Camera Store - The Hell of Retail

"I'm Gonna Miss My Train!"

A lot of times, we get customers come in just as we're about to close. It's kind of annoying, but it's all right. God knows how many times I managed to make it to a store or restaurant just before they closed, and how glad I was to not be turned away. I mean, what are they gonna say, "We close in 5 minutes, so please leave"? We stop letting people IN the store at closing time. Of course, we'd prefer to be able to start cleaning up and closing up at closing time, rather than spending 15 minutes telling someone about a camera, but if that's the way it goes, oh well.

Tonight, we actually had THREE people in the store as we closed, and it was just me and the new guy out on the sales floor, so two people had to wait for me to help them... One just wanted to know what's out there as far as compact cameras go, so he was inconsiderate enough to require my attention (for no good, constructive, purchasing-related reason) AFTER closing time AND while other people waited. The second guy actually wanted to buy a camcorder, so I treated him super nice and actually felt bad that he was made to wait by the first guy.

And then the third person was a woman, who was like "Could we hurry this up please, I have to catch my train in like 5 minutes". Now THAT's not cool. That's REALLY not cool. Why do you assume you can come in at closing time and be helped right away? Sometimes, you gotta wait, especially at that time when everyone is trying to fit in a few last batch of useful errands (or just shopping, or researching cameras) for the day (we do usually get a lot of people in in the last half hour).

In fact, why does anyone EXPECT prompt service at all? Sometimes you have to wait a while. You're free to leave at any time if it looks like your time constraints are not compatible with how quickly (or not quickly) we are able to help you. That's a decision YOU have to make. No point trying to get everyone else to feel bad. We'll all just feel mad at how unreasonable and spoiled you are, because only you seem to feel that we're not doing things as efficiently as we can, especially at closing time. Heck, we wanna go home too.

posted by Remus