Comment by otherme123 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by otherme123 | Hacker News Reader

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When US people come to Europe, they are shocked because indeed a business closes at 2 pm, and if you arrive at 2:05 pm it is your fault. If your contract says 9-5, you are not expected to work at 6 pm in the name of customers. The business need to hire someone to cover the evening, and customers get used to buy things in comercial hours.

Yes, some people do overtime, but society structured around the fact that workers are people too with a right to free (truly free) time, and maybe you as a customer don't have a "right" to be feed at 2 am, or to buy stuff on sundays. Even if that means we are "europoor" or customers pay higher prices, something that economic theory asserts but reality not so much.

Retail workers in the US are paid hourly and clock in and clock out to shifts, with strict rules around schedules and breaks. If a retail business has a stated closing time (say, 7pm), and you show up at 7:05 (or honestly 6:55), you will not be served.

The main detriment to quality of life of retail workers is that most of them are kept part time below the number of hours where employer health insurance is mandatory, and that most large businesses no longer do set weekly shift schedules, and instead it's algorithmically determined and random.

One thing that happens a LOT in retail is, say if a store closes at 10pm, a customer will walk in at 9:58pm, be there for 30 min to an hour, and employees HAVE to stay until they leave and cannot kick them out. If they do, they can get written up. Not all businesses do this obviously, but I've worked in retail long enough to have seen this happen a lot.

that's fine if the business is paying overtime for those employees, i imagine if that bumps them above 32 hours (for health coverage requirements) or over 40 hours thus requiring overtime, and it happens enough, they'll hire a minimum wage security guard to keep customers from coming in at 2 'til.

Haha, no way is the store I'm talking about ever hiring a security guard. Corporate doesn't give them enough money to hire enough people, let alone a security guard.

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