10 Minutes Before Closing

[Boozy]

During the last hour of my closing shifts, I get no one between 8:30 and 8:55, and then two or three people in the last five minutes.

This happens every shift. So yes - it must be a conspiracy.

[ShinyGreenApple]

Ugh, this happened almost every time I closed at WD, too. They closed at 11, so naturally people would literally RUN through the doors between 10:55 and 10:59 with looks of absolute triumph and glee on their faces. Or the ones who would take for-effing-ever and then come up to the register - "Oh, are you closing? I thought ya'll were 24 hours, when did ya'll stop being open all night?"

"In June of 2000, sir/ma'am."

Or at Wallyworld, despite the fact that they are open 24/7, there would be epic pileups at the checkouts at midnight. Every. Single. Night. Which sucked, because there were usually about ten of us scheduled to get off at 12. It was hell

[Jbball]

I knew someone that worked at Pizza Hut back in the day. Someone called up for an order 5 minutes before closing and demanded a pizza, even though it couldn't be made and delivered before the posted closing time. So, after 10 minutes of yelling and threats, they dicided to make the pizza. They rolled the dough on the floor and spit in it. I hope those people got what they ordered!

[Broomjockey]

I knew someone that worked at Pizza Hut back in the day. Someone called up for an order 5 minutes before closing and demanded a pizza, even though it couldn't be made and delivered before the posted closing time. So, after 10 minutes of yelling and threats, they dicided to make the pizza. They rolled the dough on the floor and spit in it. I hope those people got what they ordered!

That was incredibly unprofessional, disgusting, and inappropriate of them, and under no circumstances do we condone food tampering on this board. Please everyone keep that in mind.

[blas]

Moving swiftly along....

If anyone on here remembers my first night at the factory, well I had to work at the gas station that day. It was one of the first Sundays we were going to close an hour early.

So I'm already nervous about a new job, and nervous about will I be able to pull this off and close early?, and wouldn't you know it, 15 minutes before close, people just poured into the parking lot and would NOT leave.......there was a small break at about 5 minutes to, and I ran and locked the doors and shut off the lights just before another rush was on their way. Oh thank heaven.

SO many people were pissed about it.

After that Sunday, every Sunday night was a challenge to close early. I think customers either decided to fight back, or none of them ever got the hint. I'd always make sure to lock up 5 minutes early at least, to prevent the last minute people and to prevent having to stay any later.

I'd then count my till and watch hordes of people pull into the parking lot, try to get gas, several people would bang on the windows or yank on the door.

How dreadful. So glad I never have to deal with that again.

And do NOT get me started on how hard it was to shoo teenage girls out of the Deb shop at mall closing time.

[myswtghst]

I don't think it matters where you work, or what your hours are, it always seems to work out this way.

For instance, regardless of whether I was in the 7a-7p call center or the 24x7 call center I'm in now, I constantly get calls, usually of the complicated and painfully long variety, within a few minutes of time to leave. Often, these are also the people who want help from a specialty team that is long gone for the day, and are grumpy about that, too.

[cinema guy]

At least at the cinema we don't have new customers come in as we are closing. Also we aren't afraid to shoo people out into the cold to wait for their taxis so we can close up and go home.

There's always someone who wants to buy popcorn or a hotdog just as we are closing the kiosk for the night though.

[Peppergirl]

At my travel call center, I'll sit there sometimes an hour or so before finally getting a call at 11:52 pm (i leave at midnight) and it's inevitably someone who has to book their complicated international trip for 3 months from now.

Calls earlier in the day? The 30 second variety like "Can you resend my itinerary to me, I misplaced mine"

We joke that we have hidden cameras on us and the SCs conspire to call at the last minute.

Somewhat OT: The other night out of 22 calls, 8 of them were of the heavily-accented, barely-speaks-English variety. No one else that day got any.

[LadyAndreca]

We don't usually have a lot of trouble with people ducking in the store at the last minute, but I've noticed a strange phenomenon that whenever I get a pileup of handbaskets at the service desk and think I can take the 30 seconds to duck out from behind the counter and walk 20 feet to put them up, someone (and usually several someones) immediate makes a beeline for the counter.

I tested it yesterday. It was dead, barely any guests at all. I put my hand on a basket and looked around...and someone had just walked in the door with a bag and was heading straight for me.

[TryNotToBeThatOne]

My mom claimed that they congregated in the parking lot until there was a crowd of them & then they'd all come in at once.

[greensinestro]

I posted a thread a while back about crap like this. When I worked for Publix, always close to closing time, some asshat would come in and not buy a pack of smokes, or a bag of candy, or a gallon of milk. No, they had to grab a cart and do their entire week's worth of shopping. Yet, they had the earlier hours to come in and do it, when business was slow.

