Why do they always come at closing...

[Catwoman2965]

Oh yeah, we get that too...it will be quiet up until about 5 minutes before closing, and then you hear the unmistakable sound of the door opening..and you see one or more wander in....and they will always ask what time we close! 9 - so that doens't mean you can wander in at 8:55, start looking, and bring 900 things into the fitting room!

They just don't get it....and some will say (but not sincerely), oh, i'm sorry i kept you, or thanks for letting me try this on....I will always say, nicely, well, its ok, we have to be here anyway..and they always act surprised! like they think once we close and lock the doors we can go home! hahahahaha - yeah right.

One customer's husband asked me who did the vacuuming? i said we do, he then said, oh, i figured you'd have someone from the outside come in and do it....

clearly he's never worked retail.

[DesignFox]

I think that any person who comes into a store 5 or 10 mins before closing and proceeds to take longer than that to make a purchase has never worked retail...or possibly a day in their life.

When people come in 10 mins to closing to do an activation (or make me solve their problem), I want to ask them if they start a 20 min or more project 10 mins before they are due to leave their job.

And when they say "Of course not." I'd love to tell them- "What makes you think I want to, then?"

I mean, in all actuality, an activation itself isn't a long process assuming the customer knows precisely what phone they want, precisely what plan they want (if they aren't an existing customer), what if any features they want.....and then everything goes smoothly and the computer doesn't glitch... But you can do the math on how often all these forces come together to produce a short transaction. God forbid you are activating more than one phone.

And most people expect that you'll take the time to show them how their phone works/transfer their phonebook (or at least do some basic tutorial with them if they are totally new to cell phones).

We can see how this all snowballs into a process that takes more than 10 mins to complete. And that always puts the person in my store well after the closing time.

[auntiem]

I have a couple of clients that used to do this to me constantly - I've finaly gotten them to realize that I'm signing out at 5 regardless if they are still hemming and hawing and they can call me in the morning.
I will stay late for someone who is coming into town to get a ticket for the next day or need to drop off a payment if they work until 5 but other than that, if someone walks in at 5 to 5 and wants to book a complicated package I'll take their info and say "the company that I usually get the best price from is back East and they are closed now, I'll call them in the morning and let you know". That usually works.
One place I worked let us holler that we were closing and they had 5 minutes to bring purchases up to the counter. The manager wanted our doors locked promptly at closing time and us out the door right away.

[Reyneth]

Last week we had a day where there were no calls dropped. None. That rarely happens - usually when I get in at noon there are anywhere from 2-8 depending upon the day.

Let me rephrase that. There were no calls dropped until about 5:00 when the first shift left. Then we had massive floods of calls. I was stuck on a lengthy interpreter call and watched the "hold" number creep up and up until it was very close to double digits and then the "dropped" number also started going up. And 5 minutes after the hold calls were dealt with - nothing. Minimal calls for about an hour and then it started again! So much for the nice day we had going!