Are You Open? Redux.

[katie kaboom]

THis is why God gave us books- something to do when one is early for a store. Or even a gameboy.

True, but who knows how many of these people can actually read. I'm guessing not many.

[Bosch]

Yep.

If the store phone is the same phone as the one used:
- by whoever is going to pick some staff member up
- by a staff member's childcare facility
- by someone who might have to report an emergency preventing them from doing their next shift
- by other related businesses who need to talk to management (or other staff)
- by offsite staff who need to report in

.... etc, etc, etc.

So no, not to tell callers they're closed. But yes, the phone may need to be answered.

Or for us in the morning our store down the road opens at 9am, we open at 10am so we field calls from them asking we have stuff in inventory they are out of to put on hold.

And yes those customers show up at our gate 10min later(easy if you hop the freeway for two exits) and scream through the closed gate. "Factoria said you would open for me" No sorry we open at 10am. catbutt face and they go down to starbucks for coffee.

[Red_Dazes]

At our work we do in fact answer the phone after hours or before hours. We have a different greeting of course. In stead of
"Thank you for calling ________. Where you can find a treasure for every occasion this is RED how may I help you..."

Its

"____ Security."

thats it...

[wagegoth]

I hated the early opening at Nordstrom. In my department, there was normally only one person opening. We came in 1 1/2 hours before opening to have time to put away new merchandise, straighten the floor, set the register, etc. So, a lot to do. Then, being Nordstrom, while I'm stilling trying to get the empty boxes and rolling racks cleared, they'd open the doors fifteen minutes early.

[Mister]

Sadly, caller-id doesn't come up until you pick up at our store, so before opening hours, it might be some customer thinking we're open already or it might be a CW calling in sick. To be fair, our customers in that regard are nice, if we ask them to call back in a while because nobody's at department such and so because we don't open for another half hour, they generally apologise and call back. So that's cool.
After hours, ringing phones are generally ignored because Murphy's Law demands that it is a customer with a long complaint, so:

"____ Security."

is a great idea. Genuine questions like "I lost my car keys, have you found them?" can be answered while commercial questions "Is that in stock?" can be referred to the next day.
Thanks Red_Dazes !

[Bike_Wrench]

This happened to a co-worker.

A lady rents a bike during the week, then on Sunday when we open at 9AM, she calls at 8AM and gets the answering machine saying we don't open til 9AM.

She leaves a message asking if someone can come in early so she can drop the bike off!

When my co-worker got in he also had a second message from the grocery store across the parking lot. Apparently after getting frustrated that no one was there before hours to come in before hours...she left the bike in a cart at the grocery store, telling them to return it at 9. CW charged her an additional $10 "delivery charge" for having to walk across the parking lot and retrieve it.