A Modest Proposal: Stop Lying About When You're Open

Today, I'd like to open a huge can of worms and discuss a topic that is sure to trigger a lot of restaurant and hospitality workers; namely, inconsiderate, clueless customers who come in "too late" and make the entire staff angry.

I see it all the time on Reddit and Facebook - posts raging about patrons who come in "ten minutes before closing" and have the nerve to expect to be served. These subhuman monsters see that an establishment's listed hours are something like "11AM - 9PM" and actually believe they can exchange money for food and service during that entire period. They either don't understand or don't care that there is some unspecified period of time before the listed closing that is the real break point after which the staff no longer wants you to come in.

Typically, these posts are some variation on a common theme of, "It's just common sense to know that you don't come in 15/30/45/60 minutes before closing and expect to be served!" and the poster (and everyone else who works in the industry, it seems) will get really angry if you reply, "so in other words, 'when your restaurant is open'?"

Now, I understand that to some extent this is driven by management, who want to keep labor costs as low as possible, and by the back-of-house staff who want to have everything cleaned down early so that they can bounce at 9:01PM. Regardless of the reason, it puts the customer in the position of having to guess how close to closing is "too late" instead of just being clear about it. 

Any time you cause uncertainty in potential customers, it's bad for business - inevitably, some people will guess wrong and decide not to come in, which is lost revenue, and some people will guess wrong and come in "too late" and piss everybody off.

The really dumb thing about it is that there's a very simple solution to the problem - instead of just saying "open until 9PM," your sign says, "Last Order 8:30, Closed at 9." For reasons I can't comprehend, though, suggesting this solution enrages a large proportion of restaurant employees, who angrily shout "THE CUSTOMER SHOULD JUST KNOW!!! IT'S COMMON SENSE!!! WE WANT TO BE ANGRY INSTEAD OF FIXING THE PROBLEM WITH ALMOST NO EFFORT!!!"

Ok, maybe that last part I made up. But inexplicably, it really makes folks upset to suggest that, as the people who run the restaurant, they're the ones best able to determine how long average ticket times are and correctly estimate how much time it will take for the average patron to sit, order, get served, eat, and leave. And yet, patrons must continue to guess at this number for themselves.

With one simple, free, easy change in the way a restaurant presents its hours of operation, a huge source of staff frustration and anger would disappear, and customer service would improve. But it seems like the "hospitality" industry's commitment to institutional misanthropy will maintain the status quo, and restaurants will continue to lie about when they actually want to trade money for food.