Thought I would post this here to see if anyone else had this experience.

Hubby I went to a particular store that is in our town around 10:00am. They open up at 9:00am. I should tell you that all other stores are quite a distance so we had planned to spend quite a bit of money in this store plus it was payday.

Anyhow, we get there and start walking up to the door. A lot of the workers were outside smoking, laughing and chatting up a storm. They yelled to us that they are closed. I asked why, what was wrong? A gal said they are doing inventory and won't be open until 1:00 that afternoon.

Forget that I felt like a criminal trespassing on their property but for all of them to be goofing off like they were and not having their store ready for customers put a very bad taste in my mouth! I was just really shocked as I have never in my life seen this.

I mean to me they should be doing inventory at night or have a separate group of workers to do the inventory during the day, but never close the store!

Oh well Im over it LOL We went the extra distance to Wally's (yeah I know) but they got my money..lol

What do you all think of this? Would you have done something or no??

__________________
Paula
Some days are diamonds Some days are stone

http://paulajc.mycoupons.com/

I'm not sure what there is to "do", really. What CAN you do?

There's several things unknown. You mentioned the store by name that you went to later, what was the store you went to first?

Was this a special case? Is this something they do once a week or once a month? Was there maybe a problem doing inventory at another time? Do they normally take inventory other hours, but for some reason had to change it?

Too many things are unknown.

I have a 24 hr Kroger near by that once in a while closes for in depth cleaning and the like. If I show up when they're doing it, or other people show up, like folks that work 2nd shift and can only shop late, what's to do? They can't really help it, they have to do it SOME time.

I think it's too hard to really think anything because there's too much unknown. In any case, I have no idea what could be done, the store can do as it needs or wants. If that happened to me, I'd just go somewhere else.

Mallerie

I would go in another day and talk to the manager. See what they have to say.

There are a few stores around here that shut down for inventory during the day but they aren't rude about it and when they do open, it's a HUGE sale!

__________________
Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

Like someone else mentioned, a store can close at any time that they want to, for any reason that they want to. Obviously it wouldn't be good for business to do it during business hours...but they can do it if they want to. I can't imagine they would close on a Saturday morning unless there was some special reason that they needed to since that is probably one of their busiest days. I don't see a problem with employees standing around outside smoking/chatting/laughing. They had probably already been working for a while, and were having a break. Nothing wrong with that at all. They aren't open, and don't have regular customers inside the store that they are ignoring...so I don't see a problem with it. Also, why did you feel like you were criminal tresspassing? Because they were closed? I imagine they "yelled to you that they were closed" to save you the trip from your car to the door of the store...just to find out that they were closed. Would you rather that they ignored you, let you walk up to the door, pull the door, peer inside, pull the door again, and wonder what was going on? I can see how it would be disappointing that they were closed, and you didn't know about it before you got there and had to go out of your way to another store...but I'm not exactly sure what you could "do" about it since stores are privately owned businesses, and do whatever they want (well, not whatever they want...LOL...but can close when they want, etc).

I didn't understand that either.

I had this happen at an Ingles Supermarket a while back. Hubby and I went out for some late night milk and greeting cards (they have Gibson Greetings at 40% off) - I think it was around 9:30. This Ingles is 24 hours, so I didn't expect them to be closed and there were some cars in the lot. They didn't look closed at all. There were some kids (wearing cashier aprons) standing farther off in the lot and one of them yelled to us, "They're closed!" We both shouted back, "Okay, thanks!". I appreciated that since they didn't leave us to just walk all the way up and wonder why we couldn't get in. I didn't feel or see any rudeness in that. They COULD have just let us walk up there and gawk in the doors like a couple of ding-a-lings! LOL!

I have no idea why they were closed, no one said. All the lights in the store were on, so maybe they were doing inventory. I didn't feel the need that I should do something though. They needed to do what they needed to do, what could I have done about that?



~ Ambrie ~

__________________

I totally agree a store has the right to close for whatever reason. I can understand if it were a 24 hour store like Wallys etc for clean up or whatever. No problem with that.
I should have mentioned this was on Friday morning (payday).

I didnt want to mention what store this was but I guess I will. Its a Biglots and I never saw them do this before. Their store is always organized and clean. Who knows maybe they had a issue with the inventory.

Really, you had to have been there to know what we saw. It just did not look good and since this is the only big store in our town which I might add is packed daily. To me they should keep up on the inventory etc.. Even Hubby gave me a look like what is their problem. They were all yelling closed and one gal was waving her arms..it was just too much. The manager was out there and he should have told us or put a big sign up closed til one! I don't know..just never saw anything like it and it just looked in poor taste thats all...

