Lady, Even The Checkouts Want You To Leave…

I work in the meat department and am doing a deep clean of the area after closing. While I am doing this the following events are happening, relayed to me later by a cashier:

A customer has managed to come in just before we lock the doors for the night. Company policy is that if a customer enters before closing time they should be allowed to stay until they finish their shopping.

She finally finishes her shopping about an hour after we’ve closed. The grocery workers start to check her out but about halfway through the transaction, the registers auto shut off.

Customer: “What’s going on! Why did you turn it off!”

Cashier: “I didn’t, ma’am. It did that automatically.”

The manager has been standing nearby to ‘hurry things along’ and calls someone over the radio about it. He gets a response from someone knowledgeable that includes a few soundbites such as “why are you still there?!”.

Manager: “Apparently, they are programmed to auto shut off exactly one hour after we close for security reasons and can’t turned on until the following day.”

Customer: “Why didn’t you tell me that before!”

Manager: “Honestly, ma’am, no customer has ever kept us here this late until you, so none of us even knew the contingency system existed.”

Customer: “Well what are you going to do about it?!”

Manager: “Show you the exit and advise you come in tomorrow during normal open hours?”

About an hour and a half after we closed the lady is still in the parking lot arguing with the full-time grocery worker in charge of closing that night. I felt bad for the grocery worker but the amount of joy I felt from seeing her not get her groceries was indescribable.