Shops closing early and locking the doors!

marliepanda

Licensing laws too! It's amazing how fast meandering people move when told we couldn't sell them the bottle of wine in their basket after the hour!

stevenhp1987

Used to work in retail when I was younger...

Paid to work until 11pm.

Expected to shut shop at 11pm.

In reality, was there until gone 11.30, but not paid after 11pm. That's over 30mins unpaid and nothing you can do about it!

Cannot really complain about them closing early, the staff are not paid to be there after the "closing time".

duchy

stevenhp1987 wrote: »

Used to work in retail when I was younger...

Paid to work until 11pm.

Expected to shut shop at 11pm.

In reality, was there until gone 11.30, but not paid after 11pm. That's over 30mins unpaid and nothing you can do about it!

Cannot really complain about them closing early, the staff are not paid to be there after the "closing time".

You can always tell the posters who have worked in retail and the ones who haven't. It's becoming more and more common to pay staff til closing time despite expecting them to "close" eg tidy, hoover, despatch the lingerers etc and in some cases even cash up.

TheOP's tale has already changed with the times so the scenario probably ran more on the lines of ...... Mr Tardy arrived just before the shop shut.... the shop had closed 5 maybe 10 minutes early as head office had scheduled some work to be done . Workmen were in view of the front door so it is entirely possible the store actually wasn't open at all that day (that's the trouble with 7 day opening - if work needs to be done -it has to be done at *sometime). The "people" sound like workmen responding to some nutter hammering on the door as "He's gone" makes no sense if they were shop employees.

I never understand why people cut it so fine. I remember one Christmas Eve popping down to Tescos at 4.45 knowing they closed at 5 as a couple of lightbulbs had blown -I knew I coulld be in and out in five minutes but was gobsmacked to see people wandering in with two trollies per family obviously doing their Christmas food shop. No way were they going to be in and out in fifteen minutes. I was wondering what they'd have done if they'd got stuck in traffic and got there too late. When I worked in a travel agency we closed at 5 -Amazing how many people ambled in at 5 to wanting to do a full scale enquiry -it wasn't uncommon to be stuck til 6pm and ofcourse we were only paid til 5. My last call at work at 22.59 on Christmas eve this year (we were open til 11pm) was someone wondering if he could get a cheaper deal on his TV phone and broadband package He was a bit miffed that the sales dept was closed........ What planet do some people live on ????? Planet Selfish or Planet Oblivious ?

rant/off

fuzzything

Some people who expect a shop's opening hours to be the hours they are open to new customers might possibly be 1 in 100 people who are on the autistic spectrum, of which I am one.

I had an anxious experience a week ago when I went to a tesco express at 11:33 pm. Although it's down as open until midnight they stopped me a few steps after walking in and said sorry we are closed. I asked what time they closed and they said 10 to midnight...Me: but it's 11:33? Him: sorry. we are closed.

I left feeling confused, anxious and was worrying about it for hours afterwards. Partly I believe that's caused by my Asperger syndrome, but it was also caused by tesco's inconsistent information. If there were unforeseen circumstances that I am told of I can accept that, but routinely changing the opening times I will struggle with.

I would imagine tesco would not only want customers to be able to rely on their published opening times, but also to increase their income by selling more products. Otherwise, why stay open so late?

Money-Saving-King

fuzzything wrote: »

Although it's down as open until midnight they stopped me a few steps after walking in and said sorry we are closed. I asked what time they closed and they said 10 to midnight...Me: but it's 11:33? Him: sorry. we are closed.
If there were unforeseen circumstances that I am told of I can accept that, but routinely changing the opening times I will struggle with.

If he said they normally close at 10 to midnight but they were closed at 23:33 that does sound like unforeseen circumstances to be honest rather than routinely changing things.

duchy

fuzzything wrote: »

Some people who expect a shop's opening hours to be the hours they are open to new customers might possibly be 1 in 100 people who are on the autistic spectrum, of which I am one.

I had an anxious experience a week ago when I went to a tesco express at 11:33 pm. Although it's down as open until midnight they stopped me a few steps after walking in and said sorry we are closed. I asked what time they closed and they said 10 to midnight...Me: but it's 11:33? Him: sorry. we are closed.

