Was my boyfriend wrong?

---->Jude<-----

I would say your boyfriend is in the right.

Has he been trained to deal with late customers? Maybe he had seen other staff turn people away and assumed that was the way to do it?
I work in a retail shop and when the till is closed it literally cannot be opened until the next day, maybe your boyfriend thought the same.

If you get an angry customer you will not always be able to come up with the most polite response, so maybe we close at 12.30 was the best response he could muster without being rude.

Why is the other person not being disciplined also?

How late does his boss think he should be serving customers until?

There are a lot of things wrong with this situation and I would say his boss is the most in the wrong for allowing the door to stay open until the last colleague left. That policy needs to change so no other incidents happen.

I hope the situation gets resolved!

Acc72

---->Jude<----- wrote: »

Has he been trained to deal with late customers?

What kind of training are you thinking of ?

eschaton

Employer is out of order. When you are closed you are closed.

I'm a Manager of a retail outlet and the trading hours are clearly stated.

If someone turns up at 10pm and you close at 10pm, they are turned away, the staff are only paid until 10pm. They had 15.5hrs to come in for what they wanted.

TWDgirl_2

Thank you all for the replies they have been really helpful, as well as asking the question here my boyfriend also called acas today.

Partner spoke to his boss today and asked what the procedure is in the future if it was to happen again and he was told to use his common sense, so that clears that up.

I think the thing that has got to my partner is what a few people here mentioned, what if another four customers had followed the first customer, is he supposed to stay there until 1.30? 2.00? unpaid? When is the cut off point?

Thanks again for the help, I appreiciate it.

ska_lover

I would say your boyfriend is in the right. I work in a similar industry to your oh , and at first when i first started my present job, I would stay and deal with late arrivals like this guy. I soon realised I wasnt getting any thanks/extra pay for overtime, so I dont do it now. In fact the way I feel, the more you do for your company the more is expected, and so they take advantage.

Last Friday night, I had a customer come in 35 minutes after we had locked the front door - the customer came in through the staff entrance. Bearing in mind I had my coat on/handbag over my shoulder and was just about to leave. I had never met the chap before, he had no customer account, so would have taken a good hour to deal with. It was plainly obvious I was about to leave and the guy seemed very put out that i couldn't help him but tough titties!

Sambucus_Nigra

TWDgirl wrote: »

Partner spoke to his boss today and asked what the procedure is in the future if it was to happen again and he was told to use his common sense, so that clears that up.

Your partner needs to get sharp on comments like this, and ask his boss 'in what context' to use his common sense, as obviously the bosses version of common sense is not his version of common sense and if the boss doesn't want to lose a potential sale in future, perhaps he needs to share this common sense with the workers as they are not mind readers.

skintandscared_2

Personally, I think (a) the customer was an arrogant idiot and (b) I would lock the front door at 12.30pm whilst I shut everything down, so people couldn't come in while the front desk was unattended.

Sambucus_Nigra

skintandscared wrote: »

Personally, I think (a) the customer was an arrogant idiot and (b) I would lock the front door at 12.30pm whilst I shut everything down, so people couldn't come in while the front desk was unattended.

And if this is part of the 'common sense' he needs to get that agreed before it happens again. Otherwise the 'common sense' might be 'stay all day if a customer comes in', which might be the boss' understanding. He has to get clarity on this!

Acc72

TWDgirl wrote: »

manager told him the customer had made a complaint about him, that he was not pleased at all and that my partner was to expect disciplinary action because he should have served the customer.

Is this still the case, or was it just the manager "sounding off" ?

bevanuk

He should have took the customers details and then called the bloke on Monday morning (or asked someone else to) and the whole situation could have been avoided. As you said he couldn't have ordered anything anyway until the Monday. But lock the front door, way easier! Glad he isn't in trouble.