To close at closing time?

[Bananafritter]

I’m pretty sure I’m not but the reactions you get from some people you’d think I am!

I work in a retail store inside a shopping centre. It’s a popular clothes shop. Our shop closes an hour earlier than most other shops in the centre at normal times of the year. At the moment some shops in the centre are open much later for Christmas shopping however our Christmas shopping times don’t kick in till next week.

I often get abuse from customers in the 10 minutes before the shop closes as we can no longer let new customers in the door, or into the fitting rooms. Tonight it was particularly bad, with several people verbally abusing me (as if I set the closing times and not head office).

The simple fact of the matter is that staff don’t get paid after the shop closes therefore we can’t keep serving people with unpaid staff. On the more practical side people have buses to catch, lifts waiting, kids to get home to. It’s not fair that staff have to wait.

Is it unreasonable to close a shop at the time we say we close? I’d be interested to hear opinions from people who try to argue their way into shops past closing time.

I hated the working in retail . Shops are open from 9 am but people think they can wonder in and take their merry time 5 minutes before closing . Even when prompted several times that I will closing the till at 6pm and nothing will be going through it after then. They continue to browse and chit chat. Then get the hump when they can’t buy their items after the till is closed . That’s why we had to start shutting the shop 5 minutes early to account for the time as staff didn’t get paid a second after closing .

The closing 10 mins before is a fair question! Firstly I should say that 10 mins is a bit of an exaggeration - it’s probably closer to 5 but it depends how busy the store is.

If we let customers in until closing time they could well still be browsing till 5 past closing and by the time they’ve been served it’s 10 past. We have to serve all the customers once they’re in the store so if it’s busy we stop letting customers in before the shops closing time to allow the customers in the store to be served and leave by the time the shop actually shuts.

I have also been burned before by customers! Let in 5 mins before closing as they’ve “just got a return” and they pull out bags of stuff which we have to process.

I can understand how that part of things can maybe be confusing and I try to explain to customers but I also think it’s not fair to assume you can walk into a shop right before it closes and get served as there may be other people ahead of you, your transaction may take longer than you assume it will etc

Actually, I think your shop is BU. 10 minutes before closing is quite a long period of time, and unusual. I frequently nip in and out of shops near closing time, especially when this is around 5-5.30pm, and I don't think I've ever been greeted with more than "just to let you know, we're closing in X minutes".

Why can't it pay staff to cash up in the ten minutes after closing time, rather than before? I would, generally, expect shop doors to close at closing time, or perhaps, like trains, a few minutes earlier. Not ten!

If your shop is that busy you should be open late like all the other shops! Do your HO know you are turning people away?

In that case banana YANBU at all.

MutedUser explained it better than I did! I thought it was common practice in most shops?

Of course YANBU! And it’s horrified me that anyone would verbally abuse you! Are you in a particularly rough area? On what planet is the correct response from disappointed customers not ‘oh sorry, didn’t realise!’ and walking away!?

I used to work in retail in a very posh town. Very far from rough.
The shit we used to get from the very well to do customers would make your hair curl.

YABU. I worked in retail for years and we were never allowed to close the doors until closing time. It does take another few minutes to serve them, but that is to be expected.
In your system, would you also open the doors 10 minutes early to allow customers to browse and queue at the tills for when you officially start your day?
No excuse for rudeness but I can see why people are annoyed.

Your Christmas opening hours are to open late on 23rd and 24th December?! Have you got that right - 23rd is a Sunday so Sunday opening hours and what is the point of opening late on Christmas Eve? Your company does seem to have a rather unusual attitude to opening hours, out of line with most other companies.

I work in a supermarket which is open from 6am - 10pm, after about 7pm we are quite quiet until 9:30pm when it gets really busy. The worst customers are the ones who walk in at 9:58pm for alcohol. Licensing hours are 10am - 10pm and once the till moves on to 10:01pm we legally cannot sell alcohol, the till will not actually scan the product. People get PISSED even though they have 12 hours to buy it.

Also been burned by the people who plead that they've run out of baby milk/nappies/food for their pet so we let them in and they attempt to start buying everything. No.

Those saying why can’t the shop just pay you to stay 10 minutes after closing I have worked for many shops and this has not been the case in any of them . You do not get paid to stay behind after the store closes . If I phoned headoffice and said I stayed behind with a customer 15 minutes they would say that It was down to me to make sure the shop closed on time and wouldn’t get paid for that extra time. In fact most shops expect you to mop floor and hoover too before you leave so an extra 10 minutes with a customer and then 10 minutes to mop and you are losing 20 minutes everyday for no pay.