I left feeling confused, anxious and was worrying about it for hours afterwards. Partly I believe that's caused by my Asperger syndrome, but it was also caused by tesco's inconsistent information. If there were unforeseen circumstances that I am told of I can accept that, but routinely changing the opening times I will struggle with.

I would imagine tesco would not only want customers to be able to rely on their published opening times, but also to increase their income by selling more products. Otherwise, why stay open so late?

Often the sales don't cover the cost of staying open -wages, electricity etc so if it was a very quiet night it *might* be the manager has some leeway.....or more likely there was some issue within the shop. Either way you now know that particular store (and maybe stores in general from this thread) don't always stick precisely to their opening hours -and now you know-the next time you won't get so anxious -another coping with the rather odd world we live in AS skill. My son has Aspergers and we often have this kind of conversation about how unpredictable life can be and he often manages to reduce anxiety to just feeling a bit unsettled by keeping this in mind.

Gordon_Hose

Money-Saving-King wrote: »

Would you still be expecting to be able to walk around the place at 17:10? Surely to be closed means trading has stopped. If something closes at 5 I wouldn't turn up a few minutes beforehand not really thinking anything of it.

How do you define closed, last in or stopped trading? Surely stopped trading the obvious definition. Vision in your head what a closed shop looks like, does it have lights on and customers happily wondering around shopping or is it closed with the lights off?

Just a quick edit to say the post above also seems to agree closed means trading has stopped.

The op started off with 20 minutes, then in an email writes 11:45 so we seem to be 15 minutes now so you can pretty much tell the op already likes to exaggerate things (as I've said I've seen this from the op before) so we'll never know what the time in the op's situation really was.

I also use to do a very similar thing to Marliepanda. If they could have their purchase done by closing time they got let in, if they couldn't they wouldn't get in. It was simple, we close at x time, you need to be at the till paying by then.

I, personally, wouldn't turn up at 4:59pm and still be in there at 5:10pm. I have been in Tesco's going through the till's at 4pm (Sunday) and at 3:45pm they've had an announcement that the store is closing and start wheeling out cages to re-stock etc. They didn't however, prevent people from coming in. The security guard simply informed people they were closing at 4pm and wouldn't be able to serve anyone past that time, so they should be quick. Seemed to work.

If I turn up 5 mins before closing because I need some milk for my son, firstly I would be cursing myself for not planning ahead properly, and secondly I expect to be let in, provided I can get through the checkout before the stipulated closing time.

Otherwise, closing time isn't closing time. Where do you draw the line? 'We close at 5, but need 3 hours to clean up so no-one is allowed in after 2pm.'?

The bigger issue here is that companies are unwilling to pay their staff properly.

[Deleted User]

Money-Saving-King wrote: »

Bit of an assumption isn't it! But as I said before I've noticed you before on this forum and know the sort of biased assumptions you come up with. As has been pointed out shops often shut as the shift ends, it's impossible to have the last person in out and served in zero seconds!

What did you say when you got to the door? Why would the shout if they you just simply walked to the door, surely they wouldn't have bothered to say anything unless you started banging or shouting through the door?

Please stick to the facts of this thread and not your personal opinion of me. Its not relevant.

I tried the door, it was locked, guy walked over.

RosiPossum

fuzzything wrote: »

Some people who expect a shop's opening hours to be the hours they are open to new customers might possibly be 1 in 100 people who are on the autistic spectrum, of which I am one.

I had an anxious experience a week ago when I went to a tesco express at 11:33 pm. Although it's down as open until midnight they stopped me a few steps after walking in and said sorry we are closed. I asked what time they closed and they said 10 to midnight...Me: but it's 11:33? Him: sorry. we are closed.

I left feeling confused, anxious and was worrying about it for hours afterwards. Partly I believe that's caused by my Asperger syndrome, but it was also caused by tesco's inconsistent information. If there were unforeseen circumstances that I am told of I can accept that, but routinely changing the opening times I will struggle with.

I also feel stressed when shops are closed before they say so on their opening hours. But I also get upset with people who try to use the tills after closing time. I've no diagnosis of anything but I do place on the spectrum.
It's hard when you see a lot of things as black and white, because life just doesn't conform to it.

prowla

If it's a regular occurrence then they're encouraging you to shop elsewhere.