Most people know not to be the person who walks into a store five minutes before closing. But some still do—and they don’t always realize how much extra work they’re creating.
TikTok user Penny (@xo_pennypink), who works as a barista, recently shared a video with over 555,300 views, describing exactly what happens when a customer makes a last-minute order.
‘This is why you don’t go into stores 5 minutes before closing.’
Penny starts her video by laying out the situation.
“I know, I know you’re thinking, ‘OK, but if you have to make one thing for a customer, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. Like, you know, it’s not that big of a deal. You can still clean up and go,’” Penny begins.
But according to the barista, there are bigger consequences.
“This interaction cost me 20 minutes of my close,” she states.
A last-minute customer won’t take no for an answer
Penny says a man pulled up to her drive-thru at 8:55 p.m., right as the automated closing message played.
“There’s like a little automated thing that comes on, like five before close, and it says, ‘Oh, you know, thanks so much for coming, we’re actually closed right now. Please come back another day,’” she explains.
However, even though the customer heard it, he pulled up anyway.
“I can sense he’s staring at me through the window,” she says, adding that by this point, everything was shut down.
“Floors are mopped, counters are wiped, all the appliances are cleaned, all the food is packaged up and put away,” she says. “Everything is done.”
At first, she thought he got the hint. “I think he’s leaving, right? He pulls out. I’m like, ‘Great. Sayonara.”
But then, he parked his car, walked inside, and stood in the middle of the freshly mopped floor.
“He says, ‘Are you still open? Can I get a drink?’”
She had no choice but to make it
If it were up to her, Penny says she would’ve shut him down.
“Now, if it was my store, I would have said, ‘We are closed. We do not have the capacity to make you anything right now,’” she says.
But it wasn’t her store. She had been sent there from another location, and she didn’t want to risk getting written up for refusing a customer.
So, instead, she tried to set some boundaries.
“I said to him, ‘It depends on what you want because everything is shut down. Everything is cleaned. All the dishes are done. We cannot even make you a cup of coffee. What do you want?’” she asks.
At first, he acted understanding. “He goes, ‘Oh, that’s fine. No, I don’t need coffee,’” Penny says.
But then, he asked for something even worse, something that involved “Oreo crumbs, chocolate, and dairy”—a full-blown frappe-style drink.
“He was like, ‘Yeah. Yeah, if you can make that for me. You can make that for me, right?’” Penny says.
At this point, she had no choice but to make it. “So whatever. I charge him for the drink. I’m making it,” she said.
She and her coworkers had to re-clean everything
After handing over the drink, Penny tried to give him the benefit of the doubt: Maybe he was getting it for his kid? Maybe it was a special occasion?
But then she thought about it again.
“Who’s feeding their kid a coffee-sugary blended beverage with whipped cream at 9 p.m. at night?” Penny wonders.
And while the drink itself didn’t take long to make, cleaning everything again did.
“We had to clean the blenders again. We had to clean the appliances again. We had to clean the counters again,” she said. “We had to check and restock anything I had used to make this gross potion concoction for this grown man at nine at night.”
To anyone who’s never worked in food service, Penny has one request: Don’t assume that making something right before closing is no big deal.
“I urge you, if you don’t work in customer service, do not think, ‘Oh, it’ll be super quick.’ It adds so much time,” she says.
The confusion around ‘closing time‘
Penny isn’t the only one to struggle with closing times in the U.S.
A study on retail closing time practices found that while workers feel stressed and annoyed by closing time duties, managers often downplay these concerns, insisting that their current policies work just fine.
Meanwhile, customers may react negatively to closing time procedures, sometimes even behaving negatively when they feel rushed or unwelcome.
However, some countries have better systems in place. In Japan, for example, restaurants set a separate ‘last order’ time before closing, making sure customers know when to order while giving employees enough time to clean up without staying late.
At the end of the day, in the U.S., there’s no official rule against last-minute orders. It just comes down to whether customers choose to be considerate or not.
@xo_pennypink Do not come to my town #customerservice #restaurant #cafe #barista #closing ♬ original sound – xo, penny pink💖✨
Commenters are split
In the comments section, some viewers thought the customer was in the wrong, while others disagreed with the barista’s complaint.
“Shifts should end 30 minutes AFTER close,” noted one viewer. “If it’s 9:55 and they close at 10, then I made it just in time.”
“For me it depends on the store,” shared another. “If you have to MAKE me something, then no. If it’s a grocery/convenience store, I have 5 minutes still to run in and grab that 1 thing.”
“I’m on your side but you can see why it’s confusing when the hours say OPEN the gen public is not gonna understand your closing process,” wrote a third.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Penny via TikTok direct message for more information.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
