The Crazy Rants of Samantha BurnsStupid Thing About Stores
That's one thing that's good in this world still. Hairdressers will stay open for you past their store hours. Mr. Big got his hair done the other day at 5pm, the store's actual closing time. They stayed open just for him. Isn't he special.
You can't find that in other stores, at least not here, they are busy pushing people out about 10 minutes BEFORE closing time. I don't get why a store which is packed full of people would want to close when they could obviously make more money staying open a little longer.
This has bothered me for some time now. I know that employees don't want to work more than their 8 hour shift or whatever and that stores don't want to pay their employees overtime, but geesh, what happened to the good ol' days when stores wanted to please their customers?
If they thought about it, they would likely make a profit off keeping their store open and paying a half hour of overtime to a few employees. Perhaps there is a law or something that states that stores are only allowed to be openned during the registered times or something?
I don't get it.
Comments
I used to bartend for debutante balls and cotillions and such. It was always open bar, and we'd set the tip cup out, but we made 90% of our money at closing time because that's when drinks went from free to "costs a tip" for ten minutes. A lot of these people wouldn't drop a buck all night, and then they wanted one last one and all they'd have is a five or ten. One guy tipped me a fifty dollar bill because I mixed him a drink by dumping a third of the tonic from the bottle and filling it with gin.
I've never understood people like that, bless their inebriated little souls.
Posted by: Ted | September 12, 2005 05:05 PM
To my knowledge, there's no U.S. law against staying open later as long as you pay overtime. However, the structure of modern commerce goes against it. For example, if you patronize businesses where the owner is always on the premises, you are likely to see the store stay open later while there are still customers, because the owner can make the decision. The same thing occurs with bargaining -- scroll down to item 4 on this list http://bertrandrussell.blogspot.com/2005/05/brutuss-bath-some-of-people-doing.html
When owners would have to depend on the judgment and honesty of their employees to determine when the store would stay open later and overtime would have to be paid, however, the owner is more likely to think that she is better off sticking to a strict rule, even if it may result in some lost sales.
Posted by: PG | September 15, 2005 09:45 PM
Well, being a hairdresser now for the past 22 years, I must say there have been many a night I had to work past closing hour. Sometimes up to 45 minutes. Do I enjoy it? Absolutely not. I want to get home to my kids and eat dinner before 10:00pm like the majority of people do. The main reason we work past closing is because too many clients throughout the evening were late and put us behind schedule. Oh, yes, if we have a good client that needs squeezed in, we will stay, but the most of the time it is annoying to work past closing because a handful of people were late. Note: when we hand you an appointment card with a time on it-that's when we expect you, if you're going to be late, at least be resonsible enough to call or reschedule. Thank you for letting me rant. Take care!
Posted by: Ronnie | September 27, 2006 07:33 AM
Ronnie - ya, late customers are quite ignorant, in my opinion. I always make my appointments, and try to get there early as much as possible.
I just found it unusual, but pleasant to know that at least one store around here was nice enough to help out in a crunch.
Posted by: Sam | September 27, 2006 02:34 PM