Oh well like I said Im over it..lol

__________________
Paula
Some days are diamonds Some days are stone

http://paulajc.mycoupons.com/

Like I said ..you had to be there. It was the way they were looking at us. Even Hubby noticed that. It was almost like rudeness. I'm sure they were probably upset about the inventory and telling people they were closed etc.. so it just came out in their body language etc. I was surprised they didnt yell "hey you we are closed get lost." LOL

__________________
Paula
Some days are diamonds Some days are stone

http://paulajc.mycoupons.com/

That's the hard part of trying to do this:

All we can do is go by the similar experiences you asked about. By your first post it seems as if you were a bit irritated by it, which makes me wonder if you thought more of the ordeal at the time than there really was. (I know you said you're over it a couple of times, but you did take the time to post about it. )

My similar experience to yours, was no big deal to me. It didn't bother me at all. In your case it would have been nice if they put a sign up. With the way your describing it, it doesn't sounds like this is something routine, which is even moreso why I wouldn't have given it much thought, especially if they were standing around chatting and laughing.

Mallerie

You're right, I was irritated at the time because my girls were due home at noon and this was the closest store so we had quite a drive to Wallys but made it back in time. We usually don't go shopping on the weekends. Thats family time for us since Hubby works midnights. So... we were squeezing in the last minute shopping for the week.

I wasnt looking for pity or anything just was shocked and wondered if anyone else encountered a situation like that. Plus it makes for good conversation.. lol

__________________
Paula
Some days are diamonds Some days are stone

http://paulajc.mycoupons.com/

You mentioned weekend shopping, but then said this was on a Friday. I don't really understand the connection to pay day, but it sounds like it would make sense that they get this taken care of on a weekday so that they would be ready for Saturday and weekend shoppers.

It does drive me nuts when employees stand outside any retail establishment for a smoking break. I am not a smoker and find it very disgusting to have to walk through the nasty smell and butts all over the ground. I think retailers should provide an out of the way spot for their employees to smoke.

cj/

I have participated in inventory before at a store and we do it only 2 times a year (which I think most stores probably do). You have to scan everything and it does take hours to do. Everything has to be audited too, after it is scanned and that takes awhile to make sure it was scanned correctly. After everything was scanned, we could be waiting for a few hours until everything was cleared. Perhaps they were just waiting until they knew that everything was ready. We would do it for two days, but quite possibly maybe they did it in one night to the next morning to get it done with. I have seen numerous stores post signs that said they would close early due to inventory. It has to get done and there isn't much anyone can do, although it is an inconvenience.

I've been to stores before that have been closed for inventory in the mornings and open in the afternoons. I even went to JC Penney once and the doors were locked. They were doing inventory. No one was outside to tell me, but when I got to the door, I read the sign. But it didn't bother me. Sure, it was an inconvenience but stores have to do inventory. As far as the people outside hollering at you telling you the store was closed, maybe they were on break and were trying to let you know before you got to the doors. As far as it being payday, payday is different for everyone, so I think that's really not an issue. Maybe next time if you're going to a particular store with the intentions of spending big bucks, you'll want to call ahead so that way you won't waste a trip and gasoline.

Inventory is a fact of life in retail. Alot of companies hire an outside firm and they come in with their own employees and do the inventory. I bet you ran into just that because as you said they were outside laughing it up and smoking. I used to work retail management and when we did our own inventory we did half days at the store and we knew how we had better treat customers who showed up at the door surprised we were not open. I have also been to a few stores where the same thing happened that you described and everytime the inventory was being done by an outside firm. They really don't care what you think about the store being closed because they work for the inventory company and not the store . I am sorry this happened to you.

__________________
MyCoupons Is #1 For Holiday Shopping

I'm a vendor for stores, all have to do inventory at least once a year, some grocery stores do 3 or 4 times a year. Big Lots I know does once a year, they hire an outside firm, their store employees watch to make sure things are inventoried correctly, they were probably getting a 15 minute break then back to work for the store to be open at 1:00, they probably started working very early in the morning 4:00 or 5:00am for the store to be done at 1:00 to open. You really have to watch the inventory crews that come in they make alot of mistakes sometimes. Some stores close for inventories, some like Walmart, alot of grocery stores and larger stores stay open, since they don't want to lose sales. Larger stores have a larger staff and can watch the inventory crews, man cash registers etc., smaller stores like Big Lots have fewer employees, and some of those employees will have to work after the store opens also, making it a really long day for them. They would be minimizing their losses by opening at 1:00 since they probably don't have alot of business first thing in the morning. As far as payday I guess it depends where you live as to when pay day is, we live near a large military base, payday is the 1st and 15th for most people.

Here is what I think...Paula you were having a bad day and not happy with store A. You were upset the store was closed when you had good money to go in and pay. I think that you know that stores have to do inventory it just wasn't a good day for you. You came here wanting to rant and have everyone support you and say that it is wrong for the store to close and do inventory. Everyone has a bad day and if they can't come here and rant then where can we go? I am going to say yes Paula I can see why you were upset. Is it worth calling the store over? No but I do understand where you are coming from.
Peace to all

__________________
cmemaloy@yahoo.com


I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

Life! is a coin. You can spend it anyway you wish, but you can only spend it once.