Closing time is non-negotiable... except when it is.

[ariekain]

So, tonight I was working the closing shift (4-10pm) at self-checkout, and it was going great until the last forty-five minutes/half hour of my shift.

I had already closed most of the registers and pulled all their tills so the night manager could count them down. There were only two registers left open, and both were being used.

I managed to close one and pull its tills out, leaving one open that I intended to close as soon as the customers using it left. Except that wasn't what happened.

The customers, a group of teenagers, were buying some food and paying with EBT/food stamps. They couldn't remember the card's PIN, so one of the guys ran out to the car to get his cell phone which had the PIN on it. He comes back, tries entering it, and it doesn't work. He does this several more times until he gets the message "PIN tries exceeded".

At this point, the card can't be used because it's been locked for security reasons. I tell the guy that he can either pay with cash or another card or call up the food stamps office (or whoever can fix that, I don't know) to get his card unlocked again.

So guess what he does? Instead of taking the faster route and paying with cash which he had in his wallet, he calls to get his card unlocked. This takes some time, so I'm hanging around waiting for them to pay and leave. The next thing I know, they are leaving taking their cart of groceries with them. They haven't paid, they haven't gotten a receipt...

They're walking towards the coffee seating area, and by all appearances, it looks like they're planning on sitting down and eating their unpaid-for food and then trying to walk out. Now it's nearly fifteen minutes after I was supposed to be off.

I alert my manager to the situation, she doesn't act alarmed, even though I told her I was concerned that the teenagers were going to walk out without paying. But then I come back to the self checkouts to get my jacket, and on the way, I notice them in line at the regular register paying for their food.

What I don't understand is why they walked off with their food. Maybe I shouldn't have freaked out and assumed they were planning on stealing it. But all I saw was them not paying and then leaving with their groceries.

I'm sure there was nothing malicious in any of this, but I wasn't thrilled about having to report what I thought was a potential shoplifting attempt and then being nearly 20 minutes late clocking off because of it.

[emt_cookies]

The only thing I can think of is that they were told it would take 15-20 minutes to reset in the system. They still should have paid cash.

[Mystic]

While it's an inconvenience to people who work in the shops, I feel they did the right thing in trying to remedy the situation with the card. It's easy to say what their financial situation is to just say "pay with the cash you have" when that money could be going towards bills or other needs, or it could be going towards booze and cigs, but who are we to judge?

At least they didn't sit there arguing with you to keep trying the card or any other number of horrors we see on this site all the time. Consider you got off easy. :P

[Dips]

They sucked.

If something was going to take 20 minutes they should have told you instead of leaving you hanging like that. If you hadn't had to leave, there would have been other customers left waiting on them instead. That's just rude.

If they were going to walk away from the cash area to sit down and wait, then they should have had the courtesy to tell you what they were doing. Not telling you makes them look like shoplifters. You don't have the mind-reading skills to know their plans are if they don't tell you. You did the right thing to alert your manager.

Don't feel badly about it, OK?

[South Texan]

I'm sure there was nothing malicious in any of this

And I agree with you. I think you made a very valid assumption that they might have been attempting to shoplift. Their actions were odd and easily fit into that assumption. I suspect, however, that they really were just naive/stupid/not able to think through what their actions might cause others to conclude about what they were doing. They no doubt will gain better reasoning abilities with maturity.

Mystic's theory sounds quite probable.

[emt_cookies]

Another thing that bothers me is that she worked the "closing shift" and she got off late. So they were close to closing time and still decided to sit there instead of paying for their groceries.