriage was a necessary relationship if one wished to be able to eat and have soap may have once held true, it no longer does today.
While there may be a trend in some places towards flexible retail hours, historically they have been extremely inflexible - a fact which seems to be at odds with the vast amounts of money spent on advertising. My question might still be valid if I confined it to the twentieth century or rephrased it: why have men never shopped?
Camille Paglia (who is unfairly starring in a BBQ Pit thread near you) is big on the fact that men live their whole lives in the control of women - their mothers hand them over to their wives. I knew a married man once who made me quite sad by telling me that, in his whole life, he had never really eaten a meal of his own choosing. His mother had cooked for him and then his wife cooked. He wanted to cook but his wife apparently wasn’t amenable to the idea. I feel sure his clothes were chosen for him too.
I hope you’re right about flexible shopping hours - it could mean men will finally start dressing how they want to. Oh no…there’s something I hadn’t thought of. Sooner or later the promise keepers are going to find out their wives’ underwear stores sell handcuffs.
Maybe I’m missing something, but for the last decade or so, I’ve been able to get whatever I want whenever I want it, with a few exceptions (which I’ll detail in a moment). There are two 24-hour supercenters within a short drive of my home. If I have a hankerin’ to buy a propane grill and some floor laminate at 3 A.M., I can get either item at Wal~Mart®. Before they switched to 24-hour days, they were open until, oh, 10 P.M. or so most nights.
Banking, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely. Excluding ATMs, banking seems to operate on this same 1950’s model of doing business: we’re only open when the men are at work, so the women can do the banking. My bank is only open from 9 until noon on Saturday-- why even bother opening at all, if you’re only going to be open for three hours?
As an aside, I was at a mall in the Chicago area many many years ago the Saturday night before a Bears game. This was in late November. Anyhoo, I got in the doors at about 5:55 P.M. and noticed that they were in the process of closing everything down. I asked the clerk what the hell was going on and she gave me this look and said, “We’re closing.” So here I am at a mall in the middle of Christmas season in a major metropolitan area at 6 o’clock on a Saturday night and they were closing??? WTF??? How did (do?) these places stay in business with hours like that?
Since I prefer shopping at night, I’ve been very happy with the trend around Long Island of malls staying open till 9:30PM, big box retailers till 10:00PM, bookstores till 11:00PM, and 24hr gas stations and supermarkets.
Now, if we could only get the small independant stores and bank branches to stay open past 6:00PM…
I don’t know if all Home Depots are open 24 hours, but the one nearest me is, and it is always busy at least until 11:00 or so. It’s the best thing around should your plumbing go awry at 3 am.
Additionally, I can’t think of a single grocery store in town that isn’t open 24 hours. If only the mall was open earlier on the weekends and later during the week…
Chalk me up as another of the ‘WTF are they talking about?’ crowd.
In my 34 years of experience I’ve never faced a problem like that. Retail stores here in the DC area (at least where I have lived) are all open until 8:30 or 9. No worries there at all.
Heck, in several of the malls locally stores are required to be open until 9PM. It’s part of the rental agreement.
Even in my extremely small town rural current home (Hello, Hillsboro!) the stores stay open until 8 or so. Though, admittedly, they sometimes close early if there’s no action.
What in the world are you talking about? Where are limited retail hours a problem for anyone in the US living in anything bigger than Dogpatch or the Aleutian Islands? I live in a County of only 85,000 people on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and a trade market area of about 350,000 to 400,000 and virtually every chain retail store is open 10 AM - 9 PM Mon-Sat with 10/12-6 on Sunday with the exception of smaller entrepreneurs and mom and pop type stores. Walmart and grocery stores are open practically 24 hours a day.
Per your OP where, specifically, is this denial of retail access a problem in the 50 United States of America?
This actually makes a lot of sense. Since HD is staffed 24 hours anyway (to handle restocking and such) it doesn’t take much more for them to open the store up to customers (although you may have to wait for a cashier). Even before they were open late (the store near me closes at midnight) they never made a big deal about rushing customers out at 10pm, their previous official closing time.
I’m scratching my head over this. In most urban and suburban areas in the U.S., plenty of stores are open until 9:30, which gives people on the day shift plenty of time. Nearly all supermarkets are open 24 hours. It might be a problem on the night shift, but you can go early.
In some rural areas, it may be more difficult for two reasons: not enough population to support the evening hours and the fact that small business owners don’t want to work late hours (no one does). The people running small businesses value their free time just like anyone.
Now, going back 50 or more years, it was rare for a retail store to be open past 6:00 p.m. except maybe for one night a week. That usually was good enough. There was enough time to get to the stores to pick up necessities after work; if you didn’t need it immediately, you went out on Saturday. People planned a lot more and, if they didn’t have something, did without until the store was open. Also, in urban areas, workers could often walk to a store on their lunch hour.
The idea that they get more business by longer hours isn’t necessarily true. If all stores close at 6 p.m., your customers will eventually come to you when they can. In other words, if I need a quart of milk and the stores are closed, I’ll still end up buying the milk eventually. If you’re the only one remaining open 24 hours, then you’ll pick up business, but once everyone goes to that schedule, you’re back on an equal footing.
I’ve lived my life in central Alberta, and I haven’t seen the same problems either. When I was growing up (late 70’s, early 80’s), I recall a lot of limited shopping hours. That all started changing at least 15 years ago, IIRC.
Malls here are generally open until 9, at least on weekdays. Most supermarkets are open until 11 or 12. My old bank was open until 8, thus making it popular. The only places I can think of that generally close earlier are those that depend less or not at all on retail business, or have such a monopoly that they don’t have to stay open late (example: paying my gas bill in person). I can even go to the dentist or optometrist at 8 pm.
I would think that my area would be farther behind than most places in the US. Most of my American friends speak of 24 hour Wal-Marts and the like.
I recently needed to buy some fuses for my A/C. I remembered hearing that our local Wal•Mart had recently gone 24 hours so I went up there, this is about 2 am, and the place was a zoo. You can only go in through the exit, door which are to remain unlocked for fire code reasons were locked. A night crew was there busy filling shelves from huge pallets blocking the isles. I asked on guy how was working in the fuse isle no less, if I could get by and he said, “Yeah in a minute.” I stood there and watched him meticulously stock duck tape. When he finished and moved his pallet truck I said, “Well, I guess this store isn’t about the customer is it?” to this he sneeringly replied, “nope”.
Oh, and the things I could tell you about what goes on during the late night at a local grocery store.