Just want to answer an earlier point about retailers factoring in an extra hours wages so that people can use the fitting rooms in the last 15 minutes.
First of all, most high street shops are open 9-6 right? This is pretty standard. In my experience, by about 5:30, high streets are quietening down as most people know that it's 9-6. So, of course, staff are paid for 9-6. Overtime in retail stores is pretty unheard of, aside from the day before sales when everyone gets dragged in to get the sales ready. (That would be late night Xmas eve usually, what a great time to be working)
So if the store shuts at 6, then the tidy up begins. The tidy up can take between 10 minutes and an hour (or more during sales!). If you owned a retail chain, would you pay all staff an extra hour just in case the tidy up took an hour? You wouldn't would you? So, of course, they don't.
You will also notice, if you look around the store at about 5:30 you'll notice staff are starting to tidy, but their priority is the customer, so only so much gets done.
Oh, forgot to say, the store technically closes at 6. Heh. What an idea! Have you ever been approached by a member of staff at about 6pm to say "can I help you?"?. The correct response, in case you were wondering, is not "no, I'm just browsing, thanks". It's "yes, I would like such and such", or "yes, I'd like to buy such and such", or "oh sorry, you're closed now aren't you? I'll be off". But if you are like 90% of customers who have to be asked this, you'll choose the first one, and the sales assistant will walk away picturing you burning in fire and brimstone.
Because they will not get paid overtime. Because they will be shattered from 8 hours on their feet, and they will know that the longer you stay, the longer they stay. Unpaid and tired. (But it's ok, they made 8 hours minimum wage that day, woohoo)
I've stayed in a shop (with a customer) till 6:45 before because we put the customer first. We got out at 7:15, and that was only because we'd been tidying around said customer.
Because, the. customer. is. always. right. (I still to this day want to find whoever coined this phrase and torture them, preferably by poking them with coat hangers for all eternity)
So if you know the shop closes at 6. And by the way, the definition of a shop closing is that the doors are shut and the customers have left. Then why run in there 10-15 minutes beforehand and expect to try on clothes? You may say you'll be quick. But then so will the person who wants to try on 6 items, find they are all the wrong size, then try them all on in a different size, then go back to an earlier item, try it on again, then decide after all that they didn't like any of them and leave. Technically they may have done all this quickly, but you are still out late with no extra pay and without a sale at the end of it.
Have you ever been to a pub/club which refuses admittance after a certain time? They do this because they want to close vaguely on time. Is that letting down the customer? Or should the customer, possibly, have figured it out for themselves?
If a shop wants to 100% always cater to the customers' wants then they'd need to be open 24/7, and then the customer would be pissed off as the prices would go up to cover the wages! There may be supermarkets that do this, but they are not the majority and it works for them as they are usually giant stores with a high turnover. The bigger clothes retailers will also stay open later. For the smaller stores it makes no sense.
The staff are people too and would quite like to leave sometime around when they stop getting paid. They would also like to not have 9 hours on their feet for minimum wage.
Also, if you automatically gave ll staff an extra hours pay to allow them to tidy up, some customers would definitely take the piss and stay even later. So the staff would still end up doing unpaid work. Same goes for overtime, there'd be a lot of "oh, well you'll appreciate the extra money" comments. When all the staff want to do is go home. Is that so weird??
Kaloki