What does "Closed" mean to you?

[RoJoHen]

Well, I work in a restaurant now (and I am not afraid to kick people out after closing time), and the only other jobs I've had have been at 24-hour establishments, so I can't really speak to anything else. I can only speak as a customer, and I always avoid stores that are closing within the next half hour.

 

[Tiberius Jim]

Uh, just saying "that analogy doesn't work" doesn't prove anything. Care to give your reasons why you think it doesn't work?

The limo service analogy doesn't work. The customer hasn't paid us in advance to stay open for him, nor is there an guarantee he will spend a single cent in our store, even after keeping us open late.

A retail store doesn't offer a service, it offers products and employs people to educate, locate and sell those products. A limo service offers to services of a driver and his vehicle.

 

[number6]

Uh, just saying "that analogy doesn't work" doesn't prove anything. Care to give your reasons why you think it doesn't work?

The limo service analogy doesn't work. The customer hasn't paid us in advance to stay open for him, nor is there an guarantee he will spend a single cent in our store, even after keeping us open late.

A retail store doesn't offer a service, it offers products and employs people to educate, locate and sell those products. A limo service offers to services of a driver and his vehicle.

The train analogy doesn't work because it's designed to service so many people simultaneously that there is no room for the kind of flexibility afforded by a small business or restaurant.

I don't disagree that there are many inconsiderate customers, just that people who willingly put themselves in a position of performing a service should know enough to be a little flexible and that keeping a customer is more valuable than sending someone away pissed off by giving them an attitude.

 

[Tiberius Jim]

That's the thing, I don't give them attitude. I nicely tell them to get the fuck out.

 

[SicOne]

When you work in a service industry, there are just some things you have to suck up and deal with.

Likewise, being an ADULT there are some things you have to deal with. Like reading store hours signs on a front door and abiding by them. Suck up and deal with it. If you get there too late, tough.

--Ted

Or if there's something you absolutely positively need to have and you're going to walk in the door at T-minus-one-minute, do the store the courtesy of calling ahead, asking them to hold the item at the front, you'll be right there, and you'll be in-and-out. They're more inclined to work with you in that regard, thus securing that last sale of the day, and when you walk in briskly and go right to the front of the store (as opposed to slow moseyin' down the aisles), they will be happier to see you at that crucial time.

 

[SeerSGB]

My wife got a call last night that made me think of this thread:

She got called, at home, at 5 till closing by a panicked co-supervisor: A woman came in and wanted 600+ photos run off right at closing and rang up as 60 different orders so she could use the handful of in store coupons (1 to a transation) she grabbed as she walked in (about 2+ hour job). The super called the main manager at home to get overtime authorization and got told to get the woman the boot, tell her to come back this morning, and lock the door on time; if she goes past 15 after close, formal write up for failing to close on time and how ever much she went over taken off her next shift, plus reduced the next week as a "reminder to get her shit done on time". The woman refused to leave without her photos, threatened to call the main office-- hence the call to my wife "What should I do, I'm in trouble with <manager> and the woman's going to call <district manager> and get me fired!" The only solution: Let the machine run through the night, and if the photos overflow in the floor ~shrug~ oh well. The woman, grudingly, agreed but on the condition that she got a extra 20 photos for free. My wife was the opener this morning, so basically, she's walking into a mess both with the customer and with photos all over the floor of the lab; assuming the machine didn't paper-out over night, in which case she'll have to figure out where it stopped and rerun the order from that point, plus still let the woman pick her 20 freebies.

 

[Saturn0660]

My wife got a call last night that made me think of this thread:

She got called, at home, at 5 till closing by a panicked co-supervisor: A woman came in and wanted 600+ photos run off right at closing and rang up as 60 different orders so she could use the handful of in store coupons (1 to a transation) she grabbed as she walked in (about 2+ hour job). The super called the main manager at home to get overtime authorization and got told to get the woman the boot, tell her to come back this morning, and lock the door on time; if she goes past 15 after close, formal write up for failing to close on time and how ever much she went over taken off her next shift, plus reduced the next week as a "reminder to get her shit done on time". The woman refused to leave without her photos, threatened to call the main office-- hence the call to my wife "What should I do, I'm in trouble with <manager> and the woman's going to call <district manager> and get me fired!" The only solution: Let the machine run through the night, and if the photos overflow in the floor ~shrug~ oh well. The woman, grudingly, agreed but on the condition that she got a extra 20 photos for free. My wife was the opener this morning, so basically, she's walking into a mess both with the customer and with photos all over the floor of the lab; assuming the machine didn't paper-out over night, in which case she'll have to figure out where it stopped and rerun the order from that point, plus still let the woman pick her 20 freebies.

