No, we don't operate by CST here

[Lace Neil Singer]

Alright for some. XD

Today was an SC operating by CST; he complained that Friday night he tried to come into the petrol station at 9pm, and it was closed. Bullshit. Big, steaming, stinky pile of it. XD There is no way in hell that the petrol station closed that early; he just must have forgot to put his clocks forward or something.

[bankworking]

The drive thru lanes are open later on Saturdays than the bank itself. At my branch we had extended drive-thru hours which ended up making our drive through the ONLY place open as late as 3pm on a Saturday for my bank...not to reopen until Monday at 9. Thus, we constantly had trouble with people wanting to do business after close.

The problem was magnified by the fact that policy dictated that we had to help every car that was in line AT 3pm. No one ever paid attention to the OPEN signs going off or the CLOSED signs flashing on, so we'd have more cars keep getting in line behind the ones who had legitimately been there at 3pm. On a bad day, it might be a good 20 minutes before we got thru the cars that had been waiting at closed. Imagine how upset the SCs (who'd been waiting in line behind them) were to find out they'd been waiting for however long less than 20 minutes only to be told we had closed before they pulled up.

Because of complaints, management decided to test how bad it would be if we actually just kept helping them. As a test, my manager worked a drive-thru close with the concept that we would actually keep helping people until the line finally ended on it's own. It took until 4:45.

After that, they hired a security guard (we are fortunately at a branch where a guard is not required normally) simply to get cars to leave when the lanes closed.

[Mordecai]

The Sears near me has an automotive department. They sell tires, batteries, do service, etc. I've gone there from time to time (battery, tires, brakes). It's nice. You leave your car there for service while you shop at the mall.

Yeah, but that's Sears. Nordstrom doesn't have an automotive department, last I checked.

[EricKei]

I used to work at an expensive grocery store that, I later found out, paid most of us worse rates than the crappy chain stores...but I digress.

We had at least one regular customer who invariably came in to shop about fifteen minutes before closing time. Naturally, management would not let us shoo them out, TELL them that we were closing and that WeWouldReallyVeryMuchLikeToGoHomeNowKThanxBye, start sweeping the aisle 5 feet behind them, or anything like that that could make them feel unwelcome...but nothing stopped us from cleaning up the aisles that they were not on,turning out the lights for the aisles the nanosecond they turned the corner, etc...you get the idea. The thing with these people was, whenever the managers weren't looking and we managed to sneak in a "we close at Xpm" mention, they would always just smile and say, "Oh yes, we know. We just like coming here when it's quieter and there's no other shoppers around".

Keep in mind that they weren't coming in for a quick grab-and-buy. They were coming to do a major, 1 1/2 to 2 hour grocery run. We always ended up with one cashier, one bagger, and two managers having to stay extra time just for that nonsense. I have my doubts that the bit of extra profit eked out from these people was worth the extra expense of keeping the store open another hour or two.

[Ghel]

At our bank, the drive-up opens an hour earlier than the lobby and stays open half an hour later. Almost every morning, we have at least one person go up to the door and try it. If they're functioning with more than two brain cells, they'll read the hours on the door and go to the drive-up. Occasionally, we'll have somebody pound on the door trying to get in. If they get our attention, we point toward the side of the bank where the drive-up is. As somebody mentioned above, opening the door when you're not open is how employees get shot.

Once in a while, we'll get a call from a customer (usually on a Friday night) asking if we can stay open "just a few minutes" after close so they can come by and cash their check. No way. Or they want us to stay open late so they can get in their safe deposit box. In this case, I have a great excuse. Our insurance won't cover us in cases of theft, fraud, etc. if the incident happens outside our posted hours. I never get arguments when I tell the customer that.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Here's the Snopes link on the Nordstrom tires story. Doesn't actually say if it's true or false.

I do most things on my car at the dealer, but for tires I go to Sears. It's a lot cheaper and they do free alignment checks and stuff. Had my alignment checked a couple weeks ago (you have to do it within 6 months to keep the warranty current) and spent 20 minutes sitting in the pet store with a puppy sleeping in my lap.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Ohhhh, the stories I could have about CST.

All of them are from the wholesale club, especially when I got assigned to FDLP.

On the days I opened, I'd get people demanding to get let in when they'd see me through the vestibule's bay doors. And I'd ignore them. That's right. Straight up ignore them. The only time I'd actually address them would be to tell them to "go around" to the automatic doors on the other end of the vestibule, 'cuz the bay doors at the far end were still locked for whatever reason.

Did have one asshat of a co-irker piss me off once. He was scheduled to open cashier, meaning he was scheduled in at 8:45am (fifteen minutes before club opening, as all opening cashiers are scheduled). And the rule is, if you're coming in before the club opens, you enter through the back door, not the front.

Well, CW didn't want to go around. I'd popped into the vestibule to empty out the photo drop into the official pick-up bag.

CW: *bangs on door* Hey, man, let me in!
J2K: You gotta go around back!
CW: Fuck that! I'll wait!

And he folded his arms and leaned against the wall, scowling 'cuz I'd refused to let him in. I was fresh on FDLP at the time, and I was already in hot water for missing something on a receipt. So I was in no mood to do something against the rules and risk getting in trouble. Doors open at 9am, he goes inside, gets chewed out for being late, tries to blame me, and gets told "He was right, you were wrong. Clock in and get to work, and come in the back next time."

There were quite a few who liked to push the CST barrier when we closed at 6pm on Sundays. Pretty sure I've shared a few of those stories before, but what the hey.

J2K: Sorry, sir, we're closed.
SC: I won't be long, I just need one thing.
J2K: No, sir, we're closed, you can't come in.
SC: You still have customers in the store, don't ya? I won't be long, I just need one thing.
J2K: NO, sir, you can't come in, we're closed.
SC: I won't be long, I just need one thing.
(This whole time, he's been trying to step around me, and I've been moving to cut him off each time.)
J2K: (snaps) LOOK! It doesn't matter if you need one thing or one hundred! We're closed! You can't come in!
SC: (shocked) (walks away)

Or the time this one idiot walked in twenty minutes after we closed...

J2K: Hey, we're closed.
SC: What? When d'ya close?
J2K: Nine o'clock.
SC: (looks at watch) (pause) I still got five minutes.
J2K: (looks at SC's watch, it reads 9:17pm) ...
SC: (aware he got busted) It's twenty minutes fast--
J2K: Come back tomorrow when we're open.
SC: But my watch is--
J2K: Your watch may say whatever it wants to. The store's clock says we closed twenty minutes ago.
SC: (leaves, defeated)