Driving Through Closing Time

I work a summer job at a local fast food place that closes both dining room and drive-thru at 10:00. We have a rule, however, that as long as there are cars in the drive-thru we have to continue to take orders until there are no more cars. Because of this, we try to rush cars out of the drive-thru as fast as possible in the last few minutes until closing.

I’m taking orders for drive-thru and also acting as drive-thru cashier one night until closing, and I hand out the last order in a line of cars. I look up at the screen that shows if there are cars by the speaker and see no one, then glance down at the clock and see it’s 10:01, so I take off my headset. Not 90 seconds later I notice a car on the screen by the speaker but I ignore it because they showed up after close.

The manager then comes up from where he was cleaning the front and tells me to take their order because he isn’t sure if the car showed up before close. Despite me and a coworker pointing out that we didn’t see the car there at 10:01, we end up taking the order. The customer ends up having a $50 order, allowing time for two more cars to pull up that we now have to take orders from. We end up handing out the last order 35 minutes after closing.