Closing shifts tend to drag on when customers treat store hours like optional guidelines.

So when one retail employee kept getting stuck at work past midnight thanks to college kids flooding in at the last second, he found a way to follow the rules while locking them out at the same time.

Keep reading for the full story!

I work at a convenience store in a college dorm. We close at 12:00am. I now take my mandatory break from 11:29pm to 11:59am.

About a year ago there was a policy change at the store that created two or three times more traffic at night.

I went from being able to clean, front, stock, and drop the money by 12 a.m. to sometimes not getting out of the store until 1:30 a.m. because the kids in the dorm love to roll through at the last possible minute.

I usually had a continuous line well after midnight.

The employee tried to combat this, but nothing seemed to work.

I tried deterring this by turning the lights off at 11:30, closing the sliding double doors (but not locking them), stocking shelves and making the kids wait in line for a god-awful long time, and putting the trash that needs to go out in the doorway, leaving only a little room to walk in.

Nothing was working.

His manager was growing increasingly unhappy with him too.

My manager was also on my tail because I was working a lot of extra hours compared to what I normally did and told me I had to be off the clock by 12:20 a.m. and to stop all sales at midnight.

My shifts are usually 6 p.m.–12 a.m., and because of that I am required to take a 30-minute break.

So finally, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Getting fed up with the kids coming in the store so late, and my boss telling me to do impossible things, I decided to take a different approach a few weeks ago.

I started to take my break from 11:29–11:59 and stock and clean during that time. I’d have the doors locked and closed and the lights off, but there would always be a crowd that gathered in a sitting area outside the store.

Customers still had a hard time taking the hint.

People even looked through the doors, asked if I’m open, and tried a couple of times to open the locked doors. At 11:59 I opened the doors.

People would come in and start looking around deciding what to buy, but as soon as the clock hit 12 I would yell that the store was closed and I would no longer ring anything up and everyone had to leave.

But when they finally realized, they didn’t take it well.

I had a few people throw things on the ground and curse at me, then storm out, but it’s so worth it — and the kids are starting to get the picture.

There isn’t a crowd waiting after 11:30 anymore, once in a while a few stragglers, but not like it was, and management is evidently cool with it because they haven’t said anything.

I think a few more weeks and I’ll be able to take an actual break earlier and get my stuff done the last half hour with the store open because the kids will be trained.

I will be doing this at the start of fall semesters from now on.

If the customer’s don’t bother to watch the clock, then someone else has to do it for them.

Redditors chime in.

Closing shift can often be the worst shift to work.

A break should include a real rest.

This commenter points out that this malicious compliance could end up backfiring.

Maybe this employee should have just listened to the manager.

In retail, you don’t argue with the clock — you weaponize it!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.