Hello all and welcome to another "Tales from the Video Store" installment. Today I am going to discuss another one of my biggest pet peeves at the video store...when people come in right before closing. This is not a specific pet peeve to the video store but almost all retail jobs. However, let me explain why it was particularly annoying at the video store.
So let me explain the procedure at the end of a night shift at the video store. About an hour before close, we were required to vacuum the whole store. Around the whole perimeter, up every row, in the "back" room and the floor mats. We had to check in and put away all of the movies that were returned. We also had to clean the glass doors and mop the floors. Needless to say, as our shift ended we had a lot of busy work to do!
Things like this are why we couldn't have nice things
So while one of us would be working on the "chores" we had to do, the other would have to be covering the counter, answering the phone, etc. If a huge crowd of people came in late, it made things complicated. We would wait as long as possible to mop the floors. We put a sign out that the floors were wet but they were slippery even if you knew to look for it! We did have a few mishaps of people slipping. You might be asking, why not wait until the store is closed? Great question. Well, the answer is simple...we didn't get paid for a minute after our shift!
So when people would come in right before close, I used to flat out ask them, "Do you know what you want?" If not I would politely tell them that we were closing soon and they had to choose quickly and check out. When there was five minutes left, I would yell across the store (of course we didn't have a speaker system) that the store was closing. If people didn't move to the counter, we would lie and tell them that our system shut down at closing time. We would lock the door a few minutes early and pray no one else would show up. Occasionally people would bang on the door with a minute before close and it was a judgment call on whether we would let them in.
After everyone was out, we had to get our totals for the night for each register and count down our drawers in the back office. Then we had to make sure everything was all square and then turn off the lights. Remember, all of this time was unpaid and usually either 11 p.m. or 12 a.m. Then of course we would lock up and head out.
If our bosses would pay us to stay late, none of this would have been an issue but they didn't care about our time after the shift. We had to stay as long as it took. This meant that we needed to get people out as soon as possible to make sure we weren't screwed over. Needless to say this policy didn't make the late customers or the employees happy.
Next time you arrive at a store or restaurant right before close, remember those poor workers. I always apologize if I am near closing time.
How about you all, did you ever have a retail experience like this as a customer or as a worker? How did you handle it?
Thank you for reading and have a great rest of your day!