See there's the problem. People just need to stick up for themselves. I used to run a PhotoLab. We stopped taking orders at 9. worked till 10. If we had more then an hour of work by 9 then it was with the next morning work.
There is NEVER a reason to "let it run all night".

I would have told her, "you can leave it but it won't be done till x-time the next day". As soon as she bitches.."thats how it is"..

 

[SeerSGB]

I reckon the reason the closer decided to let it run was the woman said she'd be sitting at the store at opening in the morning and if the photos weren't ready she would be calling the store manager and the district manager both and filing a formal complaint for poor service and rude employee.

 

[ThankQ]

Ahh, TrekBBS just would't be the same without its monthly retail workers Whine Festival.

You guys are so hard done by

If we had a bunch of store managers here, the thread would probably be, "Why do employees have so much trouble helping customers late in the shift?"

 

[JimCasy]

Ahh, TrekBBS just would't be the same without its monthly retail workers Whine Festival.

You guys are so hard done by

If we had a bunch of store managers here, the thread would probably be, "Why do employees have so much trouble helping customers late in the shift?"

Whatever. I was a manager at the last retail job I had, and I was still pissed when people moseyed in at 8:59 and shopped for 20 minutes, then either didn't buy anything, or needed like fifty yards of fabric cut. We'd help them with a smile of course, but we'd bitch after they left. Especially those weeks when doing so put us over our budget for hours. And yes, we did make announcements about the store being closed. Some people simply ignored them. A few times we had people stay till forty minutes after we closed just walking around, browsing, or looking at the pattern books.

Though if someone came in at the end of the day and was out by 5 min after, that's perfectly fine. Because they're at least trying to get their shit done and let us get out of there. It was the people who seem to have absolutely no concern for letting us close at least near the time we're supposed to that bugged me.

 

[Trekker4747]

As this thread has been mostly on stupid customers...

I see on of our assistants taking down a standee on a Mountain Dew display. The display is for Mt. Dew's "gamer fuel" which -apparently- is being sponsored by WoW. So the standee is of a pink elfen warrior chick -somewhat scantily dressed- with glowing eyes. Well, I guess some older woman complained up front about this thing that we have children and older people shopping in the store and that that dispaly was inappropriate and could scare/disturb children and older folks. The woman even said we have "retards" [her word use, not mine] who shop and work there that could be scared by it and she *demanded* we remove the standee placed there by Pepsi.

 

[RoJoHen]

I didn't realize retards were afraid of elves.

 

[Trekker4747]

I didn't realize retards were afraid of elves.

I didn't realize anyone cared about store displays.

It's funny the bottles of one flavor of the game-fuel even have the elfen chick on it and another flavor has an ogre on it. I joked with the guy he should pull those too.

Oh, and the woman even stood there and made sure the manager took down the display and took it in back.

 

[Tiberius Jim]

I would have told her that looking at her was scaring/disturbing me and that she should leave.

 

[SeerSGB]

I didn't realize retards were afraid of elves.

I didn't realize anyone cared about store displays.

It's funny the bottles of one flavor of the game-fuel even have the elfen chick on it and another flavor has an ogre on it. I joked with the guy he should pull those too.

Oh, and the woman even stood there and made sure the manager took down the display and took it in back.

We got one at theater once for "I Robot"-- what we called the "Apple promo", the lead bot, looking over his shoulder on a white background. We got a customer complain that it made her feel "objectified as a woman". I was like "What the hell" when the DM came down and told we had to pull it."


Wife told me today that customer hell (see up thread) has been coming more and more and pushing buttons. But hasn't called (lately) anymore, owing to the fact that someone ratted out that the Manager was playing the tapes for all the employees and was telling people that she might get bared from the store for causing a nuisance

As I told the wife: don't fall for it. The minute you tell her off is the minute she's got a voice-recorder or a cellphone going and nails ya'

 

[SicOne]

Man, this thread is pretty good. Someone should, if not already have, started a "Stoopid Customers" thread...

 

[Trekker4747]

Ok, so today there's a guy standing there looking at our case -intently- and one of my employees asks if she can help him, "No thanks I'm just looking."

"Ok, well let me know if you have any questions."

And she goes back to her task.

He stands there for another minute or so, looks up and stands there, and then someone else asks, "Ready, sir?" He says no. Moments later he walks off.

Minute or two later he's back looking around and someone walks by the case, "Need help with anything."

In a slightly gruffer tone he says, "I'm looking."

Another minute or so after pacing back and forth he stops, looks up again, and stands there looking up at us. My gal, again, asks him if he needs any help.

He yells out, "I don't need any help, I'm just looking around, OK?!" and then storms off.

Few minutes later the assistant is back there saying he just got a complaint about the "pushy, obviously comission-based, sales staff in the meat department."

