Closing Time, Part I

I picked up the intercom phone and hit the “General Attention” button. A loud tone sounded through the public address system, causing the crew and some of our less addled customers to look up. “Attention Sav-on shoppers!” I cried, in what I hoped was a friendly tone. “It is now closing time! You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here! Please begin making your way toward the exit; our store will re-open tomorrow morning at 8:00 sharp for your shopping convenience.”

The year was 1995, and I was the Assistant Manager (sometimes called the “Front-end Manager,” “Floor Manager” or “Assistant General Manager”) of the Sav-on drug store located in Studio City, California. I’ve mentioned this job a few times in this space; I took it as a stop-gap when the cable television company I was working for during business school was purchased and my job (my entire department, in fact) was eliminated the Friday before graduation, leaving me sort of at odds and ends, with rent to pay. I spent a year in the drug store chain, applying to real companies and looking for an actual MBA job, which you don’t have to tell me is what I should already have been doing during the final months of the MBA program. It’s just that I hadn’t expected the owners to sell the company out from under me for at least a few more years (in fairness, neither had they!)…

As previously noted, it was a crappy job featuring low pay, unpleasant (and occasionally dangerous) working conditions, preposterous hours, and a wait for promotion of around six times longer than the recruiter who recruited me for the job said it would be (e.g. 12 years for promotion to General Manager, not two, and waits of 25+ years for Corporate, not 4), and I would have left sooner than I did except for two factors: the overspecialization of MBAs and devaluation of the degree had already begun, and the fact it’s difficult to devote the time to a proper job search when you’re working between 55 and 75 hours each week…

A secondary factor, it must be conceded, is that the job quite unexpectedly turned into a splendid field laboratory and practicum in both management and leadership issues, the lessons from which would serve me well when a real management job in an actual corporation finally arrived. It was also a source of continual amazement and wonder, as I confronted the general public in a front-line customer service role – and I don’t mean that in a good way…

The night in question was a typical example: despite the fact that I had been making closing time announcements at 9:30, 9:45 and 9:55 (as mandated in the Assistant Manager’s handbook) when I called for closing time, there were still about a dozen customers wandering through the aisles of the store, staring at suppositories and hair-care products as though they (the products, not the customers) had just been handed down from on high by archangels with golden wings. It was now my job to go round them up and gently suggest that since our store was closed, and our registers had gone off-line at 10:00, now might be a good time for them to toddle on home, come see us tomorrow, there’s a good customer. Most of them had ignored the announcements altogether, and were very surprised to be told that our store was closing (“don’t you stay open 24/7?”), but a few of them were quite aware of the time and the fact that we were closed, and simply expected we would make an exception for them…

After we’d convinced the last of our zombie customers that yes, they really did have to leave now, and no, I wasn’t going to keep the entire crew sitting around while they made their final $8.89 purchase, we locked the doors and began cashing out the registers and setting up for overnight conditions. It was just about then that there came a loud, frustrated shout of outrage from the front door, and someone began pounding on the security gate hard enough to make the entire building shake…

(To be continued…)