A dream come true

[Food Lady]

So many of you are familiar with my travails in the morning at café: the mall walkers, , mainly. Well, I'm not really going to have to deal with then anymore; we are opening later and if management decides to have coffee for them, [I won't be there ! I won't have to work until 9:30, when most of them leave. No more going through 3 pots off coffee in 20 minutes. No more dealing with the handle of the coffee carafe stuck on the lever because one of them decided to bring it to me. spills coffee way. No more entitled coworkers slapping money on the counter and grabbing coffee cups. No more trying to get open while someone yaps about the weather. No more people moving my tables and leaving them there; no more people moving anything I have on a specific spot for a reason. No more bring moved by a whole team of coworkers on Friday. FREEDOM

[eltf177]

Mallwalkers - the bane of a mall worker's existence as they are some of the ultimate entitlement whores. A friend of mine was in mall management and the story he told me was like !

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Mallwalkers - the bane of a mall worker's existence as they are some of the ultimate entitlement whores. A friend of mine was in mall management and the story he told me was like !

Do tell . . . inquiring minds want to know.

Luckily for me I don't have to deal with the mall walkers (a grocery store has its advantages at times - few though they are) but that does sound almost like heaven.

Now you'll get to deal with the run of the mill White Whine fodder (aka SC's.)

[Food Lady]

The only problem I see is that when I come in to open I will be interrupted a lot if we do have coffee. There are mall workers that will want it right when I get there, or people will want me to ring them up for items with barcodes on them, even though I don't have all the other food ready. All the interruptions will mean I won't have the cooked food ready by the time the mall opens. It takes the entire half hour as it is, with no interruptions, and even now I don't quite have everything done before I have to ring up 20 senior coffees at store open. None of this occurred to me at first. Now I'm apprehensive.

[bankworking]

Could you possibly NOT do coffee until your food is ready? Even if you start a pot brewing right at open, if you make it standard NOT to have it up and ready, that might allow you to put off the mall walkers... you'd have to practice your brisk, no-nonsense "The coffee will be started just as soon as I'm done with opening duties," and let complaints that it's not already ready wash over you like you don't hear them. Brisk and happy has gotten me past a lot of entitled co-workers too. "Sure! I'll get that for you! Just drop by my area as soon as I'm done with these opening items and get past the opening rush." "

The biggest thing is making no exceptions to doing anything for walkers or co-workers before you are ready to open unless your management forces you to, since one exception will turn into twenty.

[LillFilly]

I feel your pain. Worked Security at 2-malls over the course of 7-years. One mall NOTHING was open for 3-hours after we opened the doors, but the mall walkers were pretty decent and brought their own coffee maker, cups and snacks so they could meet in the food court after! One guy had a habit of pounding the door so hard before opening that I thought he would shatter it; a couple of the ladies tore into him about his behavior and I didn't have a problem with him after! My 2nd mall....not so well behaved. In fact, some acted like spoiled 8-year olds! They drove the small coffee shop there nuts after the Friendly's in the mall closed.

[notalwaysright]

I'm curious as to how this is working out, Food Lady. We recently had a change which, in the face of our large remodel was very minor, yet has created lots of SCs.

We used to have two or three chairs by our front doors. They were nick-named "husband chairs." In fact, they were never supposed to be there in the first place. They had just been there so long, nobody thought anything of it. With the remodel, there is no place to keep chairs. Cue outrage! For many days in a row, an angry customer has walked back to the pattern table and brought a chair to the front. Some days employees are bullied into bringing the chair up. We have had complaints, both in store, and on the surveys about the lack of chair. Change is not received well...

[fireheart]

Speaking of mall walkers, I actually found this bit somewhat amusing: there's a group that walks through a shopping mall I used to work at and is fairly popular across my home state. The amusing part is that they actually have polo shirts, printed with a logo to boot

To their credit, they're usually fairly polite when they visit businesses (at least from what I've seen).

[eltf177]

Do tell . . . inquiring minds want to know.

I'll do so, but it's long...

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I'll do so, but it's long...

I've got all night long . . . until around 5 a.m. when I have to get ready for work in the morning.

You can even start a separate thread if you like.

[eltf177]

I've got all night long . . . until around 5 a.m. when I have to get ready for work in the morning.

You can even start a separate thread if you like.

Still working on it, should have it up in a separate thread tonight sometime...

[Air_Stewardess]

I haven't heard the term mall walker in the UK, what does it mean please?

[NecessaryCatharsis]

We had them in the mall I used to live near, in the winter when the weather is bad, the mall would unlock an hour and a half before the stores open, and a group of `mall walkers` would come and walk laps around the mall hallways. At our mall a coffee cart would open at 8:30 (stores opened at 9) to sell coffee and Danish`s to the mall walkers when they were done walking.

[EricKei]

AS -- Many malls in the US (it may be most common here...?) will open their exterior doors several hours before any of the actual shops open, in order to allow workers, janitors, et al, access so that they can get their shops ready for business. Over the years, regular citizens -- note that I did not say "shoppers" ~_~ -- figured this out, and have taken advantage of the opportunity to get their exercise (read: walking) in a clean, dry, quiet, reasonably safe, climate-controlled area. Thus, they do so, for hours on end, many doing so several times a week.

Malls encourage this (or, at least, they don't stop them) because they hope that these people intend to make purchases once the shops open (fairly rare, save for the food court), and/or because people start complaining if they do not allow this activity. It's been going on since at least the 1970's here, so it's simply assumed that all malls will allow it here.

[fireheart]

Malls encourage this (or, at least, they don't stop them) because they hope that these people intend to make purchases once the shops open (fairly rare, save for the food court), and/or because people start complaining if they do not allow this activity. It's been going on since at least the 1970's here, so it's simply assumed that all malls will allow it here.

At the mall I used to work at, the supermarkets (both of them) opened around 6-7am, the rest of the mall didn't until 9am. The mall walkers did come in afterwards on occasion to buy drinks or a snack, but they were fairly courteous.