 

[Emher]

At my last regular work I delt with customers all the time. It was a second hand store, that just happened to be located in an old barn. The work itself was terrible, the conditions horrible (very lackluster insulation and heating so all winter I basically froze my ass off), but I stayed because it was my first job and overall I had great bosses. But the customers. Gods fucking damn it, the customers.

Sure I had some great regulars (including an incredibly charming middleaged asian woman and her Swedish husband), but the rest of the people that came there... Being as it was secondhand store, everyone thought everything was up for being shamelessly haggled about. Which was of course not true since you just can't take too bad a deal and we also had some stuff that was new (usually usefull cheap household stuff for summer guests). So the endless hours spent on people trying to wear me down on that. Sometimes I took some bad deals just to get them the hell out.

Also seeing as we where supposed to be a "cheap" store we were somehow supposed to be even cheaper then the big warehouses that specialises in bulk sellings. My favorite (or more like most hated) example was the woman who asked the price of a new plastic basket that was in one of our new bulks we've gotten hold of. I told her it was 3 bucks. She instantly becomes outraged and says "At [insert bulk warehouse here] they only take 2.50 for it!" I had to contain myself reaaaaally good at that point. What I should have done is point out to her that she would spend more then that difference in gas just going to the warehouse that was fifteen miles away. But I just shrugged it off and said "Well if you don't like the price don't buy it."

But the closed thing... No matter when we close people always always dropped in just when I was busy closing. At first we had it at 4 but my boss figured that so many people got there just before 4 so she changed it to 5, which only lead to them getting there just before 5. The procedure of closing wasn't all that easy since I was a lot of the time alone at the workplace and had to first bring up the signs from the road (we had one open sign and one bigassmetal commercial sign), if I was lucky and had the car it was pretty easy, but if I was unlucky I had to use this little bagcart to bring them up (that is until the damn thing broke and sliced up my finger in the process), then close two big gates, then close the main door to the store and then when everyone was gone lock the door and count the register. This whole procedure took, effective time, fifteen minutes. I swear I can count on one hand when I managed to keep it that low.

And it's not like it was hard to miss, we had signs, big signs on all the doors that clearly stated our opening and closing times. Not to mention the activity of me closing, taking down signs and then finally turning off the radio and the LIGHTS should make people realise that I was indeed closing. And yes I politely pointed it out to people as well a bit before closing time. For some people this was too hard to get. I remember a bunch of people in their late twenties that showed up about twenty to 4 one day and took their sweet time. Five past 4 some of them where at the register, but they didn't have the cash and we didn't have a cardreader so they had to go get some money. Which was fine since some other people wheren't finished yet and some others of the party where still looking.

During the time the people with the money problems are away several more people show up and asks if it's open. Seeing as the door is close the answer would of course be no, but I let them have a quick peak seeing as the money people aren't back yet. They appreciate it and have a very quick peak, find some stuff and then leave, as do the rest of the people who aren't part of the divided party. The money people return at about twenty past 4 and pay. I politely note to the remaining members that technically we've now been closed for a bit. The mumble something in response and I take that as an affirmative. After twenty minutes and several increasingly severe notings they are apparantly finally finished and arrive at the register. The comes the bombshell.

"Why is it so dark in here?" asks one of the...I hate to say blondes, but yes she was. I control my twitching brow and reply firmly that it's because we've been closed for 40 minutes now. "You have?" she says followed by "Oh yeah the door is closed! Why didn't you say anything?" I cooly reply. "I did. Repeatedly." "Oh my I didn't notice!" At this point I just want to scream at her but trough an incredibly amount of self control I simply say "Would...*sigh*...there be anything else?" "No thanks, bye!" "Good evening." I end with as the pass out the door. I lock it behind them, wait until they're in their cars and are driving away before I let out a scream of anger so as to not smash anything.

I quit a month later.

 

[Alpinemaps]

Man, this thread is pretty good. Someone should, if not already have, started a "Stoopid Customers" thread...

As long as we can start a 'Stoopid Retail Employees' thread.

I find all the complaints in here funny. You guys do realize that life is like this for everyone, right?

Do you think it matters to my bosses and higher ups (military Cols and Commanders) that I'm off work at 3:30PM? Does that stop them from calling or emailing with last minute requests? Or having meetings that run past 3:30? Heck, even my own employees do that crap to me! They all know I go home at 3:30, but that doesn't stop the endless 'Hey, Alpinemaps, before you leave', as I walk down the hallway, trying to leave.

I joke constantly with Mrs. Alpinemaps that I need to install a secret entrance to my office, so my staff doesn't see me come and go. Then maybe I'd actually leave on time.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Man, this thread is pretty good. Someone should, if not already have, started a "Stoopid Customers" thread...

Here's something better: A 'Stupid Customers' entire web site.