Hey, let's play 'hand back all our stuff' five minutes after close!

[Despina83]

So last night, three women come up to my lane with two carts of crap about three minutes after close, and all of the warnings that we were about to close, mind you. Anyway, they see the total and flip.

"Naw wait, wait, wait!! How am I up to 'undred dollars??!"

She begins looking through her bags at everything she bought, but she still doesn't believe me.

"Hold it now! I know I can't be up to no 'undred dollars!"

I show her the screen and she takes forever carefully examining her listed purchases. She digs through the bags.

"Take these off."

I give total.

Still too much.

"Wait, wait, wait!! Take these off too."

Finally she reluctanctly accepts her new total and pays. After handing back several items, two of which were frozen foods. Five minutes after close. I really had to restrain myself with these people.

[Aramika]

I've had the exact same problem! perhaps your customers come to my store?

and words cannot describe how much I hate these people for doing this especially on weeknights when I need to go home and do my homework so I can get more than 4 hours of sleep.

[fish3k1]

It's even worse when you get the things out to someone's car just before closing (something huge mind you, like, oh, let's say a battery powered corvette) AFTER telling them the box WILL NOT fit in their corsa. Of course, they demand help with the item, it (shockingly) doesn't fit, then I have to take it back into the store because we're not quite closed (there's like, a minute until closing) and I have to sort out all the sodding delayed pick-up paperwork.

I can't remember for sure, but I think this happened the day before Christmas eve. Was my first Christmas in the toy store I'm working at now. Hell of an introduction :/

[marasbaras]

If you don't stay open, they'll take their highly valuable business elsewhere and complain to the entire city and shut down your store!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

A similar but different incident at my store:

This was years ago when I was working a closing shift. I had just finished checking the store for stray customers and was waiting at the front for the final customer of the day, a woman with her young son.

The cashier was ringing up her items. All of a sudden I heard her say "Are you going to buy all those?"

It turned out that while the woman was shopping, the young son was grabbing all the furniture tags out of the displays. He had a stack of them over an inch thick, which is a lot of tags.

Woman looks over at her son with all the tags, giggles, and then tells the cashier "No, we're not buying those. Give those tags back to the nice lady."

Guess who got to spend an extra 20 minutes putting all those tags back with the correct displays after close?

[Nina Turner]

I wish we were able to do that where I worked. Usually, we end up 'closing' 15-25 minutes after the time we're scheduled to close because people take their damned sweet time. We can't kick anybody out once they're in the store before the closing time, either.

Several times we've been 5 minutes past close and someone couldn't figure out why their card wasn't working, comes up to me in customer service, and continues to ponder the nonexistance of their funds. Usually this happens with the EBT Food cards, where the funds are put on the card on a certain date. I ended up with carts full of go-backs because of these people, and got out half an hour late trying to process her crap. >:|

I had another lady claim that the total was wrong, even though everything is done by computer. I sat there holding up a line while calculating the total manually on a calculator. Gr.

[childofsolitude]

A couple of years ago I worked at Target and we'd kick out customers after the store closed. I now work in a grocery store and we can't say anything to the customers who stay after the store is closed. Almost everyday there is at least one customer who shops until 20-30 minutes after we close. Funny thing is we turn the lights down and the music off which SHOULD give them the hint to get the heck out.


I remember a few months ago I was the closing cashier and we were waiting 20 minutes for a guy to finish his shopping so we could leave. The guy finally comes up to my register to check out. His total comes out to a little over $70. He tells me that he only has $50 and stares at me. I stare back. We do a little more staring at each other when he finally asks me to take a few things off of his total. He was expecting me to say that it was OK for him to take an extra $20 worth of groceries for free.

[repsac]

Several years ago while working at a seasonal job, I remember one closing night myself and Andre (who introduced me to the term "pee pee dance") went to cut out the lights and the music. Now we'd been closed a good 30 minutes by then, and had announced it several times before this. So, Andre and I cut all the lights out in one swath, cut the music and start heading back up front. Milling about ready to clock out (The manager was a blast about doing that) this lady comes wandering up with a full cart of stuff and actually asks. "Why did the lights go out?" Blinking Susan (the mgr) looks at me, then Andre and then the lady and blurts out. "Cause we're closed." The lady looks shocked at this and starts to put stuff up on the counter, but Susan (who had a date IIRC) plants her hands on her hips and says quickly. "Nuh uh lady. We're closed. Ain't NO registers here working now, so you gotta go. Been closed a good half hour, what you think those announcements were? Jokes?" The lady with the stuff naturally got a bit huffy, dropped everything where it was and shuffled to the front door. As she was leaving I remember her saying something bout the store being open 24 hours when she shopped there a few years ago. Andre, the master of cool grinned and asked her (very politely) how it was she had shopped there a few years earlier, if the store was less than six months old? She called him a few dirty names. I think she even invented a few words.

[SpyOne]

Ah, how I miss the "good ol' days":

The store announced over the PA when it was 15 minutes to close. Then 10. Then 5. Then came the announcement: "Attention customers, it is now 9 o'clock and the store is now closed."
No mention of "please bring your purchases up front" went with that last one (as it had with the ones before it), and if you weren't in line at a check-out, you were SOL. If a customer tried to get in line at a check out, the cashier would (usually) say, "I'm sorry (sir/ma'am), but we've already closed. I have to stop when I've finished these folks who were already in line at 9."

Which almost never happened.
What the hell is wrong with people?

[Becks]

I had another lady claim that the total was wrong, even though everything is done by computer. I sat there holding up a line while calculating the total manually on a calculator. Gr.

I'd trust the computer over stuff entered manually into a calculator. Numbers stick or don't get entered and all that, you know?

[greensinestro]

I had another lady claim that the total was wrong, even though everything is done by computer. I sat there holding up a line while calculating the total manually on a calculator. Gr.

Please. Take me back to the 1970's, before cash registers had the ability to scan the items. I cannot count the number of times I remembered a cashier having to key in the price of an item. Heck, I recall the guys with the price guns, and you had those little old ladies who would argue that the price was not correct and so forth. I'm sure some of them probably peeled them off with their fingernails and then got their $5 discount on a bottle of aspirin or AIM toothpaste.

That's just terrible. Now that explains why I see cashiers with calculators at their registers.