I have a team member that will close machines down and pull items 2-3 hours before closing. Just so that s/he can clean things up and sit on his/her butt or go chat with other employees the last hour. I don't start closing anything up til about 30 min before closing. That team member will tell customers we're closed or can't serve them an hour before closing time. That team member will refuse to take orders because s/he has other orders to do or because s/he doesn't want to clean up the mess. S/he will also get upset and complain because I will take orders and will turn the machines back on to serve a customer. WE ARE NOT SUPPOSE TO REFUSE CUSTOMERS, but s/he gets away with this all the time. I'm getting tired of it and don't want to work with them anymore. I'd rather work when they aren't working.
I am actually dealing with the same thing at my place of work. I started just doing the area they leave me in and stopped going behind them cleaning up. If a customer comes up I serve them anyway. This does tick the team off, but I have a job to do and I'm going to do it. I say you do it no matter what. If you're doing your job and doing it right, you have nothing to worry about.
It's interesting you posted this. I'm in the bakery at my store and although without even asking I know we aren't supposed to refuse customers at any point in time. Rather you are on closing or just even beginning to open the store. And I'd never just close up just so I could be talking and slacking off. Not what I'm there for anyway.
But I'm curious, as I'm not sure if they have this at other stores or not. But since we moved into the our new store/market place building. There has been a sign slapped on the counter that says 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. hours of operation or something like that. They have something similar for the pizza and sandwich shops, and even Starbucks. To which, employees in those locations adhere to the letter(namely starbucks, as they never seem to have folks over there close to or near time for closing(which I get, as I figure who needs coffee all that late in the first place, anyway?)) and clean up and go home like right at the closing on their sign.
But when it comes to bakery(and I get we have a bit more to clean up and do at night than the other locations I mentioned), it seems like we aren't allowed to refuse customers either when it's 8 p.m. and afterward. Which I really hate sometimes, cause given how much bread we have to slice, stuff to clean up, stock floor, trash to take out, etc. that there is to do. I feel like we should be able to tell customers to come back in the morning or give them the store's biz card to contact someone with their question(namely about cake decorations or what our pastry chef can and can't do!(we can't take orders for her AT ALL in the first place, let alone be able to speak about when she will get in her next truffles or something for her case. As she rarely tells us stuff like that at times and does her own thing!(heck it took her til last week to finally get a description sheet of what her pastries are made of, so we could be able to tell the customers, as regular clerks don't always know what she is doing as we are running around filling the floor and doing other tasks to notice)).
And come to think of it, by chance does any one else have these signs in any of their depts.? We didn't have them at the old store I trained at. And it's like now we do and yet, we can't really enforce them or do much with them either as employees. So not sure why our Dept. manager had put it up there if we can't really follow it.
No we don't. Not that I know of, any way. Other departments usually close an hour before ours, but that;s because Deli stays busy up until 6 or 7. We still get customers from 7-9 but not as many. I think that it's o'kay to shut down certain things AFTER 7- 7:30, but not BEFORE and not EVERYTHING. You're not suppose to refuse customers and most of them after 7 want just sliced meat, salads, fried chicken or something simple. If you have enough fried chicken and rotisserie chickens cooked (after 7) to last up until close (9), then you can shut down fryers, oven, and one slicer, but definitely not all slicers (until close) and definitely DO NOT REFUSE a customer.
No we don't. Not that I know of, any way. Other departments usually close an hour before ours, but that;s because Deli stays busy up until 6 or 7. We still get customers from 7-9 but not as many. I think that it's o'kay to shut down certain things AFTER 7- 7:30, but not BEFORE and not EVERYTHING. You're not suppose to refuse customers and most of them after 7 want just sliced meat, salads, fried chicken or something simple. If you have enough fried chicken and rotisserie chickens cooked (after 7) to last up until close (9), then you can shut down fryers, oven, and one slicer, but definitely not all slicers (until close) and definitely DO NOT REFUSE a customer.
Yea, at our old store normally we would have shut off the ovens at 8 or so. So they can cool off enough to scrub out and so forth. But now since we moved into the new place, we are just about baking all night to stay on top of cookies and danishes. Or even now given that we have the online ordering system up and running, and for some strange reason my DH and his back ups, don't know how to schedule us when we have fewer hours, we have to bake up extra stuff to fill last min online orders cause nobody stopped to spare a moment and look into taking care of those orders earlier in the day. So when on closing, we have to do that in addition to winding the dept. down.
That is great though about your deli, I think our's is the same way. Which is kind of nice actually and less stress inducing actually. I guess my beef though with bakery is that for evening/closing peeps, we are expected to cover both afternoon shifts work as well as our own. And having such a larger section now than we did at the old store, it's just A LOT to contend with. And since they have cut us down from having 4 people to 2, to help with closing, I know things aren't getting as clean or done as properly as they should.
Most especially as some folks will come in and tell you "I'm not going into the freezer..." or when they are supposed to be cleaning up stuff they are just chucking things out(some of the bread loaves or doughnuts from the case). Then add in the customers that want something written on a cake or asking if we can do particular images or what have you, that we don't have on cakes or ask if the pastry chef has a pricing guide for wedding cakes(which I couldn't find one), or my personal fave when someone called in about there being no coin or plastic baby in their king cake. And I don't know, I guess it just stresses me out having to work with some of these peeps on closing and then have to come in the next day to hear from the day crew how bad the evening crew is all the time. Thankfully I don't drink, as it could for sure drive me there, lol.
And to get back to the original poster's topic of refusing customers. I have yet officially do that. I'd rather duck into the freezer and get stuff out to stock the floor or pull out stuff for the doughnut slack out. And leave it to the other person on that shift to handle them, just so I don't end up saying the wrong thing and get my foot or the store manager's up my butt for turning someone away.
Go an tell on the employee but do it from a pity point of view. Advise you didn't want to say anything but you are feeling uncomfortable that you may get in trouble and don't want to be a part of what she is doing. If this person is above you than shut down early when she does and advise this is what you were told to do, you didn't know any better.
What? Why bother a manager about that? Tattling doesn't change the persons' behavior/ It just makes you look bad and look like a complainer. Besides managers can't really do anything about it. One thing that makes them slack is the security of their job through the Union. The manager would have to write them up at least 2 times on the same thing , before they would even consider changing their performance. Most of the ones who get away with bad work are usually the ones who are snitches. I'd rather just do my job, than waste my time tattling.
I am not sure what the issue is here. Some departments (like Deli) take several hours to break down and clean up. Sometimes we don't have regular cashiers at 10PM because someone has called out and the person that was on a register is working U Scan from 10PM-1am. Sometimes it is necessary to shut a register down and direct a customer to U Scan or another register that is open.