We used to have this sort of thing happen at Bellsouth also. At 6pm, in the department I worked in, that was when we would close our phones and go home. Almost every day though, some poor soul would get stuck right at 6pm, when that one call manages to sneak in right under the wire, tying that rep up for 15, 20, 30 minutes at the most. Many times, due to me doing what I was paid to do, I was that poor soul that was stuck.

It's just a phenomenon of rude people. It will never go away.

[Dips]

At our company, Carl stops taking calls 15 minutes before we close because he always handles issues that take a long time. We post that fact on all our literature, on our web site and on our phone greeting.

The rest of us here handle stuff that usually takes a few minutes and don't mind taking calls right up until we close. When the issue looks like it's going to take a while after close, our boss is OK with us telling the customer something like this:

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid we have been closed for the last x minutes and it looks like this issue is going to take a lot longer to fix than I estimated. Let me get your telephone number and I'll call you back first thing tomorrow. We open at 9:00 eastern time. Is 9:00 good for you or would you prefer I call you later in the day?"

I'm sure someday I'll give that speech to an SC and he'll go off on me, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm lucky that most of my customers definitely don't suck.

[aurelemsrealm]

At a previous c-store job, I had the following closing time incident happen....

At this point, I had worked at the store for about 4 years. It had been a 24-hour store for most of the first 3 years that I'd worked there. We'd been closing at midnight for a few months, so most of the regulars had become accustomed to the changes.

So, I went about the normal closing procedures as usual. Within the last five minutes before closing time, I would lock the doors and shut off all outdoor lighting except for the perimeter lights. I only opened the doors to let customers out. I let no one in for any reason. After everyone was out, then I'd shut off all indoor lights except for the ones over the registers. I did my closing reports, pulled my car up to the door, turned off the remaining lights, set the alarm, and called it quits for the night.

This one night, I'd already set the alarm and locked the door for the last time. My car was right there and already running. This guy pulls up beside my car and asks if he can buy some beer. I tell him we're closed, but that there is a 24-hour location just up the road. He grumbles that he doesn't want to go that far and I should reopen the store, blah, blah, blah. I respond by getting in my car and leaving him there. I circle the block a couple of times until he finally leaves the parking lot. Then, I just drive around town a little bit before I go home in case he'd get some strange idea to follow me.

[Catwoman2965]

This happened to us just last night! All week, its been dead at night, and last night was no exception. So its about 8:50 (we close at 9) and there are still 2 customers in the store. One I did a return for, and she was browsing, and just needed to sign the receipt. No problem, except I think I remember her as one of those who, no matter how many hints you drop (we are not allowed to come right out and say, we are closed, you have to leave), says, oh, sure, just one second, and then continues on with what she’s doing. The other customer is on the other side, doing whatever. I’m still waiting for mine to stop browsing, and the second one is done, and being that the only open register is on my side, my co-worker brings her over to ring her up.

Now my store gives you rewards for using our store charge; if you spend a certain dollar amount, you get a $25 certificate. So if you spend 3 times that, you get $75 worth, and so on. Well, this customer couldn’t get it through her head how it worked. She said that the other store said she got $25 OFF her purchase for using the store card….first of all, we had NO CLUE what she was referring to, then, once we figured it out, she couldn’t understand the program. So finally she gets rung up, using her card, and then says “oh, that interest rate is really high” – um, what would you like US to do about it? My customer pipes up “well, it isn’t like she has any control over that!” Then she asks will she get the points if she uses another form of payment…um no. Then she wants to know WHEN she will get the cert, we told her it’s a few weeks, they ususaly issue them twice a month, but its not instantaneous!

Finally she leaves, and then I let my customer out. As I’m closing the door, and about to relock it, the other lady comes back, asking me do we have this one jacket that another store had, and she saw in the catalog!!! I DON’T KNOW…and first tried to tell her politely, that I’m part-time and I don’t know. She says, well, if I saw it, I’d know it immediately, and moved towards the door. Short of shutting it in her face, I had to let her in, but not after trying to tell her a. call back or b. come back when we are open!

I wasn’t really rude, but very short with her, and finally she left, but honestly, do you really expect me to help you look for something when you come back IN after we are closed???????

[CiggyStoreClerk]

Oh my god! So it's not just me!

Most of the time, when you work in a cigarette store, you're alone (unless you've been robbed before, then there's always either two people on shift, or a great big guard dog) so you don't actually get a lunch hour. You just sit at your counter and eat your lunch there.

So of course, it never fails! I'll take the very first bite of my food, and somebody walks in. And do they just want a carton or two of smokes? No! They want five cartons of this, eight cartons of this, a carton of that, oh and wait a second, let me call to make sure this is what the EIGHT people I'm buying for want.

Drives. Me. Crazy!