'Are you still open?': Couple orders food from exasperated workers at a closed restaurant, wonders if they're wrong

How many people working in customer service, retail, or the service industry have had to deal with this exact same scenario? The closing time was 6 pm—it's now ten after—and there are still customers in the store. You're not allowed to turn customers away—management has forbidden it—still, customers continue to pour in.

This same thing happens often, and management insists that every last customer be able to order, forcing you to stay late well past scheduled closing… Yet, every time you try to claim the overtime, they give you grief—forcing justification of the extra time despite it resulting from their own policy.

You're trying to get out of there as fast as possible; you've got an assignment due in the morning that still needs some final touches. The last time this happened, you ended up being too tired to finish it and had to accept partial credit. Your coworkers are eager to get home to feed their kids or pets or to uphold plans they'd made for after their shift.

No one wants to be there after close—at least, no one who is working. The customers are more than happy to take their time, plodding around and taking as long as possible amidst lengthy conversations. But the staff… All they want is to get home and get on with their evening as they'd planned.

And—still… customers continue to walk through the door.

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Posted by Brad Dickson

The amount of stress and drain this puts on workers is exactly the reason why you should never step foot into an establishment just before closing… Give retail workers the grace of at least 10 minutes; cafes and takeaway shops should get at least 15; and never enter a restaurant for a sit-down meal, even 30 minutes before closing.

But, hey, exceptions to social etiquette happen all the time for a lot of reasons. If you are desperate enough to patronize any establishment within these times, you had better be desperate and apologize profusely.

However, the unforgivable act of entering after closing is exactly that: Unforgivable. If you knowingly enter somewhere after you know they'd usually be shut, you have no ethical leg to stand on. The only reason why those doors are still unlocked is because there are customers in the store, the only reason why workers are still talking to you is because they have to. Just let the poor people go home.

So, when this couple shared their story of an encounter with some "rude" workers, wondering if they were in the wrong for entering the shop for some ice cream 10 minutes after close—the answer was only going to go one way.

Readers declared them to be "a-holes" and in the wrong for the situation, though a disappointing number of clueless people thought that they weren't in the wrong.

See selections of the thread that inspired this post below, followed by some of the reader's responses.