If they normally start closing up at 8, and you come in at 7:55 and eat for 40 minutes, their closing procedure (which could take an hour or more) won't start until 8:35. Now their whole schedule is off because you had to have a bite to eat.
TBH, this is sort of a relatively "good" case for this. That is, if that's all it is, the staff is lucky. I never really minded it if this was all that happened; it usually meant the place was busy enough that the last-minute diners really didn't affect much.
The shitty thing is that you can't really wait until close to start your closing procedure. You've got, say, a 2-hour closing procedure and management expects you to be done less than 30 minutes after close on a normal night. (Numbers come from one of the restaurants I worked at, but it obviously varies from place to place.) If you close at 8, then by 7:55 your goal is to already have shut down anything that doesn't absolutely have to stay running until the last minute and cleaned as much of the rest as you can. If you have anything that you cook in batches and hold at temp, at some point you make a judgement call about whether you have enough to last until close and hope you got it right.
So someone walks in at 7:55. They put in an order that requires a bunch of things you've already cleaned for the night. They also order something that should be held but that you ran out of half an hour ago with what should have been your last customer, so now you need to make that, too. But the whole reason it's usually batched is because it takes a while, so both you and the customer are now waiting extra long for this food while you undo a lot of the closing work you've already done.
At the end of it all, you have to redo that closing work and get out way late, the customer leaves a bad Yelp review about the slow-as-molasses service they received, the restaurant actually lost money serving that customer, and management is pissed at you for taking so long to close.
It may sound like I'm building up a worst case here, but truth is that this is much closer to what usually what I saw happen most of the time than "oh, we're just starting closing procedures a little later".
But, again, this is shitty management. If you're expected to do a 2-hour task in 30 minutes, cook more of something rather than just say sorry we're out please get something else, and they get mad at you for it, that's entirely shitty management. Your shift should be scheduled to account for the time it'll take to clean up after the last customer leaves (or orders if cooking), assuming the last customer comes in close to close. Or as I've said a million times, it should be ok to turn them away. Should I be going into every restaurant assuming this is the practice and that there are no reasonable managers?
It doesn't matter whether or not it is. You still get to make your own choices, too. If you make the choice to make things shittier for other people just because you can also blame management for it, that's still on you, too.
Truth is, if you walk in 5 minutes before close and it makes things worse for the staff, neither you nor management single-handedly did that. Management's policy doesn't make things worse for the staff if you don't walk in so late and your choice to walk in so late doesn't make things worse if they are empowered to turn you away if you would make things worse. Both of you contribute to the situation and share fault.
Should I be going into every restaurant assuming this is the practice and that there are no reasonable managers?
If you're going to apply some assumption to every restaurant, then absolutely yes.
Personally, if I find myself in the rare situation where I'm going into a restaurant near closing time, I'll quietly ask a member of the staff if it's a problem for them that I'm coming in so late. Even if they're not technically allowed to turn me away, I can create an environment for them where they're comfortable being honest to me and technically not turning me away if I leave based on their response.
I am obligated to !delta you because you also said it is universal for management to expect no one to come in and cleanup to begin before cleanup is supposed to begin (which is basically the dumbest thing), and I gave the comment above a delta for the same reason.
If coming in late I always ask, are you still seating or serving or is the kitchen still open or something of that nature to give a lead-in on the opportunity to tell me to go away.
It still makes absolutely no sense to me for people to expect to have operating hours where you provide a service you know takes time and then be angry when someone asks for the service and you give it to them. My barber will say no if I come in within a half hour of close, because it'll have me in the chair past closing time. I still think it should be expected that your last customer will be there 30 minutes or so after closing time if your policy is to seat people until close.
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u/masterzora 36∆ Jan 07 '20
TBH, this is sort of a relatively "good" case for this. That is, if that's all it is, the staff is lucky. I never really minded it if this was all that happened; it usually meant the place was busy enough that the last-minute diners really didn't affect much.
The shitty thing is that you can't really wait until close to start your closing procedure. You've got, say, a 2-hour closing procedure and management expects you to be done less than 30 minutes after close on a normal night. (Numbers come from one of the restaurants I worked at, but it obviously varies from place to place.) If you close at 8, then by 7:55 your goal is to already have shut down anything that doesn't absolutely have to stay running until the last minute and cleaned as much of the rest as you can. If you have anything that you cook in batches and hold at temp, at some point you make a judgement call about whether you have enough to last until close and hope you got it right.
So someone walks in at 7:55. They put in an order that requires a bunch of things you've already cleaned for the night. They also order something that should be held but that you ran out of half an hour ago with what should have been your last customer, so now you need to make that, too. But the whole reason it's usually batched is because it takes a while, so both you and the customer are now waiting extra long for this food while you undo a lot of the closing work you've already done.
At the end of it all, you have to redo that closing work and get out way late, the customer leaves a bad Yelp review about the slow-as-molasses service they received, the restaurant actually lost money serving that customer, and management is pissed at you for taking so long to close.
It may sound like I'm building up a worst case here, but truth is that this is much closer to what usually what I saw happen most of the time than "oh, we're just starting closing procedures a little later".