Imagine working at a bar or restaurant at closing time. What would you do if there were still customers lingering at a table over an hour past closing time? Would you let them stay as long as they wanted, or would you eventually tell them to leave?

In this story, one employee was in this situation, and a conversation about a smell is what finally made the customers realize they had stayed way too late.

Let’s read the whole story.

‘Can’t you do that later? It’s offending my nose!’

So it’s a Friday night and our place is open until 21:30. We do our usual last order calls 10 minutes prior – everyone is all good for the night so we start packing up and cleaning down the house.

At this point it’s 22:50 (1 hour and 20 minutes past closing) and there’s one table left at the front of the house. We’ve pretty much done all our usual tasks so we start vacuuming and mopping down the back.

5 minutes into doing this, one of the ladies at the table raises her hand and gestures someone to come over so I drop my mop and walk on over.

She had a complaint and a request.

Me: Hi there, did you need something?

Lady: Yes, that thing you guys are doing there, it’s offending my nose.

Me: Oh the mopping? I’m sorry you find the smell unpleasant, it’s a mixture of bleach and detergent that we are required to use to kill any bacteria on the floor.

Lady: WELL I DO NOT LIKE IT, CAN’T YOU DO THAT LATER?

He explained the situation.

Me: Unfortunately not, we’re closing up shop very soon and this is the final task for the evening.

Lady: So you’re saying you’re using this unpleasant smell to make us bugger off is it?

Me: Like I mentioned, this is our final task for the evening and we have a lot of staff needing to go home. We’re already past our closing time so unless you are happy paying overtime for the staff then they will need to finish this task asap.

At least they finally got the message.

Lady gets a bit flustered at this point and I go back to mopping.

The table eventually asks for the check a few minutes later and makes a comment about customer service.

Some people man..

Closing time is closing time. They were lucky they were allowed to stay so much longer after the place was officially closed.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Someone who used to work at a cafe knows exactly what it’s like to be in this situation.

Some customers really can’t take a hint!

Here’s a person who is much more considerate than the customers in this story.

Yes, it’s the perfect comeback.

Customers need to respect closing time.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.