Checking out an hour after close

[bainsidhe]

I think what shocked me most was that on Christmas Eve, the store was awesomely good at hustling customers out the door. But when we had a fire alarm, half the customers would continue to shop and management would let them.

[GroceryGIrl]

Ugh! Closing before the store shuts down before a holiday is a nightmare. Not only in regards to getting the people inside of the store outside, but the managers allowing even more to come in a few minutes before closing, which can only occur at 6 PM on the dot and not one minute sooner. So, after ringing out the last customers, counting the tills, cleaning, putting away overstock items that people changed their mind about, and then picking up the ones that were inconsiderably left laying around, it's well past 7 before we reach freedom. Luckily, I have been getting morning shifts the last couple of years so have been able to escape by mid-afternoon, but I'm sure i haven't seen the last of closing.

[Project_Mars]

When I worked at Wal-Mart, it was always a pain in the ass to get people to LEAVE on Christmas Eve.

I guess it varies from store to store. Miraculously, we managed to get everyone out on a reasonable time on Christmas Eve this year. getting out after that though...

granted, i'm sure having a cop near the only open entrance with several employees is a good way to keep people from coming in, and we had enough people going around to tell customers the store was closing and to go up front to pay, the only real issue was registers. or rather, lack thereof. (Money had been pulled from a lot of them, when me and another coworker got up front to help check people out, there was no place for us to go to help. )

[RxBoy]

That is one thing I have good to say about my store. We close at 6pm Christmas Eve and the last employees are walking out at 6:15pm. Although it's probably because all of the managers are there and THEY don't want to be working late, LOL.

They start making announcement 30 minutes before closing and have every register staffed. The managers actually walk the store and tell everyone they must get in line and check out and they refuse to let people in after closing time. If they show up 2 minutes before closing they are told that they must be in line to checkout in 2 minutes, no exceptions.

Several people walked up after closing with their "but I just need one thing" stories and were told no. I don't understand it. The supermarket part of our store is open 24/7 except we close for the night on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, New Years Eve, and we are closed all day Christmas. We are closed a total of 60 hours out of the entire year. Yet people get upset with us for making them leave. Talk about entitlement.

[MoonCat]

People are stupid.

If Christmas falls on a Saturday, we get the Fri 12/24 off. If it's on a Sunday, we get Monday 12/26 off. Yay contract! Our voicemail states that we are closed on major holidays. Well, sure enough, one year someone left a snarky message on the 26th, griping that we were closed, and finished with "And December 26th is NOT a major holiday!!!" Bitch couldn't figure out that some places might be closed the day after. She was probably calling about a free ad, anyway (they make a bigger fuss about the freebies than about anything else!)

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Is there a way of killing them with kindness. "May I help you find anything" or "Are you looking for such and such." Or just being right there as they are shopping.

This won't faze the truly self-absorbed sociopaths. They'll just tell you to fuck off so they can shop in peace. Then it's up to a manager who may be whipped into "the customer is always right" spinelessness.

I don't miss closing Christmas Eve one bit. I always ended up getting out 15 to 30 minutes late. Which isn't bad compared to what the OP had to go through but it still sucks when you want to get home to your family. All we could do to try to get the stragglers out was to keep asking them if we could help them find stuff (like the exit. ) and hope they got the hint.

On Christmas Eve, I went past the swamp 5-ish that evening. My parents and I were driving around town looking at people's Christmas lights and decorations. I noticed the parking lot was still quite full, one hour before closing. It wouldn't surprise me to learn the closers that night were late getting out.

[Sleepwalker]

I go around asking ever so sweetly if there's something they would like me to ring up for them before I turn off the registers for the night. Then I pull those mofos and they aren't getting anything unless they have exact cash(or don't mind losing their change) and it's a premade item in our display cooler.

[Blade]

Is there a way of killing them with kindness. "May I help you find anything" or "Are you looking for such and such." Or just being right there as they are shopping.