I think the reason customers are getting agitated it because you're not letting them into the shop when it's still within opening hours. If I try to go into a shop at 5.25pm that closes at 5.30pm I'd expect to be told "we close in five minutes". I worked for years at a well known high street chain and staff were always paid for half an hour after closing time to allow for cashing up. You can't say the shop is open until half five and then expect the staff to be out the door on the dot if they have to cash up etc- have you told your manager about this obvious oversight?

Absolutely standard that shops stop letting people in 5 mins or so before closing and I’m surprised some people don’t seem to have come across it ever. The staff have to serve the people already in the store in that 5 mins and if they are still letting customers in when they are supposed to be shutting they’d be shutting 10 mins or so late every time and not getting paid.

Slashlover the selling booze one is a nightmare! I worked in Sainsbury’s in the days when you couldn’t sell booze after 3pm on Sundays, people would lose the plot when we couldnt put it through, they would never believe the till was programmed to block the sale and thought we were just doing it to be nasty

Unfortunate no Sunday trading laws in Scotland maybe the OP is there

Obviously if the shop pays after hours that’s different but it’s never been the case in any shop I’ve worked in. We would be cashing up unpaid as it was without standing there while people who we let in at closing time browse and make purchases before we could do it.

I had that in a convenience store I worked in! Got screamed at by a customer for not selling her alchohol at 9:55am. I actually cannot do it wasn’t an acceptable answer apparently. Fortunately all my retail work has been part time but I intend to leave it behind me as soon as i can.

I can accept people being unhappy, pissed off, confused or surprised by policies. I generally tend to be sympathetic as I can see where they’re coming from. But when people become rude or abusive I lose all my sympathy. I can only do what I’m allowed to do or pass on the information I have.

Being annoyed is no excuse to be verbally abusive to minimum wage retail staff.

Obviously is depends on the type of shop too. You can run into a supermarket and grab milk and be out with minutes to closing . But to go into a shoe shop and trying on multiple shoes walk up and down have the sales person in the stockroom etc can’t be done in a minute .

2 members of staff stay behind half an hour to cash up. Cashing up can’t start till customers are out the door. The remaining staff leave at 7 and aren’t paid a second later. The cashing up staff don’t have time to serve people after 7 as it’s a big store with multiple tills and there’s a whole process and it would cut into their cashing up time. I close the store but don’t personally cash up so I get paid till 7.

Banana I feel for you luckily the last shop I worked it where supportive of staff and the minute anyone raised voices to us or sweared we asked them to leave . It isn’t acceptable and you can refuse to serve them .

Having worked in retail for many many years I'd say the store manager needs to sort out the rota better. Does head office know that customers are not being allowed in in the five minutes before closing? The manager should be scheduling 2 members of staff to be there 15 or 30 minutes after closing time to cash up the tills. I've worked in a few retail stores and have never known a store to refuse entry before official closing time , and a key holder and another member of staff always scheduled to stay extra 30 minutes to cash up and tidy up.

I used to work in retail for the National Trust. We would literally get people trying to squeeze between the closing doors to buy something as we closed, and they could be very rude if turned away, so it’s certainly not just the ‘rough’ areas! Many customers also seem utterly oblivious to you shutting up, turning off lights and music and starting to cash up, and appear surprised when politely informed that the shop is closing. They then continue to browse for another few minutes, then want to buy something but can’t find their purse etc etc. Grrrr.

I worked in retail a bit when I was studying and we were always paid 15-30 minutes after close to cash up, sweep, mop etc. I worked in a chocolate shop that paid 45_60 minutes after as you had a huge ice cream unit and two giant chocolate fountains to clean as well as usual floors, bins, cashing up etc. They were all in a large well known shopping centre open until midnight this time of year and any stores bringing the shutter down (or half down to put customers off) early would get big fines. Your shop also has a bizarre policy around Christmas opening hours

I'm in Scotland so it's 10-10 every day. It used to be 12:30pm-10pm on a Sunday. There was a church across from the shop and people would leave the church then hang around the store for 20 mins so they could buy their booze. It wasn't a large store.

Also, back in the day (maybe 20 years ago) we were open 9:30am-2:30pm on Christmas day so I would arrive at 9:15am to people queuing outside and then people would be knocking on the window at 2:35pm and telling my that I'd ruined their Christmas because I wouldn't let them in.