That's how I am, when I'm able to... Polite as hell, all "oh, I'm sorry, you must not have heard the announcement we made about closing ten minutes ago! Well you just let me know if there is any way I can help you, ma'am!".... and since they always say "no thanks, just looking," then I kinda clean around them until they go (aka " blatantly follow their ass until they leave").

[Lace Neil Singer]

Once, while I was working at the garden centre, we went within five seconds of locking a customer in there overnight. And it wasn't on purpose, either; she'd wandered offcamera and no-one saw her when it was time for us all to leave. If it weren't for the fact that it was payday and everyone was hanging around longer than usual, the customer would have had to spend the night in there.

At the petrol station; we put the cones accross the entrance at five minutes to closing time; once the forecourt is clear, that's it... doors are locked and any other customer who arrives after that is SOL. At the supermarket, if there are still people in the stores after they've put security on the doors, they send the supervisors on to the shop floor to round them up like naughty sheep. XD Most SCs of this caliber play dumb and say, "I didn't realise you closed at this time!" even tho you'd have to be deaf to not hear the regular announcements.

[excuse me??]

I wish we could announce this after we are closed:

"Hey Frank.... are the Dobermans ready?"

[MadMike]

Once, while I was working at the garden centre, we went within five seconds of locking a customer in there overnight. And it wasn't on purpose, either; she'd wandered offcamera and no-one saw her when it was time for us all to leave. If it weren't for the fact that it was payday and everyone was hanging around longer than usual, the customer would have had to spend the night in there.

Something like that happened in my area a few years ago. It was in the paper. A guy was shopping at a furniture store, and he sat down in one of the recliners and fell asleep. Somehow, he went unnoticed, and they closed the store with him still there.

A few hours later, he woke up, and ended up setting off the motion detectors.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Something like that happened in my area a few years ago. It was in the paper. A guy was shopping at a furniture store, and he sat down in one of the recliners and fell asleep. Somehow, he went unnoticed, and they closed the store with him still there.

A few hours later, he woke up, and ended up setting off the motion detectors.

Same thing happened in my store years ago. To this day I don't know how we missed that person, or how they managed to stay still for several hours after close.

FUN FACT: there is a special closing checklist LP and management have to complete when closing the store Christmas Eve, because the following day is the only day we ever close. One of the items on this list is to check the toilet seats in the public bathrooms for footprints. If they find any, they're supposed to assume somebody has crawled up into the ceiling via the toilet and investigate further or call the police or something.

Cue a bunch of jokes from us peons about making a special trip out to the swamp Christmas Eve just to put footprints on the toilet seats. Me, I say if somebody's really determined to stow away in the ceilings, there's other ways they can get up there that don't involve the toilet seats.

[Andara Bledin]

A guy was shopping at a furniture store, and he sat down in one of the recliners and fell asleep. Somehow, he went unnoticed, and they closed the store with him still there.

A few hours later, he woke up, and ended up setting off the motion detectors.

I had a co-worker do that. He'd gone to take a nap, fell asleep, and nobody noticed him when it was time to lock up the office. He woke up at one point, noticed the lights were out, and went back to lie down until morning. Of course, by that point, he'd set off the alarm, so the bosses had to go check it out, at which point they drove him home.

^-.-^

[Lace Neil Singer]

With the customer who was nearly locked in at the garden centre, it was just one of those things. She just happened to be off camera in one of the few places that the cameras didn't cover; all the staff knew of those places cuz they were good places to go to for a chat, knowing you weren't under scrutiny.

[Bella_Vixen]

At my store on Christmas Eve, it's not too bad. They make announcements every 5 minutes or so that we're closing, starting ½ hour before we close. Management (or the taller stockers) hangs out by the doors starting about 4:45 to tell incomers that we close in 15 minutes. They lock the entrance doors 5-10 minutes to. This Christmas, I punched out at 5:07, and I was the last cashier on register.

It's every regular bloody night of the year (we close at midnight 360 days of the year) that's the problem. Luckily, the night managers are generally allowed to lock the doors at 11:55, but heaven help us if they don't make it to the door fast